I did not say he struck me.
I did not say he struck me.
I did not say he struck me.

OTHER EXAMPLES FOR PRACTICE.

Dare you insinuate that I slandered her?

I shall not ride to town to-morrow.

This man might have been set at liberty, if he had not appealed unto Cæsar.

I thought you would not remember me.,

II. The more ordinary office of emphasis is, to give vivacity or point to a sentiment, and add force to an assertion or an argument:

Shall I reward his services with falsehood?
Shall I forget him who cannot forget mé?

A dày, an hour of virtuous liberty
Is worth a whole eternity of bondage.

- Had she been true,

If Heaven would make me such another world

Of one entire and perfect chrysolite,

I'd not exchange her for it.

Better is a dinner of herbs, where love is, than a stalled dæ and hatred therewith.

The poor beètle that we tread upon,

In corporal sufferance, feels a pang as great,
As when a giant dies.

I shall straight conduct you to a hill-side, where I will point you out the right path of a virtuous and noble education; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else so smooth, so gréen, so full of goodly prospéct, and melodious sounds on every síde, that the harp of Orpheus was not more charming.

'Tis not in folly not to scorn a foól,

And scarce in human wisdom to do mòre.

He that cannot bear a jest should never make one.

It is not so easy to hide one's faults as to mend them.
Cassius. I may do that I shall be sorry for.

Brutus. You have done that, you should be sorry for.

And this to mé, he said,

An 'twere not for thy hoary beard,
Such hand as Marmion's had not spared,
To cleave the Douglas' head.

The fault dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in oursèlves, that we are underlings.

Honorable age is not that which standeth in length of time; nor that which is measured by number of years: but wisdom is the gray hair unto mán, and an unspotted life is old age.

He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? he that formed the eye, shall not he sée ?

III. Emphasis sometimes becomes intensive, especially in passages which are cumulative, or rise into a climax. In such cases, the voice rises in pitch, increases in stress, and slides through a larger interval, at each successive stroke of emphasis :

What is time?

I asked a spirit lost; but on the shriek,

That pierced my soul! I shudder while I speak-
It cried, " a particle-a spèck-a MITE
Of endless years, duration infinite!"

Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,
Said then the lost archangel-THIS the seat,
That we must change for heav'n? This mournful gloom
For that celestial light?

But Paul said, They have beatèn us openly, uncondèmned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison; and now do they thrust us out privily? Nay, verily; but let them come themselves, and fetch us out.

"That God and nature have put into our hands!" I know not what ideas that lord may entertain of God, and

nature; but I know, that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! to attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature, to the massacre of the Indian scalping knife! to the cannibal savage, torturíng, murdering, roasting and eating, literally, my lords, EATING, the mangled victims of his barbarous battles!

IV. In reading examples like the following, besides the increased stress on the emphatic words, there should be a fuller swell, and a gradually rising pitch of the voice, on each'successive member, to the acme of the passage; when, by a gradual descent, it should return to its ordinary level: The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a rack behind.

In vain after these things may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free-if we wish to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges, for which we have been so long contending-if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained-we must-fight! I repeat it, sir, we MUSTFIGHT!! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts, is all that is left us.

What! must a man be converted, ere from the most elevated peak of some Alpine wilderness, he becomes capable of feeling the force and majesty of those great lineaments, which the hand of nature has thrown around him, in the varied forms of precipice and mountain, and the wave of mighty forests, and the rush of sounding waterfalls, and distant glimpses of human territory, and pinnacles of everlasting snow, and the sweep of that circling horizon, which folds, in its ample embrace, the whole of this noble amphitheatre?

There is in some instances a marked protraction of sound on the emphatic words:

Heaven and earth will witness,

If ROME-MUST--FALL, that we are innocent. WHY-WILL-ye-DIE, O house of Israel?

Important as emphasis is to spirited and graceful elocution, it must not be used too unsparingly, nor without just discrimination. The multiplication of emphatical words in a sentence, is "like crowding all the pages of a book with italic characters, which, as to the effect, is the same as using no such distinctions at all."

Nor should any word be emphasized, unless, by its significancy, and importance in the sentence, it be worthy of such distinction. Particles, and words of very common occurrence in language, must he spoken "trippingly on the tongue."

When, however, such particles and words become significant, they admit the emphatic stress :

Canst thou believe thy Prophet? or, what's more,
That Power Supreme that made thee-and thy Prophet?
In the corrupted currents of this world,

Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice.

LESSON VII.

Compass of Voice.

Ir has been said that "every person has three pitches of the voice:-the high, used in calling aloud to some person at a distance; the low, used in cadence, or the grave underkey; and the middle, or that which is employed in common

conversation." Strictly speaking, we have many pitches of voice, from the deep undertone to the alto or scream; and are prompted by a natural impulse, to employ one or another, according to the distance of our auditor, or the earnestness with which we address him. With more attention to this particular, than is ordinarily bestowed upon it, the compass of the voice, as well as its flexibility, might be greatly improved. One who has a practised musical ear, would possess great advantages for this purpose, over another. For cultivating the bottom, or bass of the voice, the sacred Scriptures, in their sublime descriptions of the ALMIGHTY, and of the awful scenes of the last judgment, afford the best passages for exercise. In reading such passages as the following, let the voice assume the deep reverential monotone :

And lo! there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. And the heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every freeman, hid themselves in the dens, and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things which