a word stands for the fact which it represents; to the fool it is itself the fact "-John Stuart Mill. A pause is used at a period, to mark the completion of sense; as, “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. . . Emerson. A long pause -several times the usual length of that at a period is required between paragraphs, particularly when these contain important divisions of a subject or a discourse. The comparative length of this pause depends upon the character of the subject, as grave and serious, or familiar and light,—and on the length and importance of paragraphs, as principal or subordinate. In general it should not be shorter than twice the length of the pause usually made at a period. Pauses serve the double purpose of dividing what would tend to confuse the ear by the concurrence of incongruous sounds,—and of grouping together the different divisions of sense which naturally belong to each other, presenting both the sound and the sense more clearly and distinctly to the ear and mind. Pausing thus performs the same office to clauses and sentences that syllabication does to words, serving to divide the sound into relative portions, and aiding to preserve clearness and distinctness between them. In equable and calm expression, the pauses are moderate; in energetic language, when didactic or argumentative, the pauses are rendered long by the force of emphasis preceding them; in strong and deep emotion, they run to the extremes of brevity and of length, as the tone of passion is abrupt and rapid, or slow and interrupted in utterance. Awe and solemnity are expressed by lang cessations of the voice; grief also, when deep and suppressed, requires frequent and long pauses. The common defect in regard to pauses, is, that they are made too short for clear and distinct expression. Feeble utterance, hurried articulation, and defective emphasis, generally combine to produce this fault in young readers and speakers; the pauses being in proportion to the accustomed force of utterance, or energy of articulation and emphasis. 66 "The manner of a good reader or speaker is distinguished by clearness, impressiveness, and dignity, arising from the full con ception of meaning, and the deliberate and distinct expression of it, while nothing is so indicative of a want of attention and selfcommand, and nothing so unhappy in its effect, as haste and confusion." ILLUSTRATIONS. Very Short Pauses. "One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear, When they reached the hall door, and the charger stood near; So light to the saddle before her he sprung! 'She is won! we are gone, over bank, bush and scaur; They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar.” LOCHINVAR.- Scott. "I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he: I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three; 'Good speed!' cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew; 'Speed!' echoed the wall to us galloping through; Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest, And into the midnight we galloped abreast." HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM GHENT TO AIX. "Away!-away!-and on we dash! Upon the pinions of the wind, All human dwellings left behind: A trampling troop,-I see them come! And flanks unscarred by spur or rod,— Browning. Came thickly thundering on: They stop,-they start-they snuff the air, Approach, retire, wheel round and round, Then plunging back with sudden bound, They snort, they foam-neigh-swerve aside, By instinct, from a human eye."— MAZEPPA.— Byron. Short Pauses. "Genius rushes like a whirlwind - talent marches like a cavalcade of heavy men and heavy horses-cleverness skims like a swallow in the summer evening, with a sharp shrill note, and a sudden turning. The man of genius dwells with men and with nature; the man of talent in his study; but the clever man dances here, there, and everywhere, like a butterfly in a hurricane, striking everything and enjoying nothing, but too light to be dashed to pieces."- Hazlitt. "They come from beds of lichen green, They creep from the mullen's velvet screen; From the silver tops of the moon-touched trees, Some from the hum-bird's downy nest They had driven him out by elfin power, And, pillow'd on plumes of his rainbow breast, With glittering ising-stars inlaid; And some had open'd the four-o'clock, And stole within its purple shade. And now they throng the moonlight glade, Their little minim forms array'd In the tricksy pomp of fairy pride!" THE CULPRIT FAY.-J. R. Drake. "Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures, Whilst the landscape round it measures; Russet lawns, and fallows gray, Where the nibbling flocks do stray; Where perhaps some beauty lies, The Cynosure of neighboring eyes." Moderate Pauses. L'ALLEGRO. Milton. "A woman's voice can tell a long history of sorrow in a single word. This wonderful instrument, our voice, alters its timbre with every note it yields, as the face changes with every look, until at last the dominant emotion is master, and gives quality to tone and character to expression. . . "Every look, tone, gesture of a man is a symbol of his complete nature. If we apply the microscope severely enough, we can discern the fine organism by which the soul sends itself out in every act of the being. And the more perfectly developed the creature, the more significant, and yet the more mysterious, is every habit, and every motion mightier than habit, of body and soul."- Theodore Winthrop. "An outward blow, -the sudden ruin of a friendship which he [Robertson] had wrought, as he imagined, forever, into his being, -a blow from which he never afterwards wholly recovered,— accelerated the inward crisis, and the result was a period of spiritual agony so awful that it not only shook his health to its centre, but smote his spirit down into so profound a darkness, that of all his early faiths but one remained: It must be right to do right.' He had passed up the hill Difficulty with youthful ardor; he had been glad in the beautiful house, and seen the Delectable Mountains from far; he had gone down the hill with enthusiasm and pleasant thoughts; but Apollyon met him in the valley, and broken by the battle, but unsubdued, he walked in tenfold gloom through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, with the fiends whispering dark doubts in his ears, till he half believed them to be his own,stumbling and fainting, but ever going onwards, — till at last, emerging victorious, he went up upon the hills to see with clearer vision than before, through the glass of faith, the shining of the Celestial City."-Stopford A. Brooke. "It is the sixteenth century. Beyond the ashes on the hill a red light is gathering; above the falling of the dews a great sun is rising there is a rushing of light and song upward - let it still be UPWARD! Shakespeare is in the world! And the Genius of English Poetry, she who only of all the earth is worthy (Goethe's spirit may hear us say so, and smile), stooping, with a royal gesture, to kiss the dead lips of the Genius of Greece, stands up her successor in the universe, by virtue of that chrism, and in right of her own crown."- Mrs. Browning "Forever unto thee we run, And give ourselves away; Like melting mists that seek the sun, To Nature do we turn, and minister, A memory, an appealing; An interchange of vision, An interchange of feeling; A twofold love, within the linked scope Of backward-looking Memory, and forward-looking Hope! With its old shapes of matter, long outworn; And matter, too, to new sensations born, Detects the soul of man, with spiritual surprises." R. H. Stoddard. "I have learned To look on Nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes Nor harsh, nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt All thinking things, all objects of all thought, |