5.  Is the following well phrased?  What makes it so?  Is any expression too strong?  Do you object to any?  How many of the words would you be likely not to use?

“It is but too true that there are many whose whole scheme of freedom is made up of pride, perverseness, and insolence.  They feel themselves in a state of thraldom; they imagine that their souls are cooped and cabined in, unless they have some man, or some body of men, dependent on their mercy.  The desire of having some one below them descends to those who are the very lowest of all; and a Protestant cobbler, debased by his poverty, but exalted by his share of the ruling church, feels a pride in knowing it is by his generosity alone that the peer, whose footman’s instep he measures, is able to keep his chaplain from a gaol.  This disposition is the true source of the passion which many men, in very humble life, have taken to the American war.  Our subjects in America; our colonies; our dependents.  This lust of party power is the liberty they hunger and thirst for; and this Siren song of ambition has charmed ears that we would have thought were never organized to that sort of music.”

    EDMUND BURKE:  Speech at Bristol, 1780

6.  Describe the effects of the questions in the next.  How is sentence variety secured?  What effects have the simple, declarative sentences?

“And from what have these consequences sprung?  We have been involved in no war.  We have been at peace with all the world.  We have been visited with no national calamity.  Our people have been advancing in general intelligence, and, I will add, as great and alarming as has been the advance of political corruption among the mercenary corps who look to government for support, the morals and virtue of the community at large have been advancing in improvement.  What, I again repeat, is the cause?”

    JOHN C. CALHOUN:  Speech on the Force Bill, 1833

7.  What quality predominates in the following?  Does it lower the tone of the passage too much?  Is the interrogative form of the last sentence better than the declarative?  Why?  Has the last observation any close connection with the preceding portion?  Can it be justified?

“Modesty is a lovely trait, which sets the last seal to a truly great character, as the blush of innocence adds the last charm to youthful beauty.  When, on his return from one of his arduous campaigns in the Seven Years’ War, the Speaker of the Virginia Assembly, by order of the House, addressed Colonel Washington in acknowledgment of his services, the youthful hero rose to reply; but humility checked his utterance, diffidence sealed his lips.  ’Sit down, Colonel Washington,’ said the Speaker; ’the House sees that your modesty is equal to your merit, and that exceeds my power of language to describe.’  But who ever heard of a modest Alexander or a modest Caesar, or a modest hero or statesman of the present day?—­much as some of them would be improved by a measure of that quality.”

    EDWARD EVERETT:  Character of Washington, 1858