Page:The grammar of English grammars.djvu/486



LESSON II.—NOUNS.

"There goes a rumour that I am to be banished. And let the sentence come, if God so will. The other side of the sea is my Father's ground, as well as this side."—Rutherford.

"Gentlemen, there is something on earth greater than arbitrary or despotic power. The lightning has its power, and the whirlwind has its power, and the earthquake has its power. But there is something among men more capable of shaking despotic power than lightning, whirlwind, or earthquake; that is—the threatened indignation of the whole civilized world."—Daniel Webster.

"And Isaac sent away Jacob; and he went to Padan Aram, unto Laban, son of Bethuel the Syrian, and brother of Rebecca, Jacob's and Esau's mother."—See Gen., xxviii, 5.

"The purpose you undertake is dangerous." "Why that is certain: it is dangerous to take a cold, to sleep, to drink; but I tell you, my Lord fool, out of this nettle danger, we pluck this flower safety."—Shakespeare.

"And towards the Jews alone, one of the noblest charters of liberty on earth—Magna Charta, the Briton's boast—legalized an act of injustice."—Keith's Evidences, p. 74.

"Were Demosthenes's Philippics spoken in a British assembly, in a similar conjuncture of affairs, they would convince and persuade at this day. The rapid style, the vehement reasoning, the disdain, anger, boldness, freedom, which perpetually animate them, would render their success infallible over any modern assembly. I question whether the same can be said of Cicero's orations; whose eloquence, however beautiful, and however well suited to the Roman taste, yet borders oftener on declamation, and is more remote from the manner in which we now expect to hear real business and causes of importance treated."—Blair's Rhet., p. 248.

"In fact, every attempt to present on paper the splendid effects of impassioned eloquence, is like gathering up dewdrops, which appear jewels and pearls on the grass, but run to water in the hand; the essence and the elements remain, but the grace, the sparkle, and the form, are gone."—Montgomery's Life of Spencer.

"As in life true dignity must be founded on character, not on dress and appearance; so in language the dignity of composition must arise from sentiment and thought, not from ornament."—Blair's Rhet., p. 144.

"And man, whose heaven-erected face the smiles of love adorn,   Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn." —Burns.

"Ah wretched man! unmindful of thy end!   A moment's glory! and what fates attend." —Pope, Iliad, B. xvii, l. 231.

LESSON III.—ADJECTIVES.

"Embarrassed, obscure, and feeble sentences, are generally, if not always, the result of embarrassed, obscure, and feeble thought."—Blair's Rhet., p. 120.

"Upon this ground, we prefer a simple and natural, to an artificial and affected style; a regular and well-connected story, to loose and scattered narratives; a catastrophe which is tender and pathetic, to one which leaves us unmoved."—Ib., p. 23.

"A thorough good taste may well be considered as a power compounded of natural sensibility to beauty, and of improved understanding."—Ib., p. 18.

"Of all writings, ancient or modern, the sacred Scriptures afford us the highest instances of the sublime. The descriptions of the Deity, in them, are wonderfully noble; both from the grandeur of the object, and the manner of representing it."—Ib., p. 36.

"It is not the authority of any one person, or of a few, be they ever so eminent, that can establish one form of speech in preference to another. Nothing but the general practice of good writers and good speakers can do it."—Priestley's Gram., p. 107.

"What other means are there to attract love and esteem so effectual as a virtuous course of life? If a man be just and beneficent, if he be temperate, modest,