ge of
decrepitude where the natural voice is uncertain.

But, really, what ought to be said is this--that if the same canons
of style that ruled the sixteenth century writers are studied and
obeyed, there is no reason in the world why a result equally
satisfactory with the one then attained should not be reached now.
There is nothing supernatural about the English of the Prayer Book.
Cranmer and his associates were not inspired. The prose style of
the nineteenth century may not be as good as that of the sixteenth,
but, at its best, it is vastly superior to eighteenth century style,
and of this last there are already no inconsiderable specimens in
the American Book of Common Prayer. The Office for the Visitation of
Prisoners, for example, is so redolent of the times of the Georges,
when it was composed, that it might be appropriately enough
interleaved with prints out of Hogarth. A bit of Palladian
architecture in a Gothic church is not more easily recognized.
Many worse things might happen to the Prayer Book than that the
nineteenth century should leave its impress upon the pages.

In fact, it is just as possible, if men will only think so, to use
our language with effect for any good purpose to-day as it was
three hundred years ago. All that is necessary is a willingness
to submit to the same restrictions, and those mostly moral, that
controlled the old writers; and our work, though not identical
with theirs, will have the proper similarity. True, a modern author
may not be able to reproduce, without a palpable betrayal of
affectation and mannerism, the precise characteristics of a bygone
style. Chattertons are not numerous. It is easier to secure for
the brass andirons and mahogany dining chairs of our own manufacture
the look of those that belonged to our grandfathers than it is to
catch the tones of voices long dead; and just as good judgment
dictates the wisdom of repeating the honest and thorough workmanship
of the old cabinet-makers in place of slavishly imitating their
patterns, so it will be well if the compilers of devotional forms
for modern use seek to say what they have to say with sixteenth
century simplicity rather than in sixteenth century speech. In
letters, as in conduct, the supreme charm of style is the absence
of self-consciousness. "Say in plain words the thing you mean, and
say it as if you meant it," is good advice to any seeker after
rhetorical excellence, be he young or old. The Reformers, t