In accordance with the Rule and the Remarks (pp. 142-3), say why periods are inserted in the following passages:—

Legitimate reasoning is impossible without severe thinking; and thinking is neither an easy nor an amusing employment. The reader who would follow a close reasoner to the summit and absolute principle of any one important subject has chosen a chamois-hunter for his guide. Our guide will, indeed, take us the shortest way, will save us many a wearisome and perilous wandering, and warn us of many a mock road, that had formerly led himself to the brink of chasms and precipices, or at least in an idle circle to the spot from whence he started. But he cannot carry us on his shoulders: we must strain our own sinews as he has strained his, and make firm footing on the naked rock for ourselves by the blood of toil from our own feet.

There is no one, of ever so little understanding in what belongs to a human constitution, who knows not, that without action, motion, and employment, the body languishes and is oppressed; its nourishment runs to disease; the spirits, employed abroad, help to consume the parts within; and nature, as it were, preys upon herself. For although an inclination to ease, and moderate rest from action, be as natural and useful to us as the inclination we have towards sleep; yet an excessive love of rest, and a contracted aversion to employment, must be a disease in the mind, equal to that of a lethargy in the body.

This calamity is peculiar to man. The inferior tribes know nothing of it. They obey the laws of their life, and so they have no dread of what is to come. The lamb gambols alike through the green pastures or to the place of slaughter. Up to the last flutter of her wings, the bird ceases not to trill her matins upon the air. But the only immortal being upon the earth lives in dread of death. The only being to whom death is an impossibility fears every day that it will come. And if we analyze the nature of this fear, and explore the cause of it, we shall not be at all certain that it will not follow the mere natural man into a future life, and have an important part in its retributions.

When we look at different races of animals, though all partake of that mysterious property, life; yet what an immense and impassable distance is there between the insect and the lion! They have no bond of union, no possibility of communication. During the lapse of ages, the animalcules which sport in the sunbeams a summer's day, and then perish, have made no approximation to the king of the forests. But in the intellectual world there are no such barriers. All minds are

essentially of one origin, one nature, kindled from one divine flame; and are all tending to one centre, one happiness. This great truth, to us the greatest of truths, which lies at the foundation of all religion and of all hope, seems to me not only sustained by proofs which satisfy the reason, but to be one of the deep instincts of our nature.

In whatever way, and in whatever century, the Homeric poems might be created and fashioned, they place before us a time when the heroic age was on the decline, or had perhaps already gone by. For there are two different worlds which both exist together in the compositions of Homer, -the world of marvels and tradition, which still, however, appears to be near and lively before the eyes of the poet; and the living circumstances and present concerns of the world, which produced the poet himself.

EXERCISE TO BE WRITTEN.

Insert periods in their respective places, and substitute capitals for small letters at the beginning of the sentences: —

The character of Washington is among the most cherished contemplations of my life it is a fixed star in the firmament of great names, shining, without twinkling or obscuration, with clear, steady; beneficent light it is associated and blended with all our reflections on those things which are near and dear to us.

Truly good books are more than mines to those who can understand them they are the breathings of the great souls of past times genius is not embalmed in them, as is sometimes said, but lives in them perpetually but we need not many books to answer the great ends of reading a few are better than many; and a little time, given to a faithful study of the few, will be enough to quicken thought and enrich the mind.

We stand on the threshold of a new age, which is preparing to recognize new influences the ancient divinities of violence and wrong are retreating to their kindred darkness the sun of our moral universe is entering a new ecliptic, no longer deformed by images of animal rage, but beaming with the mild radiance of those heavenly signs, Faith, Hope, and Charity the age of chivalry has gone: an age of humanity has come the horse, which gave the name to the first, now yields to man the foremost place in serving him, in doing him good, in contributing to his welfare and elevation, there are fields of bloodless triumph nobler far than any in which warriors ever conquered here are spaces of labor wide as the world, lofty as heaven.

RULE II.

Headings, Subheads, Phrases in Titlepages, &c.

A period is put after a heading or a subhead, indicating the kind of matter treated of; after any term placed over a column of contents or figure-work; after the address of a person or of persons, as used in epistolary and other writings; after every signature to a document; after the name of a book or its description, preceding the author's name, in a titlepage; and after any word or phrase used in imprints, catalogues, &c., when it is not intimately related to what follows. Thus:

1.

CONTENTS.

CHAP. I. INTRODUCTION.

Sect. I.-The Importance and Uses of Correct Punctuation

Notes illustrating its Value

Sect. II. - Plan of the Work, and Definitions of the Terms used

Dear Sir,- We hereby acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the 25th instant, addressed to our society, in which you are pleased, for reasons assigned, to present an organ to be placed in our new meeting-house for the purpose of aiding in public worship. Be pleased, dear sir, to accept the thanks of the society.

Very gratefully and respectfully, yours, &c.,

DUBLIN, Feb. 28, 1853.

JONATHAN K. SMITH.

ASA H. FISK.
ASA HEALD.

3. The First-class Standard Reader, for Public and Private Schools. By Epes Sargent. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Company. 1854.

Mill (John Stuart). A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. Third edition. London, 1851.

Christmas with the Poets; a Collection of Songs, Carols, and Descriptive Verses, relating to the Festival of Christmas.

REMARK S.

a. No point should be attached to the name of any article or subject which is followed, as in the first example, by leaders, or several points serving to lead the eye to a term or figure put at the end of the line, and completing the sense.

b. When the subjects of a chapter or section, specified in a heading or in the contents or index of a book, are distinct, they should be separated by a period; but, if closely connected in sense, they are more appropriately marked by a minor point, according to the degree of connection subsisting between them; as, " Chap. II. America. Discovery and Settlement: Columbus, Americus, Cabot, &c. Conquest of Mexico: Cortez, Pizarro, &c."

c. When the names in signatures are followed each by an explanatory term, the full point should be placed after the latter; as,

JAMES MARSHALL, President.

TIMOTHY TOMPKINS, Treasurer.

JOHN THOMSON,

Committee.

WILLIAM PARK,

RULE III.

Names, Titles, and other Words, abbreviated.

The period must be used after every abbreviated word.

EXAMPLES.

1. The age of MSS. is, in some instances, known by dates inserted in them. 2. Dr. H. Marsh, F.R.S., &c., Bishop of Peterborough; b. 1757, d. 1839. 8. The Plays of Wm. Shakspeare are sometimes printed from the text of Geo. Stevens, Esq., and Edw. Malone, Esq.

REMARK S.

a. When an abbreviated word ends a sentence, only one period is used to show the omission of the letters, and the termination of the sentence; but any other point required by the construction should be inserted after the period, as exemplified above in the abbreviations "F.R.S., &c.," and the "Esq." which appears after the name of George Stevens. In such lists of words, however, as contain many abbreviations, the period only may be used, if no obscurity, or doubtfulness of meaning, would be produced by the omission of the grammatical point. See p. 151, Remark c.

b. In books printed at Edinburgh, the period is omitted after an abbreviated word which retains the last letter; as, " Dr Combe; Mr Buckingham." But this does not seem to be a sufficient reason for deviating from general usage.

c. Some printers use the apostrophe to indicate an ellipsis of intermediate letters in words which are fully pronounced; as, " Cha's; W'm," a style of pointing that should never be resorted to, except in abbreviations of long and unusual words, and where saving of space is essential, as in headings to columns of figure-work.

d. Words derived from a foreign language, and introduced into the English, may be written or printed without the period, when they are uniformly used as contractions, and pronounced accordingly; as, "Two per cent is but small interest." Here, "cent," the abbreviation of the Latin centum, being now an English word, and pronounced as such, the period is unnecessary.

e. Such words as 1st, 2dly, 12mo, 8vo, 8°, are not, strictly speaking, abbreviations; for the figures represent the first letters of each word. The period, therefore, should not be used, unless any of these terms come at the end of a sentence. When several subjects are specified, or when particular days of a month or various sizes of books are often mentioned, words of this form are perhaps unobjectionable; but, in the usual kinds of composition, it would be better to write them in full; as, "The command of the army was given in 1796 to Napoleon Bonaparte, then in the twenty-seventh year of his age."

f. When the letters of the alphabet (A, B, C; a, b, c, &c.) are employed as significant signs, or for the purpose of reference, it is better to point them, not as abbreviations, but as ordinary words, in accordance with the construction of the sentences in which they occur; as, "The dominical letters for 1776 were G, F: therefore the first Sunday in January was the 7th of the month. Then, A representing the 7th January, D would represent the 7th February; D, the 7th March; G, the 7th April; B, the 7th May; E, the 7th June; and G, the 7th July." When placed at the beginning of a line, they are treated as subcaptions or sideheads, which, agreeably to Rule II., p. 147, require to be followed by a period, and which, in the Italic form, are so used throughout the present work.

g. Proper names, when shortened and meant so to be pronounced, should not, except at the end of a sentence, be written or printed with a full point; as, "On the poet's tombstone were inscribed the words, 'O rare Ben Jonson!""

h. Lists of abbreviated words will be given in Appendix, No. IV.