Now, the fact that _trust_-is a noticeably long syllable, especially when closed by the following _l_, makes it well fitted to fill the place of two syllables; and we should find the line distinctly less pleasing if a short syllable were there instead. _Boundless_ would do as well, because equally long; _trusty_ would not be quite so good; _silly_ would be very bad. Conversely, when a noticeably long syllable occupies the place of a light syllable, in rapid tri-syllabic verse, we feel that the verse is injured. Mr. William Larminie criticises a line of Mr. Swinburne's on this ground,-- "Time sheds them like snow on strange regions;"[53] the combination _-ange_, with its final _-nj_ sound, made still longer by the following _r_, and preceded, too, by the combination _n-st_, has too much quantity for the place where it stands in the verse. In the verse of inferior writers many worse cases could easily be found. These illustrations, then, may serve to show that while we do not coördinate our consonantal syllable-lengths as absolute "shorts" and "longs," we perceive certain degrees of length, and find these playing a part in our verse. So much for intrinsic quantity as found in English syllables. But there is much more to be said for syllables made long or short at the will of the speaker, under certain conditions. If we address a friend in surprise, saying, "_Why, John!_" we not only throw a heavy stress on both the words, but also perceptibly prolong them. In like manner, we realize that unimportant words, especially proclitics (like the italicized words in the phrase "_The_ land _of the_ free") are not only unstressed, but are hurried over in shorter moments than the accented words. Examples like this suggest what may in fact be expressed in a general statement, that accented syllables are very commonly prolonged. This is not, as we have seen, from any essential connection between the nature of accent and the nature of quantity. In certain cases, unaccented syllables even show a tendency to length beyond that of those bearing the stress, as in words like _follow_, _dying_, and others where the final sound is easily prolonged. The coincidence of stress and length, then, is due simply to the operation of the same cause--the grammatical or rhetorical importance of the syllable in question. This fact, that the important (stressed) syllables are likely to be held a little longer than the others, will not warrant us in representing them as _twice_ as long, in the exact mathematical relations of musical notes; but it may explain why a musician like Lanier tried to represent them in such notation. It must also be the cause of Mr. Robertson's attempt to identify quantity and stress. His statement that "quantity in fact, in spoken verse, consists of stress _and_ of the consonantal total of syllables," may be regarded as much more satisfactory than those already quoted from his essay. It is, however, not quite accurate.