'Twas thus, by the cave of the mountain afar, He thought as a sage, though he felt as a man "Ah! why thus abandoned to darkness and woe? Mourn, sweetest complainer; man calls thee to mourn; O, soothe him, whose pleasures like thine pass away: "Now gliding remote, on the verge of the sky, She shone, and the planets were lost in her blaze. ""Tis night, and the landscape is lovely no more: Kind nature the embryo blossom will save; 'But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn? O, when shall day dawn on the night of the grave? . 'Twas thus, by the light of false science betrayed, That leads to bewilder, and dazzles to blind, My thoughts wont to roam, from shade onward to shade, Destruction before me, and sorrow behind. "O, pity, great Father of light," then I cried, 66 Thy creature, that fain would not wander from thee: Lo, humbled in dust, I relinquish my pride: From doubt and from darkness thou only canst free!" And darkness and doubt are now flying away; The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn. LESSON LXXIX. RHETORICAL PAUSES. RULE VII. In an elliptical sentence, pause where the ellipsis takes place. EXAMPLES. To our faith we should add virtue; and to virtue. . . . knowledge; and to knowledge . . . . temperance; and to temperance.... patience; and to patience. . . . godliness; and to godliness. . . . brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness. . . . charity. The Beadsman of Nithside. BURNS. THOU whom chance may hither lead, Be thou decked in silken stole, Grave these counsels on thy soul. Life is but a day at most, Sprung from night, in darkness lost; Fear not clouds will always lower. As youth and love, with sprightly dance, May delude the thoughtless pair: As thy day grows warm and high, Dost thou spurn the humble vale? Life's proud summits wouldst thou scale? Evils lurk in felon wait: Dangers, eagle-pinioned, bold, Soar around each cliffy hold; As the shades of evening close, On all thou'st seen, and heard, and wrought: Saws of experience, sage and sound. The smile or frown of awful Heaven Sleep, whence thou shalt ne'er awake, INFLECTIONS INFLECTIONS OF THE VOICE. THE pauses which occur in reading are accompanied by certain inflections or slides of the voice, which are as necessary to the sense of the sentence as the pauses themselves. Writers on elocu tion have given numerous rules for using these inflections, many of which are omitted here, as they can hardly be reduced to practice in teaching children to read. Such, however, as are deemed important, are inserted, together with an explanation of the terms and characters used in treating upon this subject. The inflections of the voice consist in the slides which it takes in pronouncing a letter, a syllable, or a word. There are two simple inflections- the upward, or rising, and the downward, or falling. The rising inflection is usually marked by the acute accent, (') — the falling by the grave accent, ('). When both the rising and falling inflections of the voice occur in pronouncing a syllable, they are called a circumflex or wave. The rising circumflex, commencing with the falling inflection and ending with the rising, is marked thus (V); the falling circumflex, commencing with the rising and ending with the falling, is markod thus (^). When no inflection is used, a monotone, or perfect level of the voice, is produced. It is marked thus (—). THE RISING FOLLOWED BY THE FALLING. Did they act properly, or improperly? Was it done correctly, or ìncorrectly? GILBERT AINSLIE was a poor man; and he had been a poor man all the days of his life, which were not few, for his thin hair was now waxing gray. He had been born and bred on the small moorland farm which he now occupied; and he hoped to die there, as his father and grandfather had done before him, leaving a family just above the more bitter wants of this world. Labor, hard and unremitting, had been his lot in life; but, although sometimes severely tried, he had never repined, and through all the mist and gloom, and even the storms that had assailed him, he had lived on from year to year in that calm and resigned contentment which unconsciously cheers the hearthstone of the blameless poor. With his own hands he had ploughed, sowed, and reaped his often scanty harvest, assisted, as they grew up, by three |