Age, thou art shame'd; Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods. When went there by an age, since the great flood, but it was famed with more than with one man? When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome, that her wide walls encompassed but one man? Oh! you and I have heard our fathers say, there was a Brutus on'ce, that would have brooked the infernal demon to keep his state in Rome, as easily as a king!—Shakspeare.

N.B.-Let the pupil now practise Exercises on Rules 5 and 6 in Simple Rules.

ON THE PAUSE.

Read clearly one thought at a time, and pause, longer or otherwise, according to the importance of the idea, distinctly changing the tone at each clause, making "sound an echo to the sense."

EXERCISE XIII.

HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY ON DEATH.

No. I signifies Moderate Pause; 2, Longer; 3, Longest.

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To be or not to be, that is the question? | 2 Whether 't is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, To die 2-to sleep 3 and, by opposing, end them? more; and, by a sleep, to say we end the heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to! | 't is a consummation devoutly to be wished! To die to sleep-3 to sleep!-perchance to dream i-ay, there's the rub.-For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, | 2 must give us pause !1-There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life: For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of despised love, the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns that patient merit of the unworthy takes, when he himself might his quietus make with a bare bodkin? | 1 who would fardels bear, to groan and sweat

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under a weary life, but that the dread of something after death-that undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns-puzzles the will, 2 and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of. 1 Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; and

thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment, with this regard, their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.-Shakespeare.

EXERCISE XIV.

MACBETH TO THE DAGGER VISION.

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Is this a dagger which I see before me, 1 the handle toward my hand?-1 Come, let me clutch thee :- | 3 I have thee not; and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling as to sight? | 2 or art thou but a dagger of the mind; a false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? | I see thee yet, in form as palpable as this which now I draw? | Thou marshal'st me the way that I was going; and such an instrument I was to use! | 3 Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, or else worth all the rest:—I see thee still! |1 And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, which was not so before. | There's no such thing: it is the bloody business which informs thus to mine eyes. | 3 Now o'er the one half world nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep; now witchcraft celebrates pale Hecate's offerings, | and withered murder, | alarumed by his sentinel | 1 the wolf | 1 whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, with Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design moves like a ghost. | 2 Thou sure and firm-set earth, hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear thy very stones prate of my where-about. And take the present horror from the time which now suits with it. | 3 While I threat, he lives: words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.-[A bell rings].-I go, 2 and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan! for it is a knell that summons thee to heaven or to hell!-Shakespeare.

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EXERCISE XV.

THE WOUNDED DEER.

To-day, my lord of Amiens and myself did steal behind him, as he lay along under an oak | whose antique root peeps out upon the brook that brawls along this wood; | to the which place a poor sequester'd stag, that from the hunter's aim had ta'en a hurt, did come to languish; | and, indeed, my lord, the wretched animal heav'd forth such groans | that their discharge did stretch his leathern coat almost to bursting, and the big round tears coursed one another down his innocent nose in piteous chase; | 2 and thus the hairy fool, | much marked of the melancholy Jaques, stood on the extremest verge of the swift brook, augmenting it with tears.-Jaques, of course, did promptly moralise this spectacle into a thousand biting similes. First, | for his weeping in the needless stream: | 2 "Poor deer," quoth he, "thou mak'st a testament as worldlings do, giving thy sum of more to that which had too much." | Then, being alone, left and abandon'd of his velvet friends: ""Tis right," | quoth he; "thus misery doth part the flux of company. "12 Anon,

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a careless herd, full of the pasture, jumps along by him and never stays to greet him. | "Ay," quoth Jaques, sweep on, you fat and greasy citizens: 'tis just the fashion: wherefore do you look upon that poor and broken bankrupt there?" 2 Thus most invectively he pierceth through the body of the country, | city, | city, | yea, and of this our life: | swearing that we are mere usurpers, | tyrants, and what's worse to fright the animals, and to kill them up in their assign'd and native dwelling-place. | 2 And we did leave him in this contemplation, weeping, and commenting upon the sobbing deer.-Shakespeare.

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Let the pupil practise Exercises on Rules 7, 8, and 9 in Simple Rules.

TASTE AND EXPRESSION.

Taste and expression in reading are shown after something of the same principle which indicates the same requisites in singing-viz., in modulating words and clauses according to

their nature and character, and changing also the pitch of the voice, the rate of utterance, and force of tone, according to the various emotions under which the character is supposed to speak.

Read the following exercise, changing the tone and time as directed, and emphasising the words italicised :

EXERCISE XVI.

FROM THE TRAGEDY OF "HAMLET."

[Three speakers: The Queen, Hamlet, and the Ghost.] HAMLET. (Medium force.) Now, mother, what's the matter? QUEEN. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

HAMLET. (Gradually increase.) Mother, you have my father much offended.

QUEEN. (Medium force.) Come, come! you answer with an idle tongue.

HAMLET. (Gradual increase.) Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

QUEEN. (Loud.) Why, how now, Hamlet?

HAMLET. What's the matter now?

QUEEN. (Soft and slow.) Have you forgot me?

HAMLET. No, by the rood, not so? you are the queen! your husband's brother's wife; and—would it were not so! -you are my mother.

QUEEN. (Firmness.) Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak.

HAMLET. (Quick and low.) Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge! you go not, till I set you up a glass where you may see the inmost part of you!

QUEEN. (Loud.) What wilt thou do! thou wilt not murder me?

HAMLET. (Slow and strong.) Leave wringing of your hands: Peace! sit you down, and let me wring your heart; for so I shall, if it be made of penetrable stuff; if wicked custom have not brazed it so, that it is proof and bulwark against sense.

QUEEN. What have I done that thou dar'st wag thy tongue in noise so rude against me?

HAMLET. (Deep and strong.) Such an act, that blurs the

grace and blush of modesty; calls virtue, hypocrite; (middle pitch) takes off the rose from the fair forehead of an innocent love, and sets a blister there; makes marriage vows as false as dicers' oaths; (slow) O, such a deed as from the body of contraction plucks the very soul; and sweet religion makes a rhapsody of words! Ah me! that act!

QUEEN. Ah me, what act, that roars so loud, and thunders in the index ?

HAMLET. (Deep and strong.) Look here, upon this picture, and on this! the counterfeit presentment of two brothers. See what a grace was seated on this brow?--Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself, an eye like Mars, to threaten and command; a station like the herald Mercury, new lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; (slow) a combination and a form, indeed, where every god did seem to set his seal, to give the world assurance of a man: this was your husband.-Look you now, what follows:-(Gradual increase.) Here is your husband, like a mildew'd ear, blasting his wholesome brother. (High.) Have you eyes? Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, and batten on this moor? (Loud.) Ha! have you eyes? you cannot call it love (softer): for, at your age, the hey-day in the blood is tame! it's humble! and waits upon the judgment! And what judgment would step from this to this? O shame? where is thy blush?

QUEEN. (Soft.) O Hamlet, speak no more! thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul; and there I see such black and grained spots, as will not leave their tinct.

HAMLET. (Increase in force with each succeeding clause.) Nay, but to live in the rank sweat of an unrighteous lifeQUEEN. O, speak to me no more! These words like daggers enter in mine ears; no more, sweet Hamlet!

HAMLET. A murderer and a villain: a slave, that is not twentieth part the tithe of your precedent lord::-a vice of kings: a cutpurse of the empire and the rule, that from a shelf the precious diadem stole, and put it in his pocket— QUEEN. No more!

HAMLET. (Loud and quick.) A king of shreds and patches! [Enter Ghost.] (Change to soft and tremulous.) Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings, you heavenly guards!—What would your gracious figure!