laid waste and desolate. I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated. I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life."

In the essay, or the

MUTUAL RELATION OF PARAGRAPHS. chapter, the paragraphs should obey the same rules as the sentences in the paragraph. That is, the paragraphs should be relevant; they should be long or short according to the importance of their matter; they should come in natural and orderly sequence; and should, if necessary, be linked by connectives, sometimes looking forward, sometimes looking back.

EXERCISES

L. Divide the following passage into paragraphs.

Henry II., the first of the Angevin kings, was only twenty-one when he ascended the throne. His body was thickset and strong, his legs bowed, his face fiery-red. His activity was extraordinary: he was never without some bodily or mental occupation. Once when he had nothing else to do, he was found by a bishop busily mending his old clothes. He was affable and inquisitive. Without much reverence for things divine, he would even at mass whisper to his neighbours and scrawl caricatures. Henry's dominions stretched north to the Tweed and south to the Pyrenees. Northumberland and Cumberland, which Stephen had found it expedient to allow the Scots king to retain, Henry now regained. In France he was lord of about a third of all the land. This he held partly by inheritance from both father and mother, partly in right of his wife. Henry was determined to establish a strong government and to make the royal authority supreme. The great barons were no longer to defy the King. He therefore required the hearty support of the lesser Norman barons and of the English. It was now easier to secure the co-operation of Norman and English, since the division between them was disappearing. Living side by side in England and intermarrying, the two races were rapidly uniting into one people. The great barons had during times of trouble sought to become independent; each ruled as a petty king in his district and instituted courts to try cases. To check this, Henry frequently summoned the Great Council and strengthened the King's Court. Barons who attended the Great Council would have an interest in the government of England as a whole and would be less likely to attempt to be independent in small districts. Again, the

strengthening of the King's Court attracted cases to it and in proportion weakened the courts of the barons. Their military power was also lessened. To defend the possessions in France, Henry required an army to serve longer than the few weeks a year which could be demanded from the feudal vassals. Accordingly instead of service, the King accepted money for each knight's fee. With this he hired mercenaries. The King's power was thus increased; and the power of the barons lessened, for their vassals had now fewer opportunities of military experience.

LI. Re-arrange the paragraphing of the following passage.

The chief opponent of Halifax was Lawrence Hyde, who had recently been created Earl of Rochester.

Of all Tories, Rochester was the most intolerant and uncompromising. The moderate members of his party complained that the whole patronage of the Treasury, while he was First Commissioner there, went to noisy zealots, whose only claim to promotion was that they were always drinking confusion to Whiggery, and lighting bonfires to burn the Exclusion Bill.

The Duke of York, pleased with a spirit which so much resembled his own, supported his brother-in-law passionately and obstinately. The attempts of rival ministers to surmount and supplant each other kept the court in incessant agitation.

Halifax pressed the King to summon a Parliament, to grant a general amnesty, to deprive the Duke of York of all share in the government, to recall Monmouth from banishment, to break with Lewis, and to form a close union with Holland on the principles of the Triple Alliance.

The Duke of York, on the other hand, dreaded the meeting of a Parliament, regarded the vanquished Whigs with undiminished hatred, still flattered himself that the design formed fourteen years before at Dover might be accomplished, daily represented to his brother the impropriety of suffering one who was at heart a Republican to hold the Privy Seal, and strongly recommended Rochester for the great place of Lord Treasurer. While the two factions were struggling, Godolphin, cautious, silent and laborious, observed a neutrality between them.

Sunderland, with his usual restless perfidy, intrigued against them both. He had been turned out of office in disgrace for having voted in favour of the Exclusion Bill, but had made his peace by employing the good offices of the Duchess of Portsmouth and by cringing to the Duke of York, and was once more Secretary of State. Nor was Lewis negligent or inactive. Everything at that moment favoured his designs.

He had nothing to apprehend from the German Empire, which was then contending against the Turks on the Danube. Holland could not, unsupported, venture to oppose him.

He was therefore at liberty to indulge his ambition and insolence without restraint. He seized Strasburg, Courtray, Luxemburg. He exacted from the republic of Genoa the most humiliating submissions.

The power of France at that time reached a higher point than it ever before or ever after attained, during the ten centuries which separated the reign of Charlemagne from the reign of Napoleon. It was not easy to say where her acquisitions would stop, if only England could be kept in a state of vassalage.

The first object of the Court of Versailles was therefore to prevent the calling of a Parliament and the reconciliation of English parties. For this end, bribes, promises and menaces were unsparingly employed.

Charles was sometimes allured by the hope of a subsidy, and sometimes frightened by being told that, if he convoked the Houses, the secret articles of the treaty of Dover should be published.

Several Privy Councillors were bought; and attempts were made to buy Halifax, but in vain. When he had been found incorruptible, all the art and influence of the French Embassy were employed to drive him from office; but his polished wit and his various accomplishments had made him so agreeable to his master that the design. failed.

LII. Examine any piece of prose with which you are familiar. How far does it illustrate the methods and obey the rules of good paragraph construction?

LIII. Write a number of paragraphs observing the rules of paragraph construction and illustrating the various styles of paragraphs. The paragraphs may be on any of the following subjects, or on any other subject with which you are acquainted.

I. Describe a penny, a sovereign, an umbrella, a boot, a walkingstick, a needle, a pin, a doll, a cricket bat, a cricket ball, a football, a tennis racket, an oar, a fishing-rod, a rifle, a human hand, the moon, the aurora borealis, a rose, a lily, a magnet, a pocket knife, a feather, a chair, salt, sugar, snow.

2. Narrate an anecdote from history or fiction; e.g. "King Alfred and the cakes"; "Bruce and the spider"; "Androclus and the lion"; or tell a short story of the sagacity of any animal.

3. Explain some proverb or maxim, such as:
"A stitch in time saves nine."

"The more hurry, the less speed."
"Make hay while the sun shines.”

4. What do you understand by the following terms: geography, shorthand, botany, syntax, a map, the mariner's compass, longitude, volcano, balance of power, Ship-money, the Woolsack, Prime Minister, the Crusades, earthquake, tides, coral-island, a photograph?

N.B. The paragraph is to be restricted to one aspect of the subject. It is a description of a football, not an account of a football match or a history of the game. It is a definition of earthquake, not a history of earthquakes or a list of theories of their causes.

CHAPTER X

PUNCTUATION

For the sake of clearness and emphasis, we make certain pauses in speaking and in reading aloud. In writing and in printing, the pauses are indicated, with approximate exactness, by a system of signs, called stops or points. That is what is meant by punctuation. The stops represent pauses of varying length, and are, for the most part, inserted according to the grammar and sense of the passage. But, in addition, a stop may appear-where not required by grammar and sense-in order to mark a pause for rhetorical effect. Such a pause will depend on the writer's mind. For this reason, and for others, the same kind of statement may be punctuated differently by different writers. Consequently, hard and fast rules for punctuation cannot be laid down; and within certain limits a considerable variety of usage exists.

The stops proper are: period or full stop; colon; semicolon; comma; point of interrogation; point of exclamation. It is usual, however, to include in punctuation, the dash, brackets, and points of quotation.

The apostrophe, the hyphen, and the use of capital letters are also considered in this chapter.

THE FULL STOP (.). This stop must be put at the close of all sentences-except direct questions or exclamations, where it is replaced by the point of interrogation (?) or the point of exclamation (!). Note that the point of interrogation or of exclamation may be inserted elsewhere than at the end of the

sentence.

"What is spirit? What are our own minds, the portion of spirit with which we are best acquainted? We observe certain phænomena.