think that any text-book suggests everything. A book that should deal with every specific problem of effective writing could not be written, and if written would be of little practical value. Books teach us to think for ourselves, train us in our tastes, develop our powers of literary discernment. They must be supplemented by practical experience in writing. The important thing to be acquired is not a knowledge of rhetorical theory, but training in literary judgment. Rhetoric we may define, in conclusion, as the art of expressing ourselves in words in the most pleasing and most effective manner.

4. The Relation between Composition and Rhetoric. It will be seen that the relation between composition and rhetoric is very close; indeed, just what part each plays in the effective expression of our thought it is hard to point out. It is not important that we should keep in mind just where one ends and the other begins. Rhetoric and composition are inseparably connected, and so blend in their offices that they form, rather, one educational method. We may get a tolerably clear idea of the field covered by each if we think of composition as the building-up process, and of rhetoric as the smoothing and refining process, remembering that skill in either comes only from practice.

5. Distinction between an Art and a Science. Rhetoric is an art and not a science. The distinction between an art and a science is this: an art implies skill, a science implies knowledge. The basis of an art is practice; of a science, law. A knowledge of the laws of a science is a knowledge of the science itself. Thus, we

In physics,

may know a science without practicing it. for example, we perform experiments to get at the underlying law, not to become skilled in the performance. Every art has certain underlying principles, and to that extent partakes of the nature of a science; but there is this difference, we do not make a study of the principles for their own sake, but use them simply to guide us in our practice. A knowledge of the principles of music would never make us musicians. We become proficient in music according as we attain skill by practice. Like music and painting, rhetoric is an art; like them, it has underlying principles to guide us; but as students of rhetoric we are chiefly concerned with the skill attained in applying these principles.

6. Distinction between Grammar and Rhetoric. - We should distinguish carefully between grammar and rhettoric. It is the duty of grammar to make clear the rules which govern the correct use of words in a sentence. Grammar deals with the forms and offices of words, and their relations to one another in the sentence. It tells us whether to use the singular or the plural of a noun, what an adjective or an adverb should modify, or the relation of a verb to its subject. It tells us, in fact, how to write a correct sentence. Its field does not extend beyond the sentence.

Rhetoric may be said to begin where grammar ends. Like grammar it deals with words; but it concerns itself rather with the choice, the number, and the arrangement of words in the sentence that will make them

effective. It tells us whether to use a long or a short sentence, how to arrange the sentences in a paragraph, and how to combine the paragraphs into an effective whole. In rhetoric it is not the question of whether a thing is right or wrong, but whether one thing is better than another. However, to secure the best results, it is necessary to introduce some of the less familiar rules of grammar into a text-book of rhetoric to refresh the student's memory.

7. The Principles of Rhetoric and their Authority.— We naturally ask ourselves, Whence come the principles of rhetoric? and why should we follow them? Suppose that we wish to paint pictures. We might of ourselves by long practice produce fair results; but more probably we should go to some successful painter for instruction. We should expect him to tell us something of the principles he has followed in the choice of colors, in the mixing and the blending of them, the rules of optics, etc.; we should naturally follow his course. It is just so in our writing. We wish to become good writers, and so we follow the methods by which our best writers have attained their success. Now, the principles of rhetoric are only concise statements of how these writers have made themselves masters of their art. They simply record the experience of our superiors. They are not arbitrary laws for what we must do, and what we must not do. They are not morally binding. We are free to express ourselves as we please; but there is this drawback; we must use words and expres

sions as other people use them, or we shall not be understood; and that is our only object in writing. In brief, we must express ourselves in accordance with good usage. The principles of rhetoric have, largely, good usage for their authority.

8. Writing and Talking. — There are those who contend that our written language should be the same as our speech that we should write as we talk. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that they would have us talk as we write. Unquestionably the tendency in English prose has for a long time been towards an easier, more conversational, and less formal style. Yet it is not possible, or even desirable, for us ever to make our writing and our talking alike. The easy spontaneity of conversation, the rapid change of subject that keeps interest alive, the ready adjustment of each speaker to the mood of the other, are things that make our talk very different from what our writing ordinarily must be. In talking we decide each moment, and in fact each second, what effect our last words have had on our hearers; and we frame our next words to correct that effect or emphasize it, as the case may be. This we cannot do when we write. The effect of each sentence and each phrase must be weighed beforehand, and we must shape the course of our writing accordingly. Moreover, our personal relations with our readers are not the same as those that we assume with our hearers when we are in conversation. They are strangers, and we should not adopt with them so informal an air as

with friends. Even among those whom we know somewhat closely we change our mode of speech to agree with their varying characters and the varying degrees of intimacy we maintain with them. In our writing we must always be so formally careful as to make sure that we do not offend any of our readers. We will take some examples of oral and written composition, and note some of the differences in the manner of expression.

"He's gone a long time. Can't you see him down the road? Look! What is that figure behind the trees? It's moving! Don't you see the dust rising in the road?"

George Dane had waked up to a bright new day; the face of nature, well washed by last night's downpour, and shining as with high spirits, good resolutions, lively intentions the great glare of recommencement, in short, fixed in his patch of sky. He had sat up late to finish work arrears overwhelming! then at last had gone to bed with the pile but little reduced. He was now to return to it after the pause of the night; but he could only look at it, for the time, over the bristling hedge of letters planted by the early postman an hour before, and already on the customary table by his chimney-place, formally rounded and squared by his systematic servant.

HENRY JAMES: The Great Good Place.

The second of these paragraphs shows a finish that would make it seem stiff if it were an example of conversational English. In the first the contractions, the abrupt changes in the order of thought, the omission of connecting words and phrases, all indicate that it is the