3. No holy seer of religion, no sage, no statesman, no orator, no man of any literary description whatever, has come up, in the one instance, to the pure sentiments of morality; or, in the other, to that variety of knowledge, force of imagination, propriety and vivacity of allusion, beauty and elegance of diction, strength and copiousness of style, pathos and sublimity of conception, to which we have this day listened with ardor and admiration. From poetry up to eloquence, there is not a species of composition of which a complete and perfect specimen might not, from that single speech, be culled and collected. SECTION IV. RULE 3. The repetition of any word, rendered important by its connection in a sentence, usually requires an increased force of utterance. EXAMPLES. 1. You circulated that false report, You, sir. 2. They will never submit to your dictation, never, NEVER. 3. Treason! cried the speaker; treason, TREASON, TREASON, re-echoed from every part of the house. 4. It was Homer a who gave laws to the artist; it was Homer who inspired the poet; it was HOMER who thundered in the senate; and, more than all, it was HOMER who was sung by the people; and hence, a nation was cast into the mold of one mighty mind; and the land of the Iliad,b became the region of taste, the birth-place of arts. in breadth. It was built by William II., in 1097, and repaired, with many alterations, by Richard II., in 1397. It is situated in Westminster, in the western part of the city of London. a Homer, a Greek poet, who flourished about 850, B. C. Iliad, an epic poem, written by Homer. QUESTION. How should the repetition of a word usually be read? NOTE. The increase of emphasis, is usually expressed by an increase of force on the word repeated, as in the above examples, but not always sometimes the force is even diminished, in order to produce the greatest effect. EXAMPLES. 1. HUSH! hush! he stirred not, was he dead? 2. Tread softly,- BOW the head,— in reverent silence bow. EXERCISE. 1. To enumerate all the painful and appalling consequences that follow in the train of intemperate habits, would consume more time than the present occasion will allow. Suffice it, therefore, to say, if such habits are formed, indulged, and persisted in, they will, sooner or later, lead to inevitable ruin. 2. What has blasted the bright prospects of so many young men of early promise, and broken the hearts of doting parents? Early habits of dissipation and intemperance. What has reduced so many from affluence to penury and want? Neglect of business, and indiscreet management, caused by INTEMPERANCE. 3. What, in so many instances, brings on premature death? Habitual, confirmed INTEMPERance. What causes the husband, once kind and affectionate, to abuse, maltreat, and, sometimes, even to murder the very wife of his bosom? Brutality, caused by INTEMPERANCE. What has cast so many children, destitute and unprotected, on the cold charities of the world? Their tears reply, INTEMPERANCE. 4. What dethrones reason, and brute? Besotting INTEMPERANCE. degrades man to a mere What supplies the poor house with the greater portion of its inmates? Poverty, and QUESTIONS. How is this increase of emphasis sometimes best expressed? Give examples. inability to earn a living, caused, in most cases, by intemperance. What so often disturbs the fireside harmony, and drives peace from the domestic circle? Habitual intemperance. What leads on such multitudes to the perpetration of crimes of every cast and character, crimes which consign them to the penitentiary or the gibbet? In most cases, conscience-destroying intemperance. 5. What tends more directly to debase human nature, and demoralize society? What leads to the violation of law, and such riotous conduct as breaks the silence of midnight, and disturbs the repose of peaceful citizens? Intemperance is the moving spirit. What annually consigns five hundred thousand miserable sots, in the United States, to a drunkard's grave, breaks the hearts of tens of thousands of amiable wives, and beggars hundreds of thousands of orphan children? The merciless monster, INTEMPERANCE. SECTION V. RULE 4. Words used as exclamations and interjections, when attended with strong feeling or emotion, are generally emphatic. EXAMPLES. 1. O, venerable shade! O, illustrious hero! Farewell! 2. What splendid views of heaven! How majestically the sun wheels his mighty round! 3. Behold the daughter of innocence! What a look! what beauty! what sweetness! 4. O liberty! O sound once delightful to every Roman ear! O sacred privilege of Roman citizenship! once sacred· -now TRAMPLED upon! QUESTION. HOW should words used as exclamations and interjections be read? Give examples. EXERCISE. 1. The clock struck, and the wretched Altamont exclaimed with vehemence,-"Oh! time! time! it is fit thou shouldst thus strike thy murderer to the heart! How art thou fled forever ! A month! O, for a single WEEK! I ask not for years! though an AGE were too little for the much I have to do." 2. The sword of Washington! a The staff of Franklin! O, sir, what associations are linked in adamant with these names! Washington, whose sword was never drawn but in the cause of his country, and never sheathed when wielded in his country's cause! Franklin, the philosopher of the thunderbolt, the printing-press, and the plowshare! What names are these in the scanty catalogue of the benefactors of human kind! Washington and Franklin! Washington, the warrior and the legislator! Franklin, the mechanic of his own fortune! 3. How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, 4. A beam ethereal, sullied and absorpt! An heir of glory! a frail child of dust! a Washington, (George,) the father of his country, born in Virginia in 1732. Franklin, (Benjamin,) a distinguished philosopher, born in Boston in 1706. Thought wanders up and down, surpris'd, aghast, 5. How reason reels! O what miracle to man is man! Triumphantly distress'd! what joy! what dread! What can preserve my life! or what destroy! 6. Oh! deep-enchanting prelude to repose, It is a dread and awful thing to die! 7. Mysterious worlds! untravel'd by the sun, a Sinai, a mountain of Arabia, near the head of the Red Sea, celebrated in Scripture history as the place where the law was delivered to Moses. bCimmerian darkness, the appellation given by the ancients to the continual obscurity said to hang over a town on the Palus Mæotis. The country is now called Crimea. |