The treatise on the Practical Bathos which appeared in our first number, and which we have the vanity to hope is not entirely blotted out from the recollection of our readers, was intended as the first of a series of dissertations, in which we design to apply the beauties of the figures of the grammarians to the purposes of real life. We are very strongly tempted to pursue this design, when we reflect upon the advantages which have already been the result of the above-mentioned treatise. We are assured, from the most indisputable authority, that the number of the specimens of that most admirable figure exhibited by our schoolfellows in the exercises of the ensuing week was without precedent in the annals of Etonian literature. We have no doubt but those apt scholars who have so readily profited by our recommendation of the Bathos, as far as regards _com_position, will, at no very distant period, make the same use of this inestimable figure in the regulation of their _dis_position. But it is time to quit this topic, and to enter upon the second of our proposed series: “A Treatise on the Practical Asyndeton.” First, then, as in duty and in gallantry bound, we must construe this hard word. The figure Asyndeton, in grammar, is that by which conjunctions are omitted, and an unconnected appearance given to the sentence, which is frequently inexpressibly beautiful. Who is there of our rising orators who has not glowed with all the inspiration of a Roman, when fancy echoes in his ears the brief, the unconnected, and energetic thunders of the Consul, “Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit?” What reader of tragedy does not sympathize with the Orosmane of Voltaire, when, upon the receipt of the billet from Zayre, his anxiety bursts out in those beautifully unconnected expressions-- Donne!--qui la porte?--donne! The use of connecting particles in either of these cases would have ruined everything. They would have destroyed the majesty of Cicero, and reduced to the level of an every-day novelist the simple tenderness of Orosmane. The use of this figure, however, is not confined to particular sentences or expressions. It sometimes pervades the five acts of what is miscalled a regular drama, or spreads an uncertain transparent gleam over the otherwise insupportable sameness of some inexplicable epic. Numberless are the writers who have been indebted to its assistance; but our own, our immortal countryman, Shakespeare, preserves an undisputed station at the head of the list. Fettered by no imitation, but the imitation of Nature; bound down to no rules but the vivid conceptions of an untutored, self-working genius, he hurries us from place to place with the velocity of a torrent; we appear to be carried on by a rushing stream, which conveys our boat so rapidly in its eddies, that we pass through a thousand scenes, and are unable to observe for a moment the abruptness with which the changes are effected.