to the reading of some kinds of poetry, which is the occurrence of PAUSES.

2. In general, the poetic pauses are two-the Cesural Pause which occurs at or near the middle of the line; and the Final Pause which occurs at the end of the several lines. These pauses are independent of the grammatical pauses, though they frequently occur in the same place.

EXAMPLES.

1. As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,||

Swells from the vale, Il and midway leaves the storm;!!
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,"
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

2. When the last sunshine || of expiring day,
In summer's twilight weeps itself away,||
Who hath not felt the softness of the hourl
Sink on the heart, Il as dew along the flower ?||
With a pure feeling || which absorbs and awes,||
While Nature makes | that melancholy pause, ||
Her breathing moment || on the bridge where Time,||
Of light and darkness || forms an arch sublime ;Il
Who hath not shared that calm, so still and deep.
The voiceless thought I which would not speak, but weep,||

A holy concord, || and a bright regret

A glorious sympathy | with suns that set ?ll

3. The cesural pause occurs only in certain kinds of poetry. The final pause always occurs in rhyme, in order to denote the similarity of final sounds, in which it consists. It is, also, gencrally to be observed in reading blank verse.

4. In certain kinds of poetry, the lines of which are of great length, there is sometimes employed still another pause, occurring about half way between the cesural pause and the beginning or end of the line. It is called the Demi-cesural pause.

EXAMPLES.

1. I've wandered | through many a clime | when flowers of beauty grew,

Where all was blissful to the heart || and lovely to the view,

What are the Poetic Pauses, and where do they occur ? When is the Cesural Pause used? When, the final ?

I've seen them in their twilight pride and in their dress | of morn, But none appeared so sweet to me as the spot | where I was born. 2. In the cold moist earth | we laid her when the forest cast the leaf, And we wept that one so lovely | should have a lot | so brief; Yet not unmeet | it was that one | like that young friend of ours, So gentle and so beautiful, I should perish | with the flowers.

5. The observance of the succession of accented and unaccented syllables, and of the poetic pauses, constitutes the peculiar characteristic of Poetical Elocution. The inflection, emphasis, and modulation of the voice, are to be regarded in the reading of poetry the same as in that of prose. It is therefore important that these poetic pauses and feet be well understood.

6. While it is necessary to observe these peculiar characteristics in poetic reading, yet caution should be exercised lest a studied observance of them be adopted,-a practice which renders the Elocution measured and monotonous,-a chanting process, sometimes adopted by those who bestow too great a regard to poetic peculiarities, which is more to be avoided than a prosaic style of reading.

How should Emphasis, Inflection, &c., be employed in reading poetry? In observing the poetic feet and pauses, what caution should be exercised^

THE

SCHOOL READER.

FIFTH BOOK.

PART SECOND.

LESSON I.

EXPLANATORY NOTES AND DEFINITIONS.-1. DEMOSTHENES, the prince of orators, rather than to fall into the hands of his enemies, destroyed himself by taking poison.

2. TULLY, or CICERO, (Marcus Tullius Cicero.) the great Roman orator, was murdered by Popilius, whose life had once been saved by his eloquence. His head and hands were affixed to the same rostrum, from which he had poured forth eloquence, surpassed by no human voice.

3. HYPERBOREAN, (hyper, beyond or far; borean, northern.), belonging to a region very far north; most northern.

4. ATLANTIS, a celebrated fabulous island, mentioned by the ancients, the supposed situation of which is unknown.

5. SENECA was a Roman philosopher and orator, who was tutor to NERO; but the sound precepts which he taught, were unheeded, and when that cruel emperor had ascended the throne, he ordered Seneca to destroy himself, which he did.

6. THULE, an Island far to the north west of Europe, supposed to be Iceland or Shetland Isles, which was called by the ancients, on account of its great distance from the continent, ultima, the farthest.

THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE PEOPLE, THE SECURITY OF THE NATION.

EDWARD EVerett.

1. THE most powerful motives call on us, as scholars, for those efforts which our common country demands of all her children. Most of us are of that class, who owe whatever of knowledge has shone into our minds, to the free and popular institutions of our native land. There are few of us, who may not be permitted to boast that we have been reared in an honest poverty or a frugal competence, and owe every thing to those means of education, which are equally open to all.

2. We are summoned to new energy and zeal by the high nature of the experiment we are appointed in Providence to. make, and the grandeur of the theater, on which it is to be performed. When the old world afforded no longer any hope, it pleased Heaven to open this last refuge to humanity. The attempt has begun, and is going on, far from foreign corruption, on the broadest scale, and under the most benignant auspices; and it certainly rests with us to solve the great problem in human society-to settle, and that forever, the momentous question-whether mankind can be trusted with a purely popular system of government?

3. One might almost think, without extravagance, that the departed wise and good, of all places and times, are looking down from their happy seats to witness what shall now be done by us; that they who lavished their treasures and their blood of old, who labored and suffered, who spake and wrote, who fought and perished, in the one great cause of freedom and truth, are now hanging, from their orbs on high, over the last solemn experiment of humanity.

4. As I have wandered over the spots, once the scenes of their labors, and mused among the prostrate columns of their senate-houses and forums, I have seemed almost to hear a voice from the tombs. of departed ages,-from the sepulchers of the nations which died before the sight.

5. They exhort us, they adjure us, to be faithful to our trust. They implore us, by the long trials of struggling humanity-by the blessed memory of the departed-by the dear faith which has been plighted, by pure hands, to the holy cause of truth and man--by the awful secrets of the prisonhouses, where the sons of freedom have been immured--by the noble heads which have been brought to the block-by the wrecks of time-by.the eloquent ruins of nations, they conjure us not to quench the light which is rising on the world. Greece cries to us, by the convulsed lips of her poisoned, dying Demosthenes; and Rome pleads with us in the mute persuasion of her mangled Tully."

.6 When we engage in that solemn study, the history of

our race,—when we survey the progress of man, from his cradle in the east to these last limits of his wandering,—when we behold him forever flying westward from civil and religious thralldom, bearing his household gods over mountains and seas, seeking rest and finding none, but still pursuing the flying bow of promise to the glittering hills which it spans in Hesperian climes, we can not but exclaim,

"Westward the star of empire takes its way;

The four first acts already past,

The fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last."

7. In this high romance, if romance it be, in which the great minds of antiquity sketched the fortunes of the ages to come, they pictured to themselves a favored region beyond the ocean, a land of equal laws and happy men. The primitive poets beheld it in the islands of the blest; the Doric bards fancied it in the Hyperborean3 regions; the sage of the academy placed it in the lost Atlantis; and even the sterner spirit of Seneca could discern a fairer abode of humanity, in distant regions then unknown.

8. We look back upon these uninspired predictions, and almost recoil from the obligation they imply. By us must these fair visions be realized; by us must be fulfilled these high promises, which burst in trying hours from the longing hearts of the champions of truth. There are no more continents or worlds to be revealed. Atlantis hath arisen from the ocean. The farthest Thule is reached; there are no more retreats beyond the sea, no more discoveries, no more hopes.

9. Here, then, a mighty work is to be fulfilled, or never, by the race of mortals. The man who looks with tenderness on the sufferings of good men in other times; the descendant of the Pilgrims, who cherishes the memory of his fathers; the patriot who feels an honest glow at the majesty of the system, of which he is a member; the scholar who beholds with rapture the long-sealed book of unprejudiced truth, opened for all to read ;—these are they, by whom these auspices are to be accomplished. Yes, it is by the intellect of the country, that