that it is now much less
frequently used than it was formerly; its place being usurped, sometimes by
the semicolon, and sometimes by the period. For this ill reason, some late
grammarians have discarded it altogether. Thus Felton: "The COLON is now so
seldom used by good writers, that rules for its use are
unnecessary."--_Concise Manual of English Gram._, p. 140. So Nutting: "It
will be noticed, that the _colon_ is omitted in this system; because it is
omitted by the majority of the writers of the present age; three points,
with the dash, being considered sufficient to mark the different lengths of
the pauses."--_Practical Grammar_, p. 120. These critics, whenever they
have occasion to copy such authors as Milton and Pope, do not scruple to
mutilate their punctuation by putting semicolons or periods for all the
colons they find. But who cannot perceive, that without the colon, the
semicolon becomes an absurdity? It can no longer be a _semicolon_, unless
the half can remain when the whole is taken away! The colon, being the
older point of the two, and once very fashionable, is doubtless on record
in more instances than the semicolon; and, if now, after both have been in
common use for some hundreds of years, it be found out that only one is
needed, perhaps it would be more reasonable to prefer the former. Should
public opinion ever be found to coincide with the suggestions of the two
authors last quoted, there will be reason to regret that Caxton, the old
English typographer of the fifteenth century, who for a while successfully
withstood, in his own country, the introduction of the semicolon, had not
the power to prevent it forever. In short, to leave no literary
extravagance unbroached, the latter point also has not lacked a modern
impugner. "One of the greatest improvements in punctuation," says Justin
Brenan, "is the rejection of the eternal semicolons of our ancestors. In
latter times, the semicolon has been gradually disappearing, not only from
the newspapers, but from books."--_Brenan's "Composition and Punctuation
familiarly Explained"_, p. 100; London, 1830. The colon and the semicolon
are both useful, and, not unfrequently, necessary; and all correct writers
will, I doubt not, continue to use both.

OBS. 7--Since Dr. Blair published his emphatic caution against too frequent
a use of _parentheses_, there has been, if not an abatement of the kind of
error which he intended to censure, at least a diminution in the u