Sivut kuvina
PDF
ePub

The tone at be-haviour is " downward continuing," interrupted only by a breath pause, till, reaching the word lives the voice slides upward; it repeats this accent at ob-tain; three downward accents follow; then the upward for which they were a preparation; then two more downward; then two upward; and finally the conclusive for which all the preceding were a preparation. A gradual lowering of voice accompanies the last seven or eight accents. Much more is here described than the pupil will yet be able to perceive, and more is marked (though not with the exactitude that could be marked) than he can yet imitate. He has only to avail himself of what he can, and trust to practice for greater quickness of ear and flexibility of voice.

EXERCISE 4.

Suspensive and Conclusive Accents.

1. The pursuit of happiness, however various the road, is the great occupation of all the dwellers on the earth.

2. To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are váin, is one of the duties of friendship.

3. True charity is not a meteor which occasionally gláres, but a luminary which, in its ordinary and regular course dispenses a benignant influence.

4. Life consists not of a series of illustrious actions or elegant enjoyments, but in performing common duties, removing small inconveniences, procuring petty pleasures.

5. Every man who speaks and reasons, is a grammarian and a logícian, although unacquainted with the rules of art as exhibited in books and systems.

6. The tales of other times, are like the calm

dew of the morning, when the sun is faint on its side, and the lake is settled and blue in the vàle.

7. Why are bad men so anxious to wear the appearance of vírtue, but because, in their hearts, they value and revère-it?

8. Who can say, though now vigorous with youth, and courted by prospérity, that he shall not, in a few years, be poor, infirm, and dèstitute?

9. What would remain to check our vices, and curb our selfish passions, to lessen the weight of calamity, and remove the stings of déath, if religious fear and religious hope, were made to lose the influence which they yet pos

sèss.

10. Who builds his hope i' the air of men's fair looks,

Lives like a drunken sailor on a mast,
Ready, with every nod, to tumble down
Into the fatal bowels of the deep.

11. Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man's erring judgment and misguide the mind,

What the weak head with strongest bias rúles,

Is Pride.

12. Who noble ends by noble means obtains, Or failing, smiles in exile or in chains, Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed Like Sócrates, that man is great indeed.

13. 'Twas said, by ancient sages,
That love of life increased with years
So much, that, in our later stages,

When pains grow sharp, and sickness

rages,

The greatest love of life appeàrs.

14. Whate'er of life all quickening ether keeps,

Or breathes through air, or shoots beneath the deeps,

Or pours profuse on earth; one nature feeds

The vital flame, and swells the genial
seèds.

15. A soul immortal spending all her fires,
Wasting her strength in strenuous idleness,
Thrown into tumult, raptured or alarmed
At aught this scene can threaten or in-
dúlge,
Resembles ocean into tempest wrought
To waft a feather or to drown a fly.

EXERCISE 5.

Suspensive and Conclusive Accents: Continued.

1. As we perceive the shadow to have moved along the dial, but did not perceive it moving; and it appears that the grass has-grown, though no body ever sáw-it-grow: so the advances we make in learning, as they consist of such minute steps, are only perceivable by the distance.

E

2. All that makes a figure on the great theatre of the world, the employments of the busy, the enterprises of the ambitious, and the exploits of the warlike; the virtues which form the happiness, and the crimes which occasion the mísery-of-mankind: originate in that silent and secret recess of thought, which is hidden from every human eye.

3. How many young persons have set out in the world with excellent dispositions of heart; generous, charitable, kind to their friends, and amiable among all with whom they had íntercourse, who, through the influence of loose and corrupting pleasures, have sunk down, in the end, to be the burden and nuisance of society!

4. Man's study of himself, and the knowledge of his own station in the ranks of being, and his various relations to the innumerable multitudes which surround him, and with which his Maker has ordained him to be united for the reception and communication of happiness, should begin with the first glimpse of reason, and only end with life itself.

5. Though he who excels in the graces of writing, might have been, with opportunities and application, equally successful in those of conversation; yet as many please by extemporary talk, though utterly unacquainted with the more accurate method, and more laboured beauties, which composition-requires: so it is very possible that men wholly accustomed to

works of study, may be without that readiness of conception, and affluence of language, always necessary to colloquial entertainment.

6. Of systems possible, if 'tis confessed

That wisdom infinite must form the best,
Where all must fall, or not coherent be,
And all that rises, rise in due degrée;
Then in the scale of life and sense, 'tis
plain

There must be, somewhere, such a rank as
màn.

7. At the close of the day, when the hamlet is still,

And mortals the sweets of forgetfulness prove,

When nought but the torrent is heard on the hill,

And nought but the nightingale's song in the grove,

And the toils and the cares of the daylight are ó'er;

How solemn the thoughts that the future explore!

8. Lo! when the faithful pencil has designed

Some bright idea of the master's mind,
Where a new world leaps out at his com-
mand,

And ready nature waits upon his hand;
When the ripe colours soften and unite,
And sweetly melt into just shade and light;

« EdellinenJatka »