-Pauses may be viewed in another light,-as producing the effect of grouping or throwing together those words which are most closely connected in meaning. Pausing has thus a double effect,--that of parting those portions of sound which would cause confusion, if united; and, at the same time, of joining those which would produce an incorrect signification, if separated. The cessation of the voice, therefore, at proper intervals, has the same effect nearly on clauses and sentences with that of articulation on syllables, or of pronunciation on words: it serves to gather up the sounds of the voice into relative portions, and aids in preserving clearness and distinction among them. But what those elementary and organic efforts do for syllables and words, the minor portions of speech,-pausing does for clauses, sentences, and entire discourses. The great use of pauses is to divide thought into its constituent portions, and to leave the mind opportunity of contemplating each distinctly, so as fully to comprehend and appreciate it, and, at the same time, to perceive its relation to the whole. Appropriate pauses are of vast importance, therefore, to a correct and impressive style of delivery; and without them, indeed, speech cannot be intelligible.

Pausing has, farther, a distinct office to perform in regard to the effect of feeling as conveyed by utterance. Awe and solemnity are expressed by long cessations of the voice; and grief, when it is deep, and at the same time suppressed, requires frequent and long pauses.

The general effect, however, of correct and welltimed pauses, is what most requires attention. The manner of a good reader or speaker is distinguished, in this particular, by clearness, impressiveness, and dignity, arising from the full conception of meaning, and the deliberate and distinct expression of it; while nothing is so indicative of want of attention and of self-command, and nothing is so unhappy in its effect, as haste and confusion.

DEFINITION. Pauses are the intervals produced between words, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs, by

those divisions of utterance which correspond to the portions of the sense.*

Note. The frequency with which pauses are to be introduced, cannot be regulated by the grammatical punctuation, which regards the syntactical structure of sentences, rather than the mode of pronouncing them; and which, though it is often coincident with the rhetorical or vocal pauses, is not uniformly so. Thus we have a comma or grammatical stop between the following words in writing: "No, sir"-but none in speaking; the phrase being pronounced nearly as one word, and producing the same sound to the ear as any word of two syllables, accented on the first. The following example, on the other hand, contains no grammatical stop; yet it requires, in appropriate reading, a long rhetorical pause between the words. "He woke *** to die."

The length of a pause is not dependent on the value of the grammatical stops, as is commonly taught, but on the meaning of what is read or spoken, as emphatic or otherwise, and on the kind of emotion, as naturally slow or rapid in utterance, and as requiring long or short cessations of voice. 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 happens to be abrupt and rapid, or slow and interrupted, in utterance. We may find, accordingly, the pauses made at the same grammatical stop of very different lengths in the same passage, or even the same sentence, according to the turns of thought and feeling indicated by the language. There may be, in fact, as mentioned before, a long rhetorical pause where no grammatical stop could be used.

Vocal pauses are uniformly the result of emphasis;

*The extent to which explanation has been sometimes carried, is not owing to any intrinsic difficulty in the subject, but to the desire of attracting attention to the nature and importance of particular branches of elocution, and especially of those in which there is the greatest liability to failure.

every emphatic word having, as it were, an attractive power, by which it clusters round it more or less of the words preceding or following it; and the cessation of the voice which is called a pause, is but a natural and necessary consequence of the organic effort used in uttering such a collection of sounds, embracing, as it always does, one syllable, at least, which demands a great impulse of the organs, and exhausts, in some cases of great energy in language, the supply of breath required for utterance.

This fact regarding the effect of emphasis on pausing, may be traced, though to an extent comparatively moderate, even in the secondary degree of emphasis, or that which Walker has termed accented force. By pronouncing the sentence used as an example of that author's classification of emphasis, it will be found that a pause, distinct and observable, though_short, follows every word to which this degree of force belongs, and that each of these words attracts or unites to itself, in pronunciation, the 'unaccented' word or words preceding it: the same thing would happen with unaccented words following an accented one, but closely connected with it in meaning. "Exercise and temperance strengthen even an INDIFFERENT constitution." This sentence, if divided to the eye, in type, as it is divided to the ear by the voice, would run thus: "Exercise and temperance strengthen even an indifferent constitution;" or perhaps more strictly thus, "Exercise andtemperance strengthen evenanindifferentconstitution."

Whatever holds true, in this respect, of words possessing accented force, is still more strikingly so, when applied to those which are spoken with emphatic force; as may be observed by making a slight change on the form of the above sentence, so as to introduce the emphatic word where the pause which follows it may become perceptible. Thus, "Even an indifferent constitution is. strengthened by exercise and temperance," expressed to the ear thus: "EvenanINDIFFERENT Constitution isstrengthened byexercise andtemperance.

This sentence forms so short an example, that it

contains only the minor pauses of discourse,-those which are not expressed at all, in grammatical punctuation. But the application of the principle is still more apparent, when the sentences are long and the clauses numerous, and, consequently, the grammatical stops frequent. That emphasis is the key to pausing, will be fully apparent, by reverting to the preceding example, and observing the great length of pause intervening between the nominative and the verb, in this instance, compared to what takes place in the original form of the sentence.

The meaning and the ear, then, and not the punctuation, are to guide us in pausing, any farther than the latter happens to coincide with the former. Nor will there be any more difficulty thus occasioned in reading or speaking, than there is in conversation, in which, the idea of attending to pauses by any fixed mechanical rule, would be felt to be absurd. All that needs peculiar attention in reading and speaking, as far as pausing is concerned, is this; that the greater force and slowness of utterance naturally required in these exercises, when performed in public, (implying a large space to be traversed by the voice,) and the more regular-perhaps, more formal-phraseology of written language, demand, even in private reading, longer and more frequent pauses than occur in conversation. Still it is the sense of what is read or spoken, and no arbitrary system of punctuation, that is to guide the voice in this as in all other respects.

RULE. I. Make the same pauses in reading a sentence that would be used in expressing the sentiment which it embodies, if given in the same words in conversation; using, however, in declamation, or in public reading, the pause naturally required by the greater energy of utterance.

This general rule may be applied in detail as follows, in circumstances in which the grammatical stop does not usually occur.* The pause will of course be

*These subordinate rules are given,-not because they are deemed indispensably necessary, apart from the general rule of

much longer, if, in any case, an emphatic word is substituted for one possessing only accented force.

1. A slight pause, sometimes called the rhetorical,' (to distinguish it from the grammatical pause,) takes place between the principal verb in a sentence, and the word or words which express the subject of the sentence, or form the nominative to the verb,-when the word, if single, conveys an important idea, or when the nominative consists of several words, or is followed by other words dependent on in.

Examples.

"The day | (*) has been considered as an image of the year, and a year as the representation of life. The morning answers to the spring, and the spring

to childhood and youth; the noon | corresponds to the summer, and the summer to the strength of manhood. The evening is an emblem of autumn, and autumn of declining life. The night shows the winter, in which all the powers of vegetation are benumbed; and the winter points out the time when life shall cease."

"Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the mind."

"Our schemes of thought in childhood | are lost in those of youth."

2. A brief phrase occurring between the nominative and the verb, is separated from both by a short pause. Ex. "All floats on the surface of that river which with swift current | is running towards a boundless ocean."

pausing acording to the sense, but from their importance to young learners, whose customary habit of rapidity often prevents them from attending to distinct and appropriate pausing, as a part of the expression of sentiment. The particular applications of the general rule, contained in these subordinate ones, may afford useful practice in connexion with that view of pausing which makes it dependent on emphasis; and, by the influence of repetition, may suggest analogies in circumstances in which the reader has not enjoyed the advantage of a previous perusal of the piece which he is to read. *The pauses which illustrate the rule are indicated by the above mark.