ions. He heard the lyres of angels
or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the
Beatific Vision, or woke screaming from dreams of everlasting
fire. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his
sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left
no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of
the godly but their uncouth visages, and who heard nothing
from them but their groans and their whining hymns, might
laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh who
encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field of
battle.--MACAULAY.

More manifest still are the physiological benefits of
emotional pleasures. Every power, bodily and mental, is
increased by "good spirits," which is our name for a general
emotional satisfaction. The truth that the fundamental vital
actions--those of nutrition--are furthered by laughter-moving
conversation, or rather by the pleasurable feeling causing
laughter, is one of old standing; and every dyspeptic knows
that in exhilarating company, a large and varied dinner,
including not very digestible things, may be eaten with
impunity, and, indeed, with benefit, while a small, carefully
chosen dinner of simple things, eaten in solitude, will be
followed by indigestion.--HERBERT SPENCER.

NOTE

In addition to the foregoing extracts, some of those previously given,
in poetry as well as prose, may be studied in the same way. Furthermore,
the student may be required to examine more at length a few authors
designated by the teacher, in order to determine (1) the proportion of
simple, complex, and compound sentences; (2) the proportion of loose,
periodic, and balanced sentences; (3) the percentage of Anglo-Saxon or
Latin words; and (4) the average number of words in a sentence. The
results will give occasion for interesting and instructive comparisons.

CHAPTER V

FIGURES OF SPEECH

+34. Definition.+ A figure of speech is a deviation from the plain and
ordinary mode of speaking. Its object is greater effect. Figures
originated, perhaps, in a limitation of vocabulary; and many words that
are now regarded as plain were at first figurative. But the use of
figures is natural, and at present they are used to embellish discourse
and to give it greater vividness and force. To say with Thomson, for
example,--

"But yonde