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ILLUSTRATIONS.

Commencing Series.

"If truth, and faith, and honor, and justice, have filed from every other part of our country, we shall find them here. If not, our sun has gone down in treachery, blood, and crime, in the face of the world; and, instead of being proud of our country, as heretofore, we may well call upon the rocks and mountains to hide our shame

from earth and from heaven."

AN APPEAL FOR THE CHEROKEE NATION. Wm. Wirt.

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"Our own selfishness, our own neglect, our own passions, and our own vices, will furnish the elements of our destruction. With our own hands we shall tear down the stately edifice of our glory. We зhall die by self-inflicted wounds."

THE DUTIES OF AMERICANS.

'After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well;

G. S. Hillard.

Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing

Can touch him further! - Macbeth.

"To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven.
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm;
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

THE DESERTED VILLAGE.—Goldsmith.

Concluding Series.

"Now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in

To saucy doubts and fears."

-Shakespeare.

"Strong in will

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To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

"A land of beauty, virtue, valor, truth,
Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth."

HOME.-Montgomery.

"When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the color-petals out of a fruitful flower; — when they are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse to the body."— Ruskin.

Series of Series.

"Of Law, there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God; her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; -- both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy."- Hooker.

"Holy intention is to the actions of a man that which the soul is to the body, or form to its matter, or the root to its tree, or the sun to the world, or the fountain to a river, or the base to a pillar; for without these, the body is a dead trunk, the matter is sluggish, the tree is a block, the river is quickly dry, and the pillar rushes into flatness or ruin, and the action is sinful, or unprofitable, or vain.”— Jeremy Taylor.

"A crowd of spirits from the realm of the deathless come thronging around us; — from the battle-field, where Liberty went down under the brutal hoofs of Power, its immortal image trampled in the dust, from the legislative hall, where, amid the collision of adverse intellects, the orator poured his torrents of fire, from the rack and the stake, where the spirit of man chanted rapturous hymns in its fierce agonies, and met death smiling, from the cell of the thinker, where mind grappled with the mysterious unknown, piercing, with its thought of light, the dark veil of unrealized knowledge and possible combinations; - from every place where the soul has been really alive, and impatiently tossed aside the material conditions which would stifle or limit its energies, come the Genii of Thought and Action, to rouse us from our sleep of death, to tear aside the thin delusions of our conceit, and to pour into the shrunken veins of our discrowned spirits, the fresh tides of mental life."- E. P. Whipple.

19*

CADENCE.

Cadence is the closing tone of a sentence.

When three syllables successively descend in their radical pitch, at the close of a sentence, (being a falling tritone,) the phrase may be called the Cadence, or Triad of the Cadence.

"The completion of a thought is expressed, not only by the long pause which takes place at the end of a sentence, but usually by a falling of the voice, on the closing words to a lower pitch than that which prevailed in the body of the sentence. This closing descent in the tone is used to prevent the abruptness and irregularity of sound which would be produced by continuing the prevailing pitch to the close of the sentence, which, from exciting expectation of further expression, would be at variance both with harmony and meaning."

Partial Cadence takes place when a distinct portion of the sense is completed, although the whole sentence is not finished; thus, after "are," in the sentence,

“Clear writers, like clear fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound."

Distinct Cadence should be given when both the sentence and the sentiment are fully completed; as, after "profound," in the preceding example.

"Whoever closely observes the character of speech, in the common dialogue of life, must perceive that the earnest interests which govern it, the sharp replications and interruptions of argument, and the piercing pitch of mirth and anger exclude, in a great measure, the terminating repose of the cadence. This is particularly the case with children and with the ignorant, who rarely employ any other than the wider and more expressive intervals of intonation. When, therefore, attempting to read with the serious purpose of a dignified elocution, the impassioned habit is too inveterate to be at once laid aside; and a disposition to keep up the colloquial characteristic of speech, extending itself to the place of the cadence, defers, for a long time, the ability to give, with propriety and taste, the more composed and the graver intonation of the terminative phrase."Rush.

"The unmeaning and mechanical style of reading, which is too generally exemplified at schools and in professional performances, is chiefly characterized by a continually returning fall of voice at the end of every sentence, so uniform that it might be used as a guide by which to count the exact number of sentences read. A whole paragraph is read as so many detached and independent sentences, forming distinct and unconnected propositions or maxims. Animated, natural, and appropriate reading, on the contrary, avoids this frequent fall, and keeps up that perpetual variety which the change in sense requires; this effect being produced by modifying the close of every sentence according to its meaning in connection with the rest; each sentence being read as a dependent part of a connected whole, and unity and harmony thus given to a train of thought. This effect the reader attains by disregarding the arbitrary rule for a fall of the voice at every period, and seeking his guidance from the sense of

what he utters, as he does in his habits of common conversation,- making no difference in the two cases save that which arises of necessity from the more regular form of written sentences."- Russell.

The note to which the cadence falls, and the space through which it descends, are dependent on the emotion with which the sentiment should be uttered, or on the length and complication of the sentence. In strong emotion, the cadence is often both abrupt and low; thus,

as

"Let us do, or die."

"Redeem my pennon-charge again!

CryMarmion to the rescue ! ' — - Vain!" - Scott.

In gentle emotion, the cadence is gradual and moderate;

"How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank."

Shakespeare, In short sentences, in which emotion is not so strongly expressed, the fall is slight; as,

"Night brings out stars, as sorrow shows us truth." Gerald Massey.

In long sentences, the fall is more obvious, and commences farther from the close; as,

"Where sorrow 's held intrusive, and turned out,

There wisdom will not enter, nor true power,

Nor aught that dignifies humanity." - Henry Taylor.

The usual errors in cadence are,

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First:-Delaying the fall of the voice till the last words of the sentence, and dropping at once from a preceding uniform tone, fault arising from the habit of reading with mechanical attention to the words, instead of an intelligent observation of the meaning. It is the tone used by children, while the difficulty of reading still remains, or when reading what they do not understand.

Second: - Falling very low on the closing phrase, - a fault usually contracted by reading only grave and formal selections, the solemnity of style in which is unnatural to the tones of youth. The usual standard inadvertently adopted is that which too often is heard from the pulpit; the effect of this is to substitute a heavy and hollow-sounding close, bearing for the true and varied tone of meaning, a measured proportion to the preceding parts of a sentence. This cadence, especially inappropriate in young readers, should be avoided by care in the selection of exercises for practice, and after directing atten ion to the nature of the sentiment, adapting the

voice to the meaning and not to the daily routine of mechanical utterance.

Third:-Falling too near the beginning of the sentence, a fault arising from the habit of attending to the language rather than to the thought, from the wrong impression that there must necessarily be a fall, at the close of every sentence, and, perhaps, too, from a mistake in taste by which the young reader is led to imagine that there is something pleasing to the ear, in a regular and formal descent of the voice. This tone is unavoidably associated with a pedantic manner; it must be avoided by keeping the voice in the same strain of expression which should be observed in conversation. Fourth-Using a waving tone of voice, which makes a false emphasis near the close, an error often heard at declamatory exhibitions at schools and colleges. This fault would be avoided by observing the true emphasis of meaning instead of an arbitrary emphasis of sound.

Fifth-A gradual sliding downward from the beginning of the sentence, and a diminishing of the force of the voice, the speaker commencing every sentence on a comparatively high note, and with a moderate degree of force, but the pitch gradually falling and the loudness gradually diminishing in the progress of the sentence, till the tone has nearly died away at the close. These faults originate in the habits contracted in childhood, from the unnatural attempt to read too loud, or in too large a room, thus making an effort which the powers of the voice were then incapable of sustaining.

"This objectionable tone would, like all others, be removed by the habit of attending to the meaning of what is read or spoken, more than to the phraseology. Written sentences differ from those of conversation chiefly in their inversion; the most forcible and expressive phrases being generally last in order. This arrangement favors strength of style in composition; but it needs a sustained and regularly increased force of voice, to give it just utterance. In good reading, accordingly, the tone strengthens progressively in a sentence,- especially if long or complex; whilst in feeble and unimpressive reading, the voice is gradually dwindling when the language requires increasing energy.

"This sinking cadence arises also from the mechanical habit of attending to sentences as such, and not to their value, or their connection in signification. When two sentences are connected in meaning, the latter, if appropriately read, commences on the low note used at the close of the former. The unity of sound thus produced, gives the sentences a unity to the ear. The rising of the voice to a new pitch, at the opening of a new sentence, indicates by the change of note, a change of meaning, or a transition to a new and different thought. The uniform recurrence of a high pitch at the beginning of every sentence, has thus the effect of destroying the natural connection of thought, and of obscuring or changing the sense. It is a clear conception of the meaning, on which the learner is to depend as the only guide to appropriate cadence.". - Russell.

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