and would die away, or freeze, or degenerate, if it were
generally balked. Now just such an action has tragedy, and if the
sympathy with calamities caused to noble natures by ignobler, or by dark
fates, were never opened or moved or called out, it would slumber
inertly, it would rust, and become far less ready to respond upon any
call being made. Such sensibilities are not consciously known to the
possessor until developed.

_Punctuation._--Suppose an ordinary case where the involution of clauses
went three deep, and that each was equally marked off by commas, now I
say that so far from aiding the logic it would require an immense effort
to distribute the relations of logic. But the very purpose and use of
points is to aid the logic. If indeed you could see the points at all in
this relation

strophe antistrophe
1 2 3 3 2 1
----, ----, ----, apodosis ----, ----, ----,

then indeed all would be clear, but the six commas will and must be
viewed by every reader unversed in the logical mechanism of sentences as
merely a succession of ictuses, so many minute-guns having no internal
system of correspondence, but merely repeating and reiterating each
other, exactly as in men, guns, horses, timbrels, baggage-waggons,
standards.

_Sheridan's Disputatiousness._--I never heard of any case in the whole
course of my life where disputatiousness was the author of any benefit
to man or beast, excepting always one, in which it became a storm anchor
for poor Sheridan, saving him from sudden shipwreck. This may be found
in Mr. Moore's life, somewhere about the date of 1790, and in chapter
xiii. The book is thirty-seven miles off, which is too far to send for
water, or for scandal, or even for 'extract,' though I'm 'fond of
extract.' Therefore, in default of Mr. Moore's version, I give my own.
The situation was this: Sheridan had been cruising from breakfast to
dinner amongst Jews, Christians, and players (men, women, and
Herveys),[40] and constantly in the same hackney coach, so that the
freight at last settled like the sand-heap of an hour-glass into a
frightful record of costly moments. _Pereunt et imputantur_, say some
impertinent time-pieces, in speaking of the hours. They perish and are
debited to our account. Yes, and what made it worse, the creditor was an
inexorable old Jarvie, who, though himself a creditor, had never heard
the idea of c