Carolina' drank up the most precious blood of her citizens. Black and smoking ruins marked the places which had been the habitations of her children!

Driven from their homes into the gloomy and almost impenetrable swamps, even there the spirit of liberty survived; and South Carolina, sustained by the example of her Sumpters and her Marions, proved by her conduct that though her soil might be overrun, the spirit of her people was invincible!

EXERCISE XXXVI.—NEW ENGLAND.—Cushing.

[See remarks introductory to EXERCISE XXXV.]

The gentleman from South Carolina taunts us with counting the costs of that war in which the liberties and honour of the country, and the interests of the North, as he asserts, were forced to go elsewhere for their defence. Will he sit down with me and count the cost now? Will he reckon up how much of treasure the State of South Carolina expended in that war, and how much the State of Massachusetts ? how much of the blood of either State was poured out on sea or land? I challenge the gentleman to the test of patriotism, which the army roll, the navy lists, and the treasury books, afford.

Sir, they who revile us for our opposition to the last war, have looked only to the surface of things. They little know the extremities of suffering, which the people of Massachusetts bore at that period, out of attachment to the Union,their families beggared, their fathers and sons bleeding in camps, or pining in foreign prisons. They forget that not a field was marshalled on this side of the mountains, in which the men of Massachusetts did not play their part, as became their sires, and their blood fetched from mettle of war proof.' They battled and bled, wherever battle was fought or blood drawn.

Nor only by land. I ask the gentleman, Who fought your naval battles in the last war? Who led you on to victory after victory, on the ocean and the lakes? Whose was the triumphant prowess before which the Red Cross of England paled with unwonted shames? Were they not men of New England? Were these not foremost in those maritime encounters which humbled the pride and power of Great Britain?

I appeal to my colleague before me from our common

county of brave old Essex,-I appeal to my respected colleagues from the shores of the Old Colony. Was there a village or a hamlet on Massachusetts Bay, which did not gather its hardy seamen to man the gun-decks of your ships of war? Did they not rally to the battle, as men flock to a feast?

In conclusion, I beseech the House to pardon me, if I may have kindled, on this subject, into something of unseemly ardour. I cannot sit tamely by, in humble acquiescent silence, when reflections, which I know to be unjust, are cast on the faith and honour of Massachusetts.

Had I suffered them to pass without admonition, I should have deemed that the disembodied spirits of her departed children, from their ashes mingled with the dust of every stricken field of the revolution, from their bones mouldering to the consecrated earth of Bunker's Hill, of Saratoga, of Monmouth, would start up in visible shape before me, to shame on me, their recreant countryman.

cry

Sir, I have roamed through the world, to find hearts nowhere warmer than hers, soldiers nowhere braver, patriots nowhere purer, wives and mothers nowhere truer, maidens nowhere lovelier, green valleys and bright rivers nowhere greener or brighter; and I will not be silent, when I hear her patriotism or her truth questioned with so much as a whisper of detraction. Living, I will defend her; dying, I would pause in my last expiring breath, to utter a prayer of fond remembrance for my native New England.

EXERCISE XXXVII.-NOON.-Bryant.

[The beautiful and profound repose, described in the following lines, should be carefully preserved in a low, subdued, and slow utterance, with lengthened pauses. But while the stillness of the scene is maintained, in the gentleness of the tone, the voice should never flatten into insipidity, feebleness, or monotony.]

'Tis noon.—At noon the Hebrew bowed the knee,
And worshipped, while the husbandman withdrew
From the scorched field, and the wayfaring man
Grew faint, and turned aside by bubbling fount,
Or rested in the shadow of the palm.

I, too, amid the overflow of day
Behold the power which wields and cherishes
The frame of Nature. From this brow of rock,
That overlooks the Hudson's western marge,

I gaze on the long array of groves,

The piles and gulfs of verdure, drinking in
The grateful heats. They love the fiery sun;

Their broadening leaves glow glossier, and their sprays
Climb, as he looks upon them. In the midst,
The swelling river into his green gulfs,
Unshadowed, save by passive sails above,
Takes the redundant glory, and enjoys
The summer in his chilly bed. Coy flowers,
That would not open in the early light,

Push back their plaited sheaths. The rivulet's pool,
That darkly quivered, all the morning long,
In the cool shade, now glimmers in the sun,
And o'er its surface shoots, and shoots again,
The glittering dragon-fly, and deep within
Run the brown water-beetles to and fro.

A silence, the brief sabbath of an hour,-
Reigns o'er the fields; the labourer sits within
His dwelling; he has left his steers awhile,
Unyoked, to bite the herbage; and his dog
Sleeps stretched beside the door-stone, in the shade.
Now the gray marmot, with uplifted paws,
No more sits listening by his den, but steals
Abroad, in safety, to the clover field,

And crops its juicy blossoms. All the while,
A ceaseless murmur from the populous town,
Swells o'er these solitudes; a mingled sound
Of jarring wheels, and iron hoofs that clash
Upon the stony ways, and hammer clang,
And creak of engines lifting ponderous bulks,
And calls and cries, and tread of eager feet
Innumerable, hurrying to and fro.

Noon, in that mighty mart of nations, brings
No pause to toil and care; with early day
Began the tumult, and shall only cease

When midnight, hushing, one by one, the sounds
Of bustle, gathers the tired brood to rest.

Thus, in this feverish time, when love of gain
And luxury possess the hearts of men,
Thus is it with the noon of human life.
We in our fervid manhood, in our strength
Of reason, we, with hurry, noise and care,
Plan, toil, and strive, and pause not to refresh

Our spirits with the calm and beautiful
Of God's harmonious universe, that won
Our youthful wonder,-pause not to inquire
Why we are here, and what the reverence
Man owes to man, and what the mystery
That links us to the greater world, beside
Whose borders we but hover for a space.

EXERCISE XXXVIII.—SUCCESS IN LIFE.—Anonymous. [An example of serious, didactic style, and plain, practical discourse. The reading requires attention to clear, distinct enunciation, appropriate inflection, impressive emphasis, and deliberate pauses; the modulation is, properly, reserved. Passages of this description, though not so inviting to the fancy, as those of a livelier character, form the substance of instructive reading; and a perfect command of this style is, therefore, a matter of great moment.]

It is a source of regret, that many young men entertain the idea, that individual advancement in life, depends as much on what is commonly called good fortune, luck,chance, as on perseveringly following out correct preconceived principles of action. This mistake in worldly ethics has been fatal to the prosperity of thousands. It deters enthusiastic genius from soaring in her flights; it hinders ordinary and industrious minds from untiringly following out their well approved plans; it affords temptation to the undecided to relax in their efforts; and,-worst of all,it presents a plausible excuse for the inexcusable failures of the indolent and the vicious.

We will not venture unqualifiedly to assert, with Goëthe, that every man has his own fortune in his own hands, as the artist has a piece of rude matter, which he is to fashion to a certain shape;' but assuredly experience demonstrates, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that more,-very much more, of success or failure, depends on the individual himself, than the world at large appear willing to believe. And if we wish to turn that world to our purposes, how otherwise can we learn its tendencies, than by carefully studying its features, its modes of action, and its current thoughts?

To

Man can never be understood by being analyzed in the secluded cloister, or the world's tide be estimated by abstract calculations, deduced from the pages of philosophy. know the world, we must be of the world; there must genuine experience be gathered; and little can it be doubted that one year's active intercourse with 'the busy hum of men,'

will do more to cultivate those qualities which promote success in life, than a quarter of a century of abstract study and laborious thought. Well has the physically darkened, but mentally illuminated Milton written :

"Not to know at large of things remote
From use and subtle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom."

It should be ever borne in mind, that success in life is not regarded by the wise man as an end, but as a means of happiness. The greatest and most continued favours of fortune, cannot, in themselves, make an individual happy; nor can the deprivation of them render altogether miserable, the possessor of a clear conscience, and a well constituted mind. The sum of human enjoyment is not, cannot be, derivable from one source ;-many circumstances must contribute to it.

"One principal reason," remarks Bentham, "why our existence has so much less of happiness crowded into it, than is accessible to us, is, that we neglect to gather up those minute particles of pleasure, which every moment offers to our acceptance. In striving after a sum total, we forget the ciphers of which it is composed; struggling against inevitable results which we cannot control, too often man is heedless of those accessible pleasures whose amount is by no means inconsiderable when collected together. Stretching out his hand to catch the stars, he forgets the flowers at his feet, so beautiful, so fragrant, so various, so multitudinous."

In conclusion, another most fertile source of human disappointment, arises from having entertained views of life. altogether incompatible with the imperfect character of human nature, or the declared end of our probationary residence on this earthly planet. "What is it," inquires Goethe, "that keeps men in continual discontent and agitation? It is that they cannot make realities correspond with their conceptions; that enjoyment steals away from their hands; that the wished for comes too late, and nothing reached or acquired, produces, on the heart, the effect which their longing for it, at a distance, led them to anticipate."