LESSON XV.

HAMLET'S INSTRUCTION TO THE PLAYERS.

SHAKSPEARE.

1. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you: trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise.

2. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant: it out-herods Herod. Pray you, avoid it. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word; the word to the action: with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing; whose end both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature; scorn her own image; and the very age and body of the time, his form and pressure.

3. Now this, overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh, there be players, that I have seen play, and heard others praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well; they imitated humanity so abominably.

LESSON XVI.

THE FIREMAN.

CONRAD.

NOTE. In this and the next fourteen lessons, the principal examples in Antithetic, ABSOLUTE and CUMULATIVE EMPHASIS are printed in Italics. In these lessons let the pupil be required to point out the emphatic words which illustrate the FIRST RULE for EMPHASIS, those which illustrate the SECOND RULE, and those which illustrate the THIRD RULE.

1. THE city slumbers! O'er its mighty walls

Night's dusky mantle, soft and silent, falls;
Sleep o'er the world slow waves its wand of lead,
And ready torpors wrap each sinking head.
Stilled is the stir of labor and of life;
Hushed is the hum, and tranquilized the strife.
Man is at rest, with all his hopes and fears;
The young forget their sports, the old their cares ;
The grave or careless, those who joy or weep,
All rest contented on the arm of sleep.

2. Sweet is the pillowed rest of beauty now,
And slumber smiles upon her tranquil brow.

Bright are her dreams-yes, bright as heaven's own blue,
Pure as its joys, and gentle as its dew.

They lead her forth along the moonlit tide,
Her heart's own partner wandering by her side.
'Tis summer's eve: the soft gales scarcely rouse
The low-voiced ripple and the rustling boughs ;
And, faint and far, some melting minstrel's tone
Breathes to her heart a music like its own.

3. When, hark! Oh, horror! what a crash is there! What shriek is that which fills the midnight air? 'Tis fire! 'TIS FIRE! She wakes to dream no more! The hot blast rushes through the blazing door! The room is dimmed with smoke-and, hark! that cry! "Help! HELP! Will no one aid? I die! I DIE!" She seeks the casement; shuddering at its height, She turns again; the fierce flames mock her flight ;

Along the crackling stairs they wildly play,
And roar, exulting, as they seize their prey.
"Help! HELP! Will no one come?" She can no more,
But, pale and breathless, sinks upon the floor.

4. Will no one save thee? Yes; there yet is one
Remains to save, when hope itself is gone;
When all have fled, when all but he would fly,
The Fireman comes to rescue, or to DIE!

He mounts the stair-it wavers 'neath his tread;
He SEEKS the ROOM,-flames flashing round his head;
He BURSTS the DOOR; he lifts her prostrate frame,
And turns again to brave the raging flame.

5. The fire-blast smites him with its stifling breath;
The falling timbers menace him with death;
The sinking floors his hurried steps betray,
And ruin crashes round his desperate way.
Hot smoke obscures, ten thousand cinders rise,
Yet still he staggers forward with his prize.
He leaps from burning stair to stair. On! ON!
COURAGE! One effort more, and all is won !
The stair is passed-the blazing hall is braved!
Still on!

YET ON! ONCE MORE! THANK HEAVEN,
SHE'S SAVED!

6. And should the fireman, generous, true, and brave,
Fall as he toils the weak to shield and save?

Shall no kind friend, no ministering hand be found
To pour the balm of comfort in his wound?
Or, should he perish, shall his orphans say
"He died for them, but what for us do they?"
Say, is it thus we should his toils requite?
Forbid it, justice, gratitude, and right!
FORBID it, ye whose hoard he toils to save!
FORBID it, all ye generous, just, and brave!

LESSON XVII.

SUPPOSED SPEECH OF JAMES OTIS.

MRS. L. M. CHILD.

JAMES OTIS, a distinguished American patriot, was born at West Barnstable, Mass., May, 1724, and was killed by lightning in 1783. He was an eminent lawyer, statesman, and scholar.

1. ENGLAND may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as fetter the step of freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. Arbitrary principles, like those against which we now contend, have cost one king of England his life, another his crown, and they may yet cost a third his most flourishing colonies.

2. We are two millions; one-fifth fighting-men. We are bold and vigorous, and we call no man master. To the nation from whom we are proud to derive our origin we ever were, and we ever will be, ready to yield unforced assistance; but it must not, and it never can be, EXTORTED.

3. Some have sneeringly asked, "Are the Americans too poor to pay a few pounds on stamped paper?" No! America, thanks to God and herself, is rich. But the right to take ten pounds implies the right to take a thousand; and what must be the wealth that avarice, aided by power, cannot exhaust? True, the specter is now small; but the shadow he casts before him is huge enough to darken all this fair land.

4. Others, in a sentimental style, talk of the immense debt of gratitude which we owe to England. And what is the amount of this debt? Why, truly, it is the same that the young lion owes to the dam, which has brought it forth on the solitude of the mountain, or left it amid the winds and storms of the desert.

us.

5. We plunged into the wave, with the great charter of freedom in our teeth, because the fagot and torch were behind We have waked this new world from its savage lethargy; forests have been prostrated in our path; towns and cities have grown up suddenly as the flowers of the tropics; and the fires in our autumnal woods are scarcely more rapid than the

increase of our wealth and population. And do we owe all this to the kind succor of the mother country? No! we owe it to the tyranny that drove us from her, to the pelting storms which invigorated our helpless infancy.

6. But perhaps others will say, "We ask no money from your gratitude: we only demand that you should pay your own expenses." And who, I pray, is to judge of their necessity? Why, the king: and, with all due reverence for his sacred majesty, he understands the real wants of his distant subjects as little as he does the language of the Choctaws! Who is to judge concerning the frequency of these demands? The ministry. Who is to judge whether the money is properly expended? The cabinet behind the throne. In every instance, those who take are to judge for those who pay. If this system is suffered to go into operation, we shall have reason to esteem it a great privilege that rain and dew do not depend upon Parliament; otherwise, they would soon be taxed and dried.

7. But, thanks to God, there is freedom enough left upon earth to resist such monstrous injustice. The flame of liberty is extinguished in Greece and Rome; but the light of its glowing embers is still bright and strong on the shores of America. Actuated by its sacred influence, we will resist unto death. But we will not countenance anarchy and misrule. The wrongs that a desperate community have heaped upon their enemies shall be amply and speedily repaired. Still, it may be well for some proud men to remember that a fire is lighted in these colonies, which one breath of their king may kindle into such fury that the blood of ALL ENGLAND cannot extinguish it.

LESSON XVIII.

EXTRACT FROM THE "ODE TO ELOQUENCE.”

HENRY CAREY.

1. HERMES, (her'-méz,) the Grecian name of Mercury, who was the god of eloquence: the "Son of Hermes" therefore refers to Demosthenes, the greatest of Grecian orators.

1. CECROPIA, the original name of Athens, derived from Cecrops, who is said to have founded that city.