enotes the style proper for monumental or other inscriptions. This is a kind of medium between prose and verse; the jejune and the brilliant are here equally to be avoided. Cicero has prescribed the rules of it: Accedit oportet oratio varia, vehemens, plena spiritus. Omnium sententiarum gravitate, omnium verborum ponderibus, est utendum.

Lapidescent, any thing which has the faculty of petrifying, or turning bodies to stony nature. The older naturalists speak of a lapidescent principle, a lapidescent spirit, a lapidescent juice, and so on.