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 marked thus (A).

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

RULES AND EXERCISES UPON INFLECTIONS.

RULE I. In all cases where the sense is incomplete or suspended, the rising inflection should be used; as,

If our language, by means of the simple arrangement of its words, possesses less harmony, less beauty, and less force than the Greek and Látin, it is, however, in its meaning, more obvious and plain.

As, while hope remains, there can be no full and positive misery; so, while fear is yet alive, happiness is incomplete.

RULE II. In simple affirmative sentences, or members of sentences, where the sense is complete or independent, the falling inflection should be used; as,

He who is of a cowardly mind is, and must be, a slave to the world. He smiles, and frowns, and betrays, from abject considerations of personal safety.

It is of the last importance to season the passions of a child with devotion; * which seldom dies in a mind that has received an early tincture of it.

* Where the falling inflection is used at the end of a clause of a sentence which makes perfect sense in itself, the voice should not fall so low as at the end of a sentence. It should be sustained a little above the ordinary pitch, to intimate something more is coming; but at the end of a sentence the voice should fall to its ordinary pitch, to denote that the sense is fully completed.

RULE III.

Negative sentences and members of sentences

*

adopt the rising inflection; as,

The region beyond the grave is not a sólitary land. There your fathers are, and thither every other friend shall follow you in due

season.

The religion of the gospel is not a glóomy religion.

SENTENCES ILLUSTRATIVE OF SUSPENSION.†

As beauty of person, with an agreeable carriage, pleases the eye, and that pleasure consists in observing that all the parts have a certain elegance, and are proportioned to each other; so does decency of behavior obtain the approbation of all with whom we converse, from the order, consistency, and moderation of our words and actions.

Since it is certain that our hearts deceive us in the love of the world, and that we cannot command ourselves enough to resign it, though we every day wish ourselves disengaged from its allurements; let us not stand upon a formal taking of leave, but wean ourselves from them, while we are in the midst of them.

To hear a judicious and elegant discourse from the pulpit, which would in print make a noble figure, murdered by him who had learning and taste to compose it, but, having been neglected as to one important part of his education, knows not how to deliver it otherwise than with a tone between singing and saying, or with a nod of his head, to enforce, as with a hammer, every emphatical word, or with the same unanimated monotony in which he was used to repeat his lesson at school; what can be imagined. more lamentable? yet what more common?

The causes of good and evil are so various and uncertain, so often entangled with each other, so diversified by various relations, and so much subject to accidents which cannot be foreseen; that he who

* When a negative sentence assumes a positive form, it should end with the falling inflection; as, "Thou shalt not steal."

+ In reading the sentences, the learner should be called upon to reduce the foregoing Rules upon Inflections to practice. The inflection always commences at the accented syllable of the emphatic word. The words which require the emphasis are not marked. They should be determined by the taste and judgment of the reader.

would fix his condition upon incontestable reasons of preference, must live and die inquiring and deliberating.

Besides the ignorance of masters who teach the first rudiments of reading, and the want of skill, or negligence in that article, of those who teach the learned languages; besides the erroneous manner which the untutored pupils fall into, through the want of early attention in masters to correct small faults in the beginning, which increase and gain strength with years; besides bad habits contracted from imitation of particular persons, or the contagion of example, from a general prevalence of a certain tone or chant in reading or reciting, peculiar to each school, and regularly transmitted from one generation to another: besides all these, which are fruitful sources of vicious elocution, there is one fundamental error in the method universally used in teaching to read, which at first gives a wrong bias, and leads us ever after blindfolded from the right path, under the guidance of a false rule.

If reason teaches the learned, necessity the barbarian, common custom all nations in general; and if even nature itself instructs the brutes to defend their bodies, limbs, and lives, when attacked, by all possible methods; you cannot pronounce this action criminal, without determining, at the same time, that whoever falls into the hands of a highwayman must of necessity perish either by his sword or your decisions. Had Milo been of this opinion, he would certainly have chosen to fall by the hands of Clodius, who had more than once before this made an attempt upon his life, rather than be executed by your order, because he had not tamely yielded himself a victim to his rage. But if none of you are of this opinion, the proper question is, not whether Clódius was killed, for that we grant, but whether justly or unjustly; an inquiry of which many precedents are to be found.

When the gay and smiling aspect of things has begun to leave the passages to a man's heart thus thoughtlessly unguarded; when kind and caressing looks of every object without, that can flatter his senses, have conspired with the enemy within, to betray him and put him off his defence; when Music likewise hath lent her aid, and tried her power upon the passions; when the voice of singing men, and the voice of singing women, with the sound of the viol and the lute, have broken in upon his soul, and in some tender notes have touched the secret springs of rapture, that moment, let us dissect and look into his heart; see how vain, how weak, how empty a thing it is!

Seeing then that the soul has many different faculties, or, in other words, many different ways of acting; that it can be intensely pleased or made happy by all the different faculties, or ways of acting; that it may be endowed with several latent faculties, which it is not at present in a condition to exert; that we cannot believe the soul is endowed with any faculty which is of no use to it; that whenever any one of these faculties is transcendently pleased, the soul is in a state of happiness; and in the last place, considering that the happiness of another world is to be the happiness of the whole man: who can question but that there is an infinite variety in those pleasures we are speaking of; and that this fulness of joy will be made up of all those pleasures which the nature of the soul is capable of receiving?

In that soft season, when descending showers
Call forth the green and wake the rising flowers;
When opening buds salute the welcome day,
And earth, relenting, feels the genial ray;
As balmy sleep had charmed my cares to rest,
And love itself was banished from my breast;
A train of phantoms, in wild order rose,
And, joined, this intellectual scene compose.

He who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,

What varied beings people every star,

May tell why Heaven has made us as we are.

Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires

True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires;
Blessed with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;

Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,
A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged;
Like Cato, give his little senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
While wits and templars every sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise-
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if ATTICUS were he !

If ever you have looked on better days;
If ever been where bells have knolled to church;
If ever sat at any good man's feast;

If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear,

And know what 'tis to pity, and be pitied;
Let gentleness my strong enforcement be:

In the which hope, I blush, and hide my sword.

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing heavenly muse!

Sweet is the breath of morn, her rising sweet,
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun
When first on this delightful land he spreads
His orient beams on herb, tree, fruit, or flower,
Glistering with dew; fragrant the fertile earth
After soft showers; and sweet the coming on
Of grateful evening mild; then silent night,
With this her solemn bird, and this fair moon,
And these the gems of heaven, her starry train :
But neither breath of morn, when she ascends,
With charm of earliest birds; nor rising sun
On this delightful land; nor herb, fruit, flower,
Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers;
Nor grateful evening mild; nor silent night,
With this her solemn bird; nor walk by moon
Or glittering starlight, without thee, is sweet.

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