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cian softness, all hereditary claims to preeminence. No effeminate nobility crowded into the dark and austere ranks of the pilgrims. No Carr or Villiers would lead on the ill-provided band of despised puritans. No well-endowed clergy were on the alert, to quit their cathedrals, and set up a pompous hierarchy in the frozen wilderness. No craving governors were anxious to be sent over to our cheerless El Dorado of ice and snow. No, they could not say they had encouraged, patronized, or helped the pilgrims: their own cares, their own labors, their own councils, their own blood, contrived all, achieved all, bore all, sealed all. afterwards fairly pretend to reap where they had not strown; and as our fathers reared this broad and solid fabric with pains and watchfulness, unaided, barely tolerated, it did not fall when the favour, which had always been withholden, was changed into wrath; when the arm which had never supported, was raised to destroy.

Pathetic Description.

They could not

Style of elocution, as in the example of the same species of rhetorical style, on the preceding page.

'Methinks I see it now, that one solitary, adventurous vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuinga circuitous route ;-and now driven in fury before the raging tempest, on the high and giddy waves.

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Awe and Horror.

Partially Aspirated Quality,' 'Impassioned' Force, 'Thorough Stress,' 'Low' Pitch, Prevalent 'Falling Inflection' of the 'Fifth,'' Slow Movement,' Long Pauses, Intense Emphasis, and 'Expression.'

'The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging.

The labouring masts seem strained from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard ;-the ship leaps, as it were, madly, from billow to billow;-the ocean breaks, and settles with engulphing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening, shivering weight, against the staggered vessel.

Pathetic Description.

Style, as before.

'I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but desperate undertaking, and landed at last, after a five months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth,-weak and weary from the voyage,-poorly armed, scantily provisioned, depending on the charity of their ship-master for a draught of beer on board, drinking nothing but water on shore, -without shelter,-without means, surrounded by hostile tribes.

Oratorical Apostrophe.

'Orotund Quality,' 'Declamatory' Force, 'Thorough Stress,' 'Middle' Pitch, Prevalent 'Falling Inflection,' of the 'Fifth,'' Moderate'' Movement,' and Pauses, Energetic Emphasis, and bold 'Expression.'

Shut now the volume of history; and tell me, on any principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers.-Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes, enumerated within the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures of other times, and find the parallel of this.

Earnest Interrogation.

'Quality' and Force, as before,-' Radical Stress,' 'High' Pitch, 'Rising Inflection' of the Third,'' Moderate Movement,' Long Pauses, Earnest Emphasis and Expression.'

'Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children; was it hard labour and spare meals ; -was it disease, was it the tomahawk,-was it the deep

malady of a blighted hope, a ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching in its last moments, at the recollection of the loved and left, beyond the sea: was it some, or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate?

Astonishment.

Slightly 'Aspirated Quality,' 'Declamatory' Force, 'Compound Stress,' 'Highest' Pitch, 'Rising Inflection,' of the 'Fifth' and 'Octave,' 'Slow Movement,' Long Pauses, Intense Emphasis and 'Expression.'

'And is it possible that neither of these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope ?-*Is it possible, that from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, an expansion so ample, a reality so important, a promise, yet to be fulfilled, so glorious?'

* The effect of increasing astonishment is to produce 'impassioned' force, 'vanishing stress,' and 'falling inflections' of the 'fifth,' in the last

sentence.

READING OF THE SCRIPTURES.

THE mechanical and unmeaning style of reading, which arises from prevalent defects in early education, is nowhere more perceptible or more injurious in effect, than when exemplified in a passage of Scripture. With the language of the sacred volume are associated all the highest thoughts and profoundest emotions of which the soul is susceptible; and our utterance, in the reading of its pages, ought to be the expression of such states of mind. But no book, generally speaking, is read with less of appropriate feeling or expressive sense.

The Scriptures are not unfrequently read with tones which do not indicate any personal interest, on the part of the reader, in the sentiments which he is uttering. The effect of the cold, dry style, commonly adopted in reading the Bible, is often, indeed, rendered utterly absurd, when the attention happens, for a moment, to fall on the oriental fervour and sublimity of the style of language, in contrast with the meagre and shabby effect of the readers' voice. The words, in such cases, speak of God and of eternity, in strains which the undebased mind associates with the vastness of the overhanging firmament, and the grandeur of the reverberating thunder; but the reader's tone is that of the coolest indifference, or of an affair ordinary and trivial. The fault of a cold, inexpressive voice, is often the result of an anxiety to shun all appearance of assumed and imposing style, and to allow the hearer to feel for himself, the solemnity of the subject. But

as it is destitute of the natural indication of earnestness, in the reader, it deadens the sympathy of the hearer.

Another error in the style of reading, is that of loading the words of Scripture with a formal, unwieldy, and unmeaning tone, which aims at a certain solemn dignity of effect, but only reaches a very unmusical song.

Sometimes, a third fault is incurred, by a desire to break through the trammels of conventional restraint, and produce a lively impression on the mind, by familiar and vivid tone, which savours too much of ordinary talk by the fireside. But coldness and familiarity are alike forbidden, on subjects which appeal to the deepest susceptibilities of the heart.

The monotonous solemnity of tone, which is exemplified by many readers of the sacred volume, defeats its own purpose, by a dull uniformity of effect; as a painter would spoil a picture by the exclusive use of one sombre tint, applied indiscriminately to scenes of evening, morning, and midday. The cold, indifferent reader seems to forget the vivid interest which appropriately belongs to every subject introduced in the pages of Scripture; the lively reader seems, by his familiar and anecdotic style, to overlook the majesty of the sacred volume; but the formal reader seems blind to all the varied beauties of language, and the natural and simple expression, which pervade, and so peculiarly characterize, both the Old Testament and the New.

The dignity of the subject, the sublimity of the style, the simplicity of the language, demand, in every passage of Scripture, the mingling effects of grave, full, and vivid expression. To the reading of the sacred page should be brought every aid arising from the deepest impressions on the heart, the most vivid effects of poetic imagination, the most refining influences of the highest intellectual culture. All the treasures of knowledge, gathered by excursive thought from the fields of science and literature, all the richer and truer wealth of life and experience, which an individual possesses,-and which never fails to modify the qualities and expression of the voice, should be made tributary to the exercise of read

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