onies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, snd imagination cold and barren."

Or vice versâ the ascent may be of three clauses, and the descent completed in one; like the following from the same speech.

"Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent, to which it has been pushed by this recent people."

In comparing the purposes, to which these two modes of constructing a period will be most applicable, it will be obvious, that the division in equal parts is best adapted to express contrast, and the unequal division best suited for accumulation. That the former is the period for antithesis, and the latter the period for climax.

Of climax and antithesis I propose to speak more at large hereafter. They are among the most splendid and ambitious ornaments of speech; and as such their characters will most properly be investigated under the next subordinate branch of

elocution; which, in conformity to the terms heretofore adopted from the ancinets, I have denominated dignity.

LECTURE XXX.

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE.

WE have finished our examination of those constituent parts of elocution, which have been called by the names of elegance and composition, from which we are to deduce our principles for the selection and arrangement of the words, which combine to the formation of oratorical discourse. We have now arrived at the third subdivision of this department, which has been called dignity; and which I have heretofore explained, as intending the decoration of discourse. It involves the consideration of all figurative language.

You have learnt from Mr. Locke, that all human ideas are ultimately derived from one of two sources; either from objects perceptible to the

senses, or from the reflections of our own minds upon such objects. It is equally clear that language, the purpose of which is to communicate our ideas, must be composed of words, first drawn from ideas of sensation. For, in order that the articulate sound, by which an idea could be conveyed, might be received in association with the same idea, connected with it in the mind of the speaker, there must necessarily be some materiál prototype, to which both speaker and hearer might alike resort, and which they should agree to represent by that sound. Of ideas of reflection no such prototype can exist. The operations of the mind therefore, when exhibited by means of speech, must be embodied into figure; and hence every word, representing such an operation, must have been originally figurative. Figures have sometimes been called modes of speech, differing from the common. But this, from what I have here observed, is not altogether correct. Nothing is more common than figurative language.

The symbols, the hieroglyphics, the allegories of antiquity, all furnish examples of the prevalence of figures in the primitive ages of the world. Among the savages of this continent the same figurative character is found in their modes of com

municating thought.

So

It is among the most unlettered classes of civilized society, that figurative discourse principally predominates. The disposition so generally observed in men of every trade and profession to apply the technical terms, with which they are most familiar, bears the same indication. They all use figuratively the words, with which they are acquainted, instead of the proper terms, of which they are ignorant. that figurative speech, instead of being a departure from the ordinary mode, is the general practice, from which the words, rigorously confined to their proper sense, are rare exceptions. figures must indeed have preceded metaphysical reasoning. They communicate ideas not by ab-. stractions, but by images. They speak always to the senses, and only through them to the intellect. They give thought a shape. They are therefore the mother tongue, not only of reflection, but of the imagination and the passions.

The use of

The observation of Cicero then, although in late times it has been contested, must be substantially true; that figures were in the first instance used from necessity, and afterwards were multiplied on account of their beauty. They were necessary to express every idea, which had no mould