Exercise.
Pick out the adjective clauses, and tell what each one modifies; i.e., whether subject, object, etc.
1. There were passages that reminded me perhaps too much of Massillon.
2. I walked home with Calhoun, who said that the principles which I had avowed were just and noble.
3. Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds.
4. In one of those celestial days when heaven and earth meet and adorn each other, it seems a pity that we can only spend it once.
5. One of the maidens presented a silver cup, containing a rich mixture of wine and spice, which Rowena tasted.
6. No man is reason or illumination, or that essence we were looking for.
7. In the moment when he ceases to help us as a cause, he begins to help us more as an effect.
8. Socrates took away all ignominy from the place, which could not be a prison whilst he was there.
9. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear ghosts except in our long-established Dutch settlements.
10. From the moment you lose sight of the land you have left, all is vacancy.
11. Nature waited tranquilly for the hour to be struck when man should arrive.
Adverbial Clauses.
377. The adverb clause takes the place of an adverb in modifying a verb, a verbal, an adjective, or an adverb. The student has met with many adverb clauses in his study of the subjunctive mood and of subordinate conjunctions; but they require careful study, and will be given in detail, with examples.
378. Adverb clauses are of the following kinds:
(1) TIME: "As we go, the milestones are grave-stones;" "He had gone but a little way before he espied a foul fiend coming;" "When he was come up to Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful countenance."
(2) PLACE: "Wherever the sentiment of right comes in, it takes precedence of everything else;" "He went several times to England, where he does not seem to have attracted any attention."
(3) REASON, or CAUSE: "His English editor lays no stress on his discoveries, since he was too great to care to be original;" "I give you joy that truth is altogether wholesome."
(4) MANNER: "The knowledge of the past is valuable only as it leads us to form just calculations with respect to the future;" "After leaving the whole party under the table, he goes away as if nothing had happened."
(5) DEGREE, or COMPARISON: "They all become wiser than they were;" "The right conclusion is, that we should try, so far as we can, to make up our shortcomings;" "Master Simon was in as chirping a humor as a grasshopper filled with dew [is];" "The broader their education is, the wider is the horizon of their thought." The first clause in the last sentence is dependent, expressing the degree in which the horizon, etc., is wider.
(6) PURPOSE: "Nature took us in hand, shaping our actions, so that we might not be ended untimely by too gross disobedience."
(7) RESULT, or CONSEQUENCE: "He wrote on the scale of the mind itself, so that all things have symmetry in his tablet;" "The window was so far superior to every other in the church, that the vanquished artist killed himself from mortification."
(8) CONDITION: "If we tire of the saints, Shakespeare is our city of refuge;" "Who cares for that, so thou gain aught wider and nobler?" "You can die grandly, and as goddesses would die were goddesses mortal."
(9) CONCESSION, introduced by indefinite relatives, adverbs, and adverbial conjunctions,—whoever, whatever, however, etc.: "But still, however good she may be as a witness, Joanna is better;" "Whatever there may remain of illiberal in discussion, there is always something illiberal in the severer aspects of study."
These mean no matter how good, no matter what remains, etc.
Pick out the adverbial clauses in the following sentences; tell what kind each is, and what it modifies:—
1. As I was clearing away the weeds from this epitaph, the little sexton drew me on one side with a mysterious air, and informed me in a low voice that once upon a time, on a dark wintry night, when the wind was unruly, howling and whistling, banging about doors and windows, and twirling weathercocks, so that the living were frightened out of their beds, and even the dead could not sleep quietly in their graves, the ghost of honest Preston was attracted by the well-known call of "waiter," and made its sudden appearance just as the parish clerk was singing a stave from the "mirrie garland of Captain Death."
2. If the children gathered about her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble because they had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas.
3. The spell of life went forth from her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thousand objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied.