subtle principle of sentence mechanics—we require variety and dislike a dreary uniformity in this kind of architecture. Good writing in English, _readable_ English, will always respond in greater or less measure to the unconscious demand of the English-reading mind. Most persons do not know what is the offending element in a dreary sentence; they only know that “the style” is tiresome, and that they can not interest themselves in the reading. The good writer overcomes the difficulty by avoiding the offending elements. It will usually be found that the tiresome effect is produced by repetition and uniformity. The pieces used may all be good; but we do not like to see Greek pillars before every house along the road. We tire of Gibbon’s periods, of Addison’s perfection, of Macaulay’s stateliness. We can read a little of each with delight; for daily diet we do not desire any of them. I will now give some of the results of my comparative studies of relative pronouns in the English sentence. I begin with the Bible of 1611. I notice first here that the Psalms differ from other books of the Bible, and I suppose that the difference arises from the superior directness of prayer. The same difference is discoverable between the modern prayer and the sermon. In the Psalms there is one relative in each ninety-five words, on the average; and about four fifths of these are _thats_. In the _number_ of relatives, the Psalms approach closely to modern parsimony; but in the use of _that_ they exaggerate the practice of the sixteenth century. Many of these _thats_ are used in a formula now seldom heard, of which “_he that_” is a typical example. In St. Matthew’s record of the Sermon on the Mount, there is one relative to each forty-four words; in St. John’s gospel, chapters one to ten inclusive, there are two hundred and eleven relatives, and one hundred and three are _thats_. The proportion of relatives is one to each forty-six words. In the first six chapters of I. Corinthians there are sixty relatives, and of these twenty-seven are _thats_. The proportion is one relative in forty-five words. Combining the results obtained by this counting in the New Testament, the result is one relative for each forty-five words, and more than three sevenths are _thats_. It is probably safe to assume that in the New Testament sentence every forty-fifth word (on the average) is a relative pronoun, and that three times in seven this relative is the word _that_. In the Psalms the relative occurs not quite half so frequently, but four times in five this relative is _that_. We should also remember that at least one form of sentence architecture of which the relative _that_ is the conspicuous piece has practically disappeared in modern English. “He _that_ dwelleth in the secret place of the most high,” is a common syntax of the Psalms. There are men who say and write “he who would be rich;” but it is an archaic formula.