Panted hand-in-hand with faces pale,
Swung themselves, and in low tones replied;
Till the fountain spouted, showering wide
Sleet of diamond-drift and pearly hail.
Then the music touch'd the gates and died;
Rose again from where it seem'd to fail,
Storm'd in orbs of song, a growing gale;

Till thronging in and in, to where they waited,

As 'twere a hundred-throated nightingale,

The strong tempestuous treble throbb'd and palpitated;
Ran into its giddiest whirl of sound,
Caught the sparkles, and in circles,

Purple gauzes, golden hazes, liquid mazes,
Flung the torrent rainbow round.

Then they started from their places,
Moved with violence, changed in hue,
Caught each other with wild grimaces,
Half-invisible to the view,

Wheeling with precipitate paces
To the melody, till they flew,

Hair, and eyes, and limbs, and faces,
Twisted hard in fierce embraces,

Like to Furies, like to Graces,
Dash'd together in blinding dew:

Till, kill'd with some luxurious agony,
The nerve-dissolving melody

Flutter'd headlong from the sky.

TENNYSON, The Vision of Sin.

Let it not be supposed that any one of the foregoing extracts is to be read in uniformly slow or uniformly fast time; that will change with each variation in the importance of the thought. Without attempting to force any interpretation upon the student, an illustration is appended in which he may note how the relative importance of the ideas affects the rate of movement in the various phrases.

Med.

Med.

Fast.

"Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home? What tributaries follow him to Rome,

To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels?

Slow.

Very slow.

Med. and fast.
Fast.

Fast.

Med.

Med.

Med.

Med.
Fast.

Fast.

Fast.

Fast.
Slow.

Med.
Med.
Fast.

Med.
Slow.
Slow.

5

10

10

You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey? Many a time and oft
Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements,
To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops,
Your infants in your arms, and there have sat
The livelong day, with patient expectation,
To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome :
And when you saw his chariot but appear,
Have you not made an universal shout,
That Tiber trembled underneath her banks,
To hear the replication of your sounds
Made in her concave shores?

And do you now put on your best attire ? .
And do you now cull out a holiday?
And do you now strew flowers in his way,
That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood?
Begone!

Run to your houses, fall upon your knees,

Pray to the gods to intermit the plague
That needs must light on this ingratitude."

15

20

20

24

It must be apparent that it is very difficult to suggest by a word the rate of speed at which one would render a given line. Fast and slow are relative terms. Certain speakers would consider slow reading what another would consider moderate. Yet there is on the whole a pretty general agreement as to the use of these terms. With this statement we may proceed to an analysis of the selection to justify the marking.

The citizens of Rome have just declared to the Tribunes, enemies of Cæsar, why the people are making holiday: "We make holiday to see Cæsar, and to rejoice in his triumph." Whereupon Marullus, one of the Tribunes, begins the speech, endeavoring to impress upon the mob that there is absolutely nothing Cæsar has done to merit this ovation. After the word "tributaries" the time is

accelerated for the reason that all that follows, to the end of the query, is virtually repetitious, being included in the idea of tributaries. The indicated marking of lines four and five needs no justification. "Knew you not Pompey?" is a question containing reproach. The latter element will tend to retard the movement. "Many a time and oft" is repetitious; he is simply reminding them of well-known facts. When the speaker reaches "yea, to chimney-tops,' the importance of the idea is at once manifest in the slower time, which continues to "arms," when it again changes to medium and fast. The student may find it a

good drill to examine the remaining lines, to see whether he agrees or differs with the time-markings.

II. GROUPING.

Let the student study carefully the following extract, and then read it aloud:

"But when the gray dawn stole into his tent,
He rose, and clad himself, and girt his sword,
And took his horseman's cloak, and left his tent,
And went abroad into the cold wet fog,

Through the dim camp to Peran-Wisa's tent."

He will notice a tendency to break up the sentence into groups of varying length. This tendency is more or less instinctive; and while there may be some difference of opinion as to the number of groups, yet it must be conceded that there is a definite underlying principle, which admits of no exception. For instance, one might read the fourth line as if it were but one group; another, with virtually the same idea in mind, might divide it into two

groups at the word "abroad.” On the other hand, no

one would read like this: "And went abroad into the " "cold wet fog through" "the dim camp to PeranWisa's tent."

Read the following sentences aloud carefully, and it will be noticed that the same principle of grouping obtains:

"The star of Napoleon was just rising to its zenith as that of Washington was passing away."

"The name and memory of Washington will travel with the Silver Queen of Heaven through sixty degrees of longitude, nor part company with her till she walks in her brightness through the Golden Gate of California, and passes serenely on to hold midnight court with her Australian Stars."

The reading of these shows that grouping is entirely independent of punctuation. It is true that the spoken group may coincide with the grammatical group, but that is merely an accident. We group as we do, not because of punctuation marks, but for more fundamental and less conventional reasons. The function of the punctuation mark is to assist the reader in getting the author's thought. The following example will illustrate this:

"The slaves who were in the hold of the vessel had been captured in Africa."

It is plain that the clause introduced by "who" is a restrictive one, and implies that there were other slaves on the vessel besides those mentioned. If we now insert commas after "slaves" and "vessel," the sentence becomes equivalent to, The slaves, and they were all in the hold of the vessel, had been captured in Africa.

Note, again, how the sense would be obscured if the author had omitted the comma after "all" in this extract:

"For we are all, like swimmers in the sea,

Poised on the top of a huge wave of fate."

To prove that grouping is independent of punctuation, let the student read aloud the following illustrations: "But, look you, Cassius,

The angry spot doth glow on Cæsar's brow."

"I saw Mark Antony offer him a crown; and, as I told you, he put it by once; but, for all that, to my thinking he would have had it . . . and, for mine own part, I dare not laugh."

The object of these illustrations has been to free the student from a very common misconception that the group is determined by the punctuation mark. It has been shown that this is not the case. The punctuation will make the sense clear wherever such help is necessary, but after that the student need give it no further attention.

In order to avoid carelessness, the student should practice grouping in the following extracts, which will afford him excellent exercise:

"So every bondman in his own hand bears

The power to cancel his captivity."

"And as the greatest only are,

In his simplicity sublime."

"The first object of a free people is the preservation of their liberty; and liberty is only to be preserved by maintaining constitutional restraints and just divisions of political power."

"Soon after William H. Harrison's nomination, a writer in one of the leading administration papers spoke of his 'log cabin' and his use of hard cider,' by way of sneer and reproach. . .

6

It did not happen to me to be born in a log cabin, but my elder