and expressed with greater emphasis, than the words that immediately precede or those which follow them. In nearly all cases there should be a marked pause directly after the antithetic words, and on the remaining words in the passage the voice should take its ordinary, unimpassioned tone. EXAMPLES. 1. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, But not expressed in fancy-rich, not gaudy. 2. Many hope to atone for the evil they have done by the good they intend to do, and are only virtuous in the perspective. 3. I do not tremble when I meet The stoutest of my foes; But heaven defend me from the friend Who comes and never goes. 4. Go show your slaves how choleric You are, and bid your bondmen tremble. Must I observe you? Must I stand and crouch 5. The cottage was a thatched one, But all within that little cot Was wondrous neat and clean. 6. Though dark and despairing my sight I may seal, Yet man can not cover what God would reveal. 7. The cynic is one who never sees a good quality in a man, and never fails to see a bad one. He is the human owl, vigilant in darkness and blind to light, mousing for vermin and never seeing noble game. 8. I care not how high his station, how low his character, whether a privy councillor or a parasite, my answer would be a blow. 9. A liar begins by making a falsehood appear like truth, and ends by making a truth appear like falsehood. 10. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here. AMPLIFICATION AND SUSPENDED SENSE. Examples of suspended sense admit of various modes of delivery, according to the nature of the subject and other circumstances. Study the following examples carefully, and use your own discretion as to the style and manner of giving them. In sentences containing if, when, as, as when, so, etc., the sense is suspended until the close. EXAMPLES. 1. If we wish to be free; if we mean 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, we must fight! 2. If I see an uncommon endowment of heaven; if I perceive extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the south; and if, moved by local prejudice or gangrened by state jealousy, I get up here to abate a tithe of hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth. 3. The old man may sit and sing, I would I were a boy again, but he grows older while he sings. He may read of the elixir of youth, but he can not find it. He may sigh for the secrets of that alchemy which is able to make him young again, but sighing brings it not. He may gaze backward with an eye of longing upon the rosy schemes of earlier years, but as one who gazes upon his home from the deck of a departing ship, every moment carries him further and further away. Poor old man, he has little more to do than to die! 4. If the overthrow of our government is inevitable, let it be so! If civil war, which appears to so much threaten, must come, I can only say, let it be so! If blood be necessary to extinguish any fire I have enkindled, I shall not hesitate to contribute my own! And if I am doomed to fall, I shall at least have the painful consolation to fall as a fragment of the ruins of my country. 5. If virtue starves while vice is fed, What then? Is the reward of virtue bread? TRANSITION. Transition, in elocution, signifies a sudden change in the pitch, force, quality, quantity, or movement of the voice, as from a high to a low pitch, from a subdued to a very loud tone, from a slow to a very rapid rate of utterance, and the reverse of these. It refers, also, to the changes in style, as from the didactic to the declamatory; also to the expression of passion or emotion. Transition, when required by the subject or sentiment, if properly delivered, adds much to the pleasing variety and to the impressiveness of discourse; but when indulged in too much, is as unpleasant as monotony. A transition should be in every respect appropriate to the sentiment and the occasion. It should be given as if involuntarily, and not in accordance with any pre-arranged plan of delivery. Careful practice of the following examples, if persevered in, will soon enable the student to execute difficult transitions with skill and ease. First.-Repeat one, two, three, four, with gradually increasing force, and elevate the voice, as in the climax, up to the last number, which pronounce with great force, then pause for a moment and pronounce five, six, seven, eight, very slowly, in the lowest and deepest tone you can command. Increase the number of particulars as you acquire the power of sustaining the voice in a lower or a higher pitch. Second. Give the short and the open vowels, mingled in any order that you please, or a number of words or names, with increasing force and rapidity to the last one, then pause and let the voice fall as before advised, and give other sounds, words, or names very slowly with long quantity and in the lowest pitch of voice that you can reach. Third. Select for yourself suitable examples for practice. Also write out examples of transition of your own and exercise on them. EXAMPLES.. 1. Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! 2. I know not what course others may take; but, as for me, give me liberty or give me death. 3. The bones of her sons, fallen in the great struggle for independence, lie intermingled with the soil of every State, from New England to Georgia, and there they will lie forever. 4. I an itching palm? you know that you are Brutus that speak this, or, by the gods, this speech were else your last. 5. They fought-like brave men, long and well; They piled that ground with Moslem slain; They conquered, but Bozzaris fell, Bleeding at every vein. CLIMAX. A Climax is a series of particulars, members, or sentences in which each successive particular, member, or sentence rises in force and importance to the last. Its delivery requires an increase of voice, energy, animation, or passion corresponding with the degree and nature of the climax. As to the manner in which the earnestness, passion, or emotion of any sentence should be expressed, no rules or directions can be given by which the student will be enabled to render it correctly. From a teacher who is able to give vivid exemplification of the modulation and manner best suited to this or any other class of examples, the student can derive more advantage than from all the rules which have ever been written upon the subject. Every example must be studied until it is understood and appreciated. Then, and not till then, the pupil will have a standard in his own mind by which he can test his performance. EXAMPLES. 1. It is, in my opinion, the shortest, easiest, and the best way of doing it. 2. Eloquence must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. It comes, if it comes at all, like the bursting of a fountain from the earth, with spontaneous, native, original force. 3. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves our children will honor it; on its annual return they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of gratitude, of exultation, and of joy! 4. The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a gentleman and a man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and even life itself in the sacred cause of liberty. 5. A day, an hour of virtuous liberty, is worth a whole eternity of bondage. 6. Cry God for Harry, England, and Saint George! 7. A hungry, lean-faced villain, A mere anatomy, a mountebank, "Fortune-teller,” A thread-bare juggler, and a 8. As a peer of parliament, as speaker of this right honorable house, as keeper of the great seal, as guardian of His Majesty's conscience, as Lord High Chancellor of England, I am as much respected, nay, I will add as respectable, as the proudest peer I now look down upon. 9. Ask ye what ye should do? Would ye seek instruction? Ask ye yon conscious walls, Ask yonder senate house, whose stones are purple |