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date, and move at her control. But, like other mighty sovereigns, she is so surrounded by her envoys, her officers, and her ministers of state, that it is extremely difficult to be admitted to her presence chamber, or to have any immediate communication with herself. Ambition, Avarice, Love, Revenge, all these seek her, and her alone; alas! they are neither presented to her, nor will she come to them. She despatches, however, her envoys unto them, mean and poor representatives of their queen. To Ambition, she sends Power; to Avarice, Wealth; to Love, Jealousy; to Revenge, Remorse: alas! what are these, but so many other names for vexation or disappointment? Neither is she to be won by flatteries or by bribes: she is to be gained by waging war against her enemies, much sooner than by paying any particular court to herself. Those that conquer her adversaries, will find that they need not go to her, for she will come unto them. None bid so high for her as kings; few are more willing, none more able, to purchase her alliance at the fullest price. But she has no more respect for kings than for their subjects; she mocks them, indeed, with the empty show of a visit, by sending to their palaces all her equipage, her pomp, and her train; but she comes not herself. What detains her? She is travelling incognita to keep a private appointment with Contentment, and to partake of a dinner of herbs in a cottage.”

Graphic Conversational Description.

Rebuke of Flippancy. - Cumberland.

"Hear the crude opinions that are let loose upon society in our table conversations; mark the wild and wandering arguments that are launched at random, without ever hitting the mark they should be levelled at: what does all this noise and nonsense prove, but that the talker has indeed acquired the fluency of words, but never known the exercise of thought, or attended to the development

of a single proposition? Tell him that he ought to hear what may be said on the other side of the question — he agrees to it, and either begs leave to wind up with a few words more, which he winds and wire-draws without end; or, having paused to hear, hears with impatience a very little, foreknows everything you had farther to say. cuts short your argument, and bolts in upon you with — an answer to that argument ? No; with a continuation of his own babble; and, having stifled you with the torrent of his talk, places your contempt to the credit of his own capacity, and foolishly conceives he speaks with reason, because he has not patience to attend to any reasoning but his own.

"There are also others, whose vivacity of imagination has never felt the trammels of a syllogism.

"To attempt at hedging in these sciolists, is but lost labor. These talkers are very entertaining, as long as novelties with no meaning can entertain you; they have a great variety of opinions, which, if you oppose, they do not defend, and if you agree, with, they desert. Their talk is like the wild notes of birds, amongst which you shall distinguish some of pleasant tone, but out of which you compose no tune or harmony of song. These men

would have set down Archimedes for a fool, when he danced for joy at the solution of a proposition, and mistaken Newton for a madman, when, in the surplice which he put on for chapel over night, he was found the next morning, in the same place and posture, fixed in profound meditation on his theory of the prismatic colors. So great is their distaste for demonstration, they think no truth is worth the waiting for: the mountain must come to them: they are not by half so complaisant as Mohammed. They are not easily reconciled to truisms, but have no particular objection to impossibilities. For argument they have no ear; it does not touch them; it fetters fancy, and dulls the edge of repartee. If by chance they find themselves in an untenable position, and wit is not at

hand to help them out of it, they will take up with a pun, and ride home upon a horse laugh: if they cannot keep their ground, they will not wait to be attacked and driven out of it. Whilst a reasoning man will be picking his way out of a dilemma, they, who never reason at all, jump over it, and land themselves at once upon new ground, where they take an imposing attitude, and escape pursuit. Whatever these men do, whether they talk, or write, or act, it is without deliberation, without consistency, without plan. Having no expanse of mind, they can comprehend only in part; they will promise an epic poem, and produce an epigram. In short they glitter, pass away, and are forgotten; their outset makes a show of mighty things; they stray out of their course into byways and obliquities; and, when out of sight of their contemporaries, are forever lost to posterity."

EXERCISES IN "RHYTHM."*

"Rhythm" is, in elocution, the result of that regular and symmetrical movement of the voice, which is caused by the comparatively measured style of rhetorical composition. It implies, also, a just observance of those pauses, whether marked in the punctuation or not, which the sense of a passage demands; and these pauses thus become, like rests in music, portions of the measure and rhythm It is this last mentioned effect which renders rhythm so important to an easy, fluent, and natural use of the voice, in reading and speaking; suggesting the practice of frequent, slight, but well-timed breathing, instead of the common faulty mode c. drawing breath at distant and irregular intervals, and with painful effort. The former of these habits renders public reading and speaking easy, even to persons of feeble health; the latter wears away the organic strength of the most vigorous. The former mode preserves the smooth, even

*The word "rhythm" is used, in elocution, to designate that regulated movement of voice, which exists, in its fully marked form, in the combined effect of the metre and pauses of verse, but which belongs, in degree, to all well-written and well-spoken language, in prose, in the forms, particularly, of declamation and discourse.

flow of voice; the latter breaks the continuity both of sound and

sense.

Rhythm is, in detail, the regular recurrence of accent, at definite and measured intervals, and may be beat and marked as strictly as in music, if attention is paid to the suspensions of sound by pauses, so as to include them, as well as the actual sounds of the voice, between the beats, as in the bars of music. Every accented syllable is, in elocution, equivalent to the beginning of a bar in music, and may be so marked; thus, | Muse | music | musical | un- | musical | or, if read with pauses | Muse |, | or | | music |, | or | musical |, | or | 7| un- | musical |

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The subjoined exercises should be practised with the aid, at first, of beating time at the commencement of every bar, as in music. The rhythm should be, for some time, marked quite strongly with the voice; the beat and the decided marking may be gradually laid aside, as the ear becomes competent to direct itself. But the actual time should never cease to be carefully observed in reading, speaking, and reciting, any more than in music itself. The fact, however, should never be forgotten, that an habitual strong marking of rhythm, is the same fault in elocution as in music. It protrudes what should be a barely perceptible property, and turns an excellence into a defect. A delicate marking of rhythm, is a genuine grace of cultivated elocution, in the reading of verse, and in the language of oratory or of sentiment. The great object of practice, as regards "time," is truth, not force.

The student of elocution would do well to score numerous passages, for himself, in the manner exemplified as follows.

* Every accented monosyllable, in elocutionary rhythm, constitutes a bar; all the unaccented syllables, in a polysyllable, are grouped in the same bar, with the accented syllable, or pause preceding. The rule for marking is simply, Place a bar before every accented syllable, wherever found, and before every pause. One or more unaccented syllables are sometimes grouped into the same bar with a pause. For the convenience of marking, a bar is assumed as composed of one quarter or two eighth notes.

Half or secondary accents, wherever they occur, commence a new bar; thus, the syllable man-, in the word | manifes | tation, or the syllable con-, in the word in- | contro- | vertible.

*

Verse, or Metrical Accent.

Iambic Metre.

Blank Verse.

"Be | wise to-day || tis | madness to

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The vast con- cerns of an e- | ternal | scene."

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Octosyllabic Quatrain Stanza (Long Metre).

"Dear is the | hallowed | morn to me |;|

When | village | bells a- | wake the | day |;|1] by their sacred | minstrelsy |, |

And
Call me

from | earthly | cares | a- | way.”

* The rests are usually “rhetorical” pauses, or prolongations added to the grammatical pauses indicated by the punctuation. The initial rest represents the slight interval between the first bar and the preceding utterance, whatever that may be.

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