EXERCISE XXX.

PRIDE OF ANCESTRY.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

1. It is a noble faculty of our nature which enables us to connect our thoughts, our sympathies, and our happiness with what is distant in place or time; and, looking before and after to hold communion at once with our ancestors and our posterity. Human and mortal although we are, we are never theless not mere insulated beings, without relation to the past or the future. Neither the point of time nor the spot of earth in which we physically live, bounds our rational and intellectual enjoyments.

2. We live in the past by a knowledge of its history, and in the future by hope and anticipation. By ascending to an association with our ancestors; by contemplating their example and studying their character; by partaking their sentiments and imbibing their spirit; by accompanying them in their toils; by sympathizing in their sufferings, and rejoicing in their successes and their triumphs,-we mingle our own existence with theirs, and seem to belong to their age.

3. We become their contemporaries, live the lives which they lived, endure what they endured, and partake in the rewards which they enjoyed. And in like rnanner, by running along the line of future time, by contemplating the probable fortunes of those who are coming after us; by attempting something which may promote their happiness, and leave some not dishonorable memorial of ourselves for their regard when we shall sleep with the fathers, we protract our own earthly being, and seem to crowd whatever is future, as wel as all that is past, into the narrow compass of our earthly existence.

4. As it is not a vain and false, but an exalted and religious imagination, which leads us to raise our thoughts from the orb which, ainidst this universe of worlds, the Creator has given us to inhabit, and to send them with something of the feeling

which nature prompts, and teaches to be proper among children of the same Eternal Parent, to the contemplation of the myriads of fellow-beings with which his goodness has peopled the infinite of space, so neither is it false or vain to consider ourselves as interested or connected with our whole race through all time; allied to our ancestors; allied to our posterity; closely compacted on all sides with others; ourselves being but links in the great chain of being, which begins with the origin of our race, runs onward through its successive generations, binding together the past, the present, and the future, and terminating at last with the consummation of all things earthly, at the throne of God.

5. There may be, and there often is, indeed, a regard for ancestry, which nourishes only a weak pride; as there is also a care for posterity, which only disguises an habitual avarice, or hides the workings of a low and groveling vanity. But there is also a moral and philosophical respect for our ances tors, which elevates the character and improves the heart.

6. Next to the sense of religious duty and moral feeling, I hardly know what should bear with stronger obligation on a liberal and enlightened mind, than a consciousness of alliance with excellence which is departed; and a consciousness, too, that in its acts and conduct, and even in its sentiments, it may be actively operating on the happiness of those who come after it. Poetry is found to have few stronger conceptions, by which it would affect or overwhelm the mind, than those in which it presents the moving and speaking image of the departed dead to the senses of the living. This belongs to poetry, only because it is congenial to our nature.

7. Poetry is, in this respect, but the handmaid of true philosophy and morality. It deals with us as human beings, naturally reverencing those whose visible connection with this state of being is severed, and who may yet exercise we know not what sympathy with ourselves;-and when it carries us forward, also, and shows us the long-continued re sult of all the good we do in the prosperity of those who

follow us, till it bears us from ourselves, and absorbs us in an intense interest for what shall happen to the generations after us, it speaks only in the language of our nature, and affects us with sentiments which belong to us as human beings.

EXERCISE XXXI.

NATURE'S NOBILITY.

REV. GEORGE ASPINWALL

1. Room for a nobleman to pass!
In costly robes? in trappings gáy?
A fop tricked out before the glass?
No; clad in sober gray,
A nobleman in heart is he,
With mind for his nobility.

2. His crest, a soul in virtue strong,
His arms, a heart with candor bright,
Which gold bribes not to what is wrong,
Nor blinds to what is right;
The patent of his courtly race,-
Behold it in his open face!

3. He cringes not on those above,
Nor tramples on the worm below;
Misfortunes can not cool his love,
Or flattery make it grow :
Stanch to his friends in woe or weal,
As is the magnet to the steel.

4. He envies not the deepest sage;

He scoffs not at the meanest wight;
And all the war that he doth wage
Is in the cause of right;

For broad estate, and waving land,

He has the poor man's willing hand.

5. He is not rích, and yet, indeed,

Has wealth; nor poór, has stock, though small;
Nor rích, he gives so much to need;
Not poor, for on him fall

Such blessings from relieved distress,
To crown his path with happiness.

6. Room for a lord, ye truckling crew,

Who round earth's great ones fawn and whine!

Fall back! and gaze on something new;

A lord, at least, in mind,—

That bravest work in Nature's plan,
An UPRIGHT, Independent man.

QUESTIONS.-1. Why the rising inflection at the questions in the first stanza, and the falling at the answer? See Rule I., page 26.

What rule for the inflections as marked in the fifth stanza!
Rule IV., page 29.

2.

See

EXERCISE XXXII.

Be careful to avoid a singing tone in reading this piece; to which there is a strong tendency in unpracticed readers.

BENDEMEER'S* STREAM.

THOMAS MOORE

1. There's a bower of roses by Bendemeer's stream,

And the nightingale sings round it all the day long; In the time of my childhood, 'twas like a sweet dream, To sit in the roses and hear the bird's song.

2. That bower and its music I never forget,
But oft, when alone, in the bloom of the year,

* Name of a river near the ruins of Chi minar.

I think-Is the nightingale singing there yet?

Are the roses still bright by the calm Bendemeér?

3. No; the roses soon withered that hung o'er the wave,
But some blossoms were gathered while freshly they shone,
And a dew was distilled from their flowers, that gave
All the fragrance of summer, when summer was gone.

4. Thus memory draws from delight, ere it dies,
An essence that breathes of it many a year;
Thus bright to my soul, as 'twas then to my eyes,

Is that bower on the banks of the calm Bendemeer!

QUESTIONS.-1. What rule for the inflections, as marked in the 24 and 3d stanzas? 2. How many accented syllables are there in each line 3. How many unaccented syllables?

EXERCISE XXXIII.

ARACHNE AND MELISSA; OR, THE ART OF HAPPINESS.

HARRIS.

1. Almost every object that attracts our notice, has its bright and its dark side. He who habituates himself to look at the displeasing side, will sour his disposition, and consequently impair his happiness; while he who constantly beholds it on the bright side, insensibly meliorates his tem per, and in consequence of it improves his own happiness, and the happiness of all about him.

2. Arachne and Melissa are two friends. They are both of them women in years, and alike in birth, fòrtune, educátion, and accomplishments. They were originally alike in temper too; but, by different management, are grown the reverse of each other. Arachne has accustomed herself to look only on the dark side of every object. If a new poem makes its appearance with a thousand brilliancies, and but one or two