that the Iambic foot, consisting of a short syllable before a long one, which was excluded from all grave and dignified subjects, as proper only for topics of levity, is the species of foot most peculiarly appropriated in our time to heroic verse; and that the anapestic foot, in which the ancients discovered so much grandeur and dignity, forms the versification of our most simple ballads, and enlivens the gaiety of our most sportive, convivial songs.

If the numbers of ancient versification, thus measured by mere varieties of time, cannot be applied to the construction of our verse in such a manner as to produce poetic harmony, still less can they be made subservient to the music of English oratory. That mysterious marriage between the unison of the dactyl and the octave of the iambus, issuing in the first and second paean, certainly produces in our language no such won ders of harmony, as are celebrated in the pages of Aristotle and Cicero.

I never should advise any English speaker to waste his time in attempts to arrange his sentences according to the rules of Greek or Latin prosody. Yet I would not have him altogether inattentive to the location and distribution of his accented sylla29

VOL. II.

bles; for I have no doubt but that upon this the
harmony of a sentence may often depend. The
first paean has a recommendation for commencing
a sentence, because the accent, being on the first
syllable, arrests immediately the attention. The
second paean, having the accent on the closing
syllable, may for a similar reason be proper at the
end. If the accented syllables be crowded too
closely together, they will encumber and clog in a
painful manner the speaker's utterance; if too
thinly scattered, his discourse will be flattened by
multiplied monosyllables.
As far as I can trust
the judgment of my own ear, I should say, that a
predominant proportion of dactyls, or of syllables,
every third of which is accented, interspersed for
the purpose of variety with occasional iambics,
anapests, and spondees, would form the most ef-
fectual combination for the production of nume-
rous prose.
But it is vain to attempt

Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.

It is idle to compute the charms of oratorical numbers by the multiplication table of arithmetic ; nor is it conceivable to me, that the lightning of a Demosthenes could need to be sped upon the wings of a semi-quaver. These are subjects of

curious inquiry to the student, but should never for a moment arrest the precious moments of the practical speaker. Even Cicero himself, after all the pains he has taken to elucidate the doctrine of oratorical numbers, acknowledges, that the only final guide must be the instinct of a delicate ear.

I shall here conclude my observations upon those elements of oratorical composition, denominated order, juncture, and number. The putting together of letters, syllables, and words, has perhaps already detained us too long. We have still however to consider them, as compounded in the form of sentences and periods.

LECTURE XXIX.

SENTENCES.

HAVING considered the principles of oratorical composition in respect to the construction of sentences, by analyzing the nature and character of their constituent parts, it will now be proper to close this part of my subject with remarks relative to the character of those sentences themselves, as entire bodies. The order, the juncture, and the number, of which I have treated in my last lectures, all refer to the position of letters, syllables, and words, in the body of a sentence. We have been inquiring how words should be put together for the formation of sentences. We are now to analyze the sentences into their component parts; not of words and syllables, but of members and divisions of thought.