our art, to contrast word to word, and to compare similar, and oppose contrary circumstances, and make several sentences (or parts of a sentence) conclude alike, and terminate with the same cadence; --ornaments, which in real pleadings, are to be used more sparingly, and with less appearance of art. Isocrates, therefore, confesses in his _Panathenaicus_, that these were beauties which he industriously pursued; for he composed it not for victory in a suit at law (where such a confession must have greatly injured his cause) but merely to gratify the ear. "It is recorded that the first persons who practised this species of composition [Footnote: The _composition_ here mentioned consisted of three parts, The _first_ regarded the structure; that is, the _connection_ of our words, and required that the last syllable of every preceding, and the first of every succeeding word should be so aptly united as to produce an agreeable sound; which was effected by avoiding a collision of vowels or of inamicable consonants. It likewise required that those words should be constantly made choice of, whose separate sounds were most harmonious and most agreeable to the sense. The _second_ part consisted in the use of particular forms of expression, such as contrasts and antithesises, which have an appearance of order and regularity in their very texture. The _third_ and last regarded that species of harmony which results not so much from the sound, as from the time and quantity of the several syllables in a sentence. This was called _number_, and sometimes _rhyme_; and was in fact a kind of _prosaic metre_, which was carefully attended to by the ancients in every part of a sentence, but more particularly at the beginning and end of it. In this part they usually included the _period_, or the rules for determining the length of their sentences. I thought it necessary to give this short account of their composition, because our author very frequently alludes to it, before he proceeds to explain it at large.] were _Thrasymachus_ the Chalcedonian, and _Gorgias_ the Leontine; and that these were followed by _Theodorus_ the Byzantine, and a number of others, whom Socrates, in the Phaedrus of Plato, calls [Greek: logodaidalos] _Speech-wrights_; many of whole discourses are sufficiently neat and entertaining; but, being the first attempts of the kind, were too minute and puerile, and had too poetical an air, and too much colouring. On this account, the merit of _Herodotus_, and _Thucydides_ is the more conspicuous: for though they lived at the time we are speaking of, they carefully avoided those studied decorations, or rather futilities. The former rolls along like a deep, still river without any rocks or shoals to interrupt it's course; and the other describes wars and battles, as if he was founding a charge on the trumpet; so that history (to use the words of _Theophrastus_) caught the first alarm from these, and began to express herself with greater dignity and spirit.