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"O, pity, great Father of light," then I cried,

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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;
No longer I roam in conjecture forlorn :
So breaks on the traveller, faint and astray,
The bright and the balmy effulgence of morn.
See Truth, Love, and Mercy, in triumph descending,
And nature all glowing in Eden's first bloom!
On the cold cheek of Death smiles and roses are blending,
And Beauty immortal awakes from the tomb!

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 clad in russet weed,

Be thou decked in silken stole,

Grave these counsels on thy soul.

Life is but a day at most,

Sprung from night, in darkness icst;
Hope not sunshine every hour,

Fear not clouds will always lower.

As youth and love, with sprightly dance, Beneath thy morning star advance, Pleasure, with her siren air,

May delude the thoughtless pair:
Let prudence bless enjoyment's cup,
Then raptured sip, and sip it up.

As thy day grows warm and high,
Life's meridian flaming nigh,

Dost thou spurn the humble vale!

Life's proud summits wouldst thou scale?
Check thy climbing step, elate:

Evils lurk in felon wait:

Dangers, eagle-pinioned, bold,
Soar around each cliffy hold;
While cheerful peace, with linnet song,
Chants the lowly dells among.

As the shades of evening close,
Beckoning thee to long repose;
As life itself becomes disease,
Seek the chimney-nook of ease.
There ruminate, with sober thought,

On all thou'st seen, and heard, and wrought;
And teach the sportive younkers round

Saws of experience, sage and sound.
Say, Man's true, genuine estimate,
The grand criterion of his fate,
Is not, Art thou high or low?
Did thy fortune ebb or flow?
Did many talents gild thy span ?
Or frugal nature grudge thee one?
Tell them, and press it on their mind,
As thou thyself must shortly find,

The smile or frown of awful Heaven
To virtue or to vice is given.
Say, to be just, and kind, and wise,
There solid self-enjoyment lies;
That foolish, selfish, faithless ways,
Lead to the wretched, vile, and base.
Thus resigned and quiet, creep
To the bed of lasting sleep-

Sleep, whence thou shalt ne'er awake,
Night, where dawn shall never break,
Till future life, future no more,
To light and joy the good restore,
To light and joy unknown before.
Stranger, go! Heaven be thy guide!
Quod the beadsman of Nithside.

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 elocution 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 (\); the falling circumflex, commencing with the rising and ending with the falling, is marked thus (^).

When no inflection is used, a monotone, or perfect level of the voice, is produced It is marked thus (—).

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THE RISING FOLLOWED BY THE FALLING.

Did they act properly, or ìmproperly?
Did he speak distinctly, or indistinctly?
Must we do right, or wrong?

Was it done correctly, or ìncorrectly?

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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

sons, who, even in boyhood, were happy to work along with their father in the fields. Out of doors or in, Gilbert Ainslie was never idle. The spade, the shears, the plough-shaft, the sickle, and the flail, all came readily to hands that grasped them well; and not a morsel of food was eaten under his roof, or a garment worn there, that was not honestly, severely, nobly earned. Gilbert Ainslie was a slave, but it was for them he loved with a sober and deep affection. The thraldom under which he lived God had imposed, and it only served to give his character a shade of silent gravity, but not austere; to make his smiles fewer, but more heartfelt; to calm his soul at grace before and after meals; and to kindle it in morning and evening prayer.

There is no need to tell the character of the wife of such a man. Meek and thoughtful, yet gladsome and gay withal, her heaven was in her house; and her gentler and weaker hands helped to bar the door against want. Of ten children that had been born to them, they had lost three; and as they had fed, clothed, and educated them respectably, so did they give them who died a respectable funeral. The living did not grudge to give up, for a while, some of their daily comforts, for the sake of the dead, and bought, with_the_little sums which their industry had saved, decent mournings, worn on Sabbath, and then carefully laid by. Of the seven that survived, two sons and a daughter were farm-servants in the neighborhood, while two daughters and two sons remained at home, growing, or grown up – a small, happy, hardworking household.

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Many cottages are there in Scotland like Moss-side, and many such humble and virtuous cottagers as were now beneath its roof of straw. The eye of the passing traveller may mark them, or mark them not, but they stand peacefully in thousands over all the land; and most beautiful do they make it, through all its wide valleys and narrow glens, — its low holms encircled by the rocky walls of some bonny burn, - its green mounts elated with their little crowning

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