EXAMPLES OF INTONATIONS.

Rising.-Are you desirous of becoming a good reader, speaker, and singer? Then learn and practice the principles herein taught and demonstrated.

Fulling. A mind properly disciplined to submit to a small present evil, to obtain a greater distant good, will often reap victory from defeat and honor from repulse.

Rising and Falling.-To whom the goblin, full of wrath, replied: Art thou traitor angel? Art thou he who first broke peace in heaven, and faith till then unbroken? Back to the punishment-false fugitive!

The man who is in the daily use of ardent spirits, if he does not become a drunkard, is in danger of losing his health and character.

EXAMPLES OF WAVES OR CIRCUMFLEXES.

Rising. The love of approbation-produces excellent effects on men of sense; a strong desire for praise in weak minds conduces to little else than vanity.

Falling. It is not prudent to trust your secrets to a man who can not keep his own. If you had made that affirmation, I might perhaps have believed it.

Combination. Mere hirelings and time-servers-are always opposed to improvements and originality: so are tyrants--to liberty and republicanism.

CADENCE.

Ye nymphs of Solyma, begin the song;

To heavenly themes sublimer strains belong.

Such honors Ilion to her lover paid,

And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade.

EXAMPLES OF DYNAMICS.

Loud. With mighty crash the noise astounds; amid Carnarvon's mountains rages loud, the repercussive roar; and Thule bellows through her utmost isles.

Rough. The tempest growls; the unconquerable lightning struggles through, ragged and fierce, and— raging, strikes the aggravating rocks.

SOFT.

Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers
Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze

Along the vale. Breathe your still song
Into the reaper's heart.

SMOOTH.

Perfumes as of Eden flowed sweetly along,
And a voice as of angels enchantingly sung.

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flowed.

Harsh.-On a sudden, open fly with impetuous recoil and jarring sound the infernal doors, and on their groaning hinges grate harsh thunder.

Forcible. Now storming fury rose, and clamor, such as heard in heaven, till now, was never; arms on armor clashing, brayed horrible discord.

Harmonious.--As earth asleep, unconscious lies; effuse your mildest beams, ye constellations, while your angels strike, amid the spangled sky, the silver lyre.

Strong.-Him the Almighty power hurled headlong, flaming from the ethereal skies, with hideous ruin and combustion down to bottomless perdition.

CHAPTER VII.

SELECTIONS FOR PRACTICE.

THE student who aims at excellence in speaking or writing should carefully study, and become familiar with, the spirit of the masters of elocution and composition. He will profit more in studying well, practicing thoroughly, on a single production from one of their pens, than by memorizing and declaiming a hundred indifferent compositions by second-rate authors. Booth, Jefferson, Salvini, and Cushman, by mastering the characters of Hamlet, Rip Van Winkle, Othello, and Meg Merrilies, can have a profitable field of action for a life-time in playing those characters alone. One thing well done, in elocution as in other vocations, prepares the way for doing other things well, and leads the way to honor and prosperity.

In the following selections the masters of language and of oratory are represented, and their productions may not be excelled for ages. The selections are arranged with the view to public declamation as well as private exercise.

TO RANGE.

Strike home, strong-hearted man! down to the root
Of old oppression sink the Saxon steel.

Thy work is to hew down. In God's name, then,

Put nerve into thy task. Let other men

Plant, as they may, that better tree, whose fruit,
The wounded bosom of the church shall heal,
Be though the image-breaker. Let thy blows
Fall heavily as the Suabian's iron hand,
On crown or crosier, which shall interpose
Between thee and the weal of Father-land.
Leave creeds to closet idlers.

First of all,

Shake thou all German dream-land with the fall
Of that accursed tree, whose evil trunk

Let us hear

Was spared of old by Erfart's stalwart monk.
Fight not with ghosts and shadows.
The snap of chain-links. Let our gladdened ear
Catch the pale prisoner's welcome, as the light
Follows thy axe-stroke, through his cell of night.
Be faithful to both worlds; nor think to feed
Earth's starving millions with the husks of creed.
Servant of Him whose mission high and holy
Was to the wronged, the sorrowing, and the lowly,
Thrust not His Eden promise from our sphere,
Distant and dim beyond the blue sky's span;
Like him of Patmos, see it, now and here,—
The New Jerusalem comes to man!

Be warned by Luther's error.

Nor like him,

When the routed Tuton dashes from his limb

The rusted chain of ages, help to bind

His hands, for whom thou claim'st the freedom of the mind!

GLORY.

1. The crumbling tombstone and the gorgeous mausole'um, the sculptured marble, and the venerable cathedral, all bear witness to the instinctive desire within us to be remembered by coming generations. But how short-lived is the immortality which the works of our hands can confer! The noblest monuments of art that the world has ever seen are covered with the soil of twenty centuries. The works of the age of Pericles lie 3*

at the foot of the Acropolis in indiscriminate ruin. The plow-share turns up the marble which the hand of Phidias had chiseled into beauty, and the Mussulman has folded his flock beneath the falling columns of the temple of Minerva.

2. But even the works of our hands too frequently survive the memory of those who have created them. And were it otherwise, could we thus carry down to distant ages the recollection of our existence, it were surely childish to waste the energies of an immortal spirit in the effort to make it known to other times, that a being whose name was written with certain letters of the alphabet, once lived, and floŭrished, and died. Neither sculptured marble, nor stately column, can reveal to other ages the lineäments of the spirit; and these alone can embalm our memory in the hearts of a grateful prosperity.

3. As the stranger stands beneath the dome of St. Paul's, or treads, with religious awe, the silent aisles of Westminster Abbey, the sentiment, which is breathed from every object around him, is, the utter emptiness of sublunary glory. The fine arts, obedient to private affection or public gratitude, have here embodied, in every form, the finest conceptions of which their age was capable. Each one of these monuments has been watered by the tears of the widow, the orphan, or the patriot.

4. But generations have passed away, and mōurners and mourned have sunk together into forgetfulnèss. The aged crone, or the smooth-tongued beadle, as now he hurries you through ailes and chapel, utters, with measured cadence and unmeaning tone, for the thousandth time, the name and lineäge of the once honored dead; and then gladly dismisses you, to repeat again his wellconned lesson to another group of idle passers-by.