There is another pretty Fancy: When a young Man has a Mind to let us know who gave him his Scarf, he speaks a Parenthesis to the Almighty, Bless, as I am in Duty bound to pray, the right honourable the Countess; is not that as much as to say, Bless her, for thou knowest I am her Chaplain? Your humble Servant, J. O. T.

Let us grant here one brief parenthesis of respect and astonishment to the scientific knowledge and philological acumen of a distinguished graduate of Yale College, and member of Congress, whom we encountered on our travels.

PRECEPT IV.Do not introduce parentheses, except when a lively remark may be thrown in without diverting the mind too long from the principal subject.

The reader will do well in the first place to pass over this very clumsy parenthesis in the original; and return to it after he has finished the rest of the paragraph.

[Footnote 8: I will here add, that this "stinking fly"the parenthesis ("in a certain stage of development")was added merely to avoid dogmatizing on the question, how early in human history or in human life this mysterious notion of the divine spirit is recognizable as commencing.]

In some late grammars, (for example, Hazen's and Day's,) the parenthetic curves are called "the Parentheses" From this the student must understand that it always takes two parentheses to make one parenthesis!

All sorts of people are thronging there,some kneeling before the shrine of the Madonna, which gleams with its hundreds of silver votive hearts, legs, and arms,some listening to the preaching,some crowding round the chapel of the Presepio,old women, haggard and wrinkled, come tottering along with their scaldini of coals, drop down on their knees to pray, and, as you pass, interpolate in their prayers a parenthesis of begging.

As Boswell remarks, he never uses a parenthesis; and his style, though ponderous and wearisome, is as transparent as the smarter snip-snap of Macaulay.