Yon churchyard's bowers? No: in ourselves their souls exist, -a part of ours'. 'What hallows ground where heroes sleep?— Or genii twine beneath the deep 'But strew his ashes to the wind Whose sword or voice has served mankind,- To live in hearts we leave behind, 'Is't death to fall for Freedom's right?— What can alone ennoble fight?— 'Give that! and welcome War to brace Her drums, and rend heaven's reeking space :— The colours planted face to face, The charging cheer, Though death's pale horse lead on the chase, Shall still be dear; 'And place our trophies where men kneel Transfer it from the sword's appeal 'Peace, Love!—the cherubim that twine Their spread wings o'er Devotion's shrine, Prayers sound, in vain, and temples shine, Where they are not.― The heart alone can make divine Religion's spot.' Joy and Sublimity. Prophetic Anticipations.-Cowper. 'O scenes surpassing fable, and yet true, And clothe all climes with beauty: the reproach The garden fears no blight, and needs no fence; Of the same grove, and drink one common stream. Lurks in the serpent now: the mother sees, The breath of heaven has chased it. In the heart But all is harmony and love. Disease Awe and Sublimity. The Final Judgment.-Horsley. 'God hath warned us, and let them, who dare to extenuate the warning, ponder the dreadful curse with which the Book of Prophecy is sealed,-"If any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy; God shall take away his part out of the book of life:"-God hath warned us, that the inquiry into every man's conduct will be public;Christ himself the Judge,-the whole race of man, and the whole angelic host, spectators of the awful scene. 'Before that assembly, every man's good deeds will be declared, and his most secret sins disclosed. As no elevation of rank will then give a title to respect, no obscurity of condition shall exclude the just from public honour, or screen the guilty from public shame. Opulence will find itself no longer powerful;-poverty will be no longer weak ;-birth will no longer be distinguished;—meanness will no longer pass unnoticed. The rich and poor will indeed strangely meet together; when all the inequalities of the present life shall disappear, and the conqueror and his captive, the monarch and his subject, the lord and his vassal,—the statesman and the peasant,―the philosopher and the unlettered hind,-shall find their distinctions to have been mere illusions. The characters and actions of the greatest and the meanest have in truth been equally important, and equally public; while the eye of the omniscient God has been equally upon them all,—while all are at last equally brought to answer to their common Judge, and the angels stand around spectators, equally interested in the dooms of all. 'The sentence of every man will be pronounced by him who cannot be merciful to those who shall have willingly sold themselves to that abject bondage from which he died to purchase their redemption,-who, nevertheless, having felt the power of temptation, knows to pity them that have been tempted; by him on whose mercy contrite frailty may rely,— whose anger hardened impenitence must dread. 'To heighten the solemnity and terror of the business, the Judge will visibly descend from heaven,-the shout of the archangels and the trumpet of the Lord will thunder through the deep, the dead will awake,—the glorified saints will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air; while the wicked will in vain call upon the mountains and the rocks to cover them. 'Of the day and hour when these things shall be, knoweth no man; but the day and hour for these things are fixed in the eternal Father's counsels. Our Lord will come,-he will come unlooked for, and may come sooner than we think.' EXERCISES IN FORCE. The thorough discipline of the voice, for the purposes of public speaking, extends from whispering to shouting,-not with a view, in the case of these extremes, to the actual use of them, in the exercise of reading, but for the purpose of reaching the natural limits of capability, and securing a perfect command over every degree of force, whether for acquiring organic power, and pliancy of voice, or ensuring command of expression as dependent on any degree of loudness. The following exercises, and the elements, of all three classes, tonic, subtonic, and atonic, should be repeated several times, daily, for months, till their effect is fully felt in strengthening and compacting the sounds of the voice, and rendering the production of any degree of force an easy and agreeable exercise. Diligent cultivation in this department of elocution, for even a few weeks, will impart a stentorian power of vocal effort to persons whose volume of voice was previously insufficient, and whose degree of organic vigour, as well as their expressive power, in actual utterance, was very low. Suppressed Force. (Whisper and half whisper.)* Awe and Tenderness. Evening Prayer at a Girls' School.-Mrs. Hemans. 'Hush! 'tis a holy hour :-the quiet room Seems like a temple, while yon soft lamp sheds And the sweet stillness, down on young bright heads, Mantling beneath its earnest brow of thought, And fragile things, as but for sunshine wrought?— Subdued Force. (Softened Utterance: 'Pure Tone.') Pathos. The Death of Reynolds.-J. Montgomery. 'Behold the bed of death, This pale and lovely clay ! Heard ye the sob of parting breath? Marked ye the eye's last ray? * All passages of deep awe, require a degree of suppression, and hence of 'aspiration,' or breathing effect, which always produces more or less impurity of tone, in consequence of the restraining effect of awe upon the organs, and the unavoidable escape of unvocalized breath, along with the sound of the voice. |