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follow him. But, at that very instant, a musket bullet from the ramparts pierced his groin with a wound which he immediately felt to be mortal. It was impossible to conceal this fatal event from the army. The soldiers soon missed their general whom they were accustomed to see in every time of danger: but, instead of being disheartened by the loss, it animated them with new valour. The name of Bourbon resounded along the line accompanied with the cry of blood and revenge. The veterans who defended the walls were soon overpowered by numbers; the unrestrained body of city recruits fled at the sight of danger; and the enemy with irresistible violence rushed into the town.

It is impossible to describe or even to imagine the misery and horror of that scene which followed. Whatever a city taken by storm can dread from military rage unrestrained by discipline-whatever excesses the ferocity of the Germans, the avarice of the Spaniards, or the licentiousness of the Italians could commit, these the wretched inhabitants were obliged to suffer. Churches, palaces, and the houses of private persons, were plundered without distinction. No age, or character, or sex, was excmpt from injury. Cardinals, nobles, priests, matrons, virgins, were all the prey of soldiers, and at the mercy of men deaf to the voice of humanity. Nor did these outrages cease, as is usual, in towns which are carried by assault, when the first fury of the storm was over: the imperialists kept possession of Rome several months; and, during all that time, the insolence and brutality of the soldiers scarce abated. Their booty in ready money amounted to a million of ducats: what they raised by ransoms and exactions far exceeded that sum. Rome, though taken several different times by the northern nations, who overran the empire in the fifth and sixth centuries, was never treated with so much cruelty by the barbarous and heathen Huns, Vandals, and Goths, as now by the bigotted subjects of a Catholic monarch."

Robertson's History of Charles 5th.

Here all is activity, energy, and animation. The mind of the reader is hurried into the very scene of action; and the emotion excited by so vivid a description, of course requires a corresponding expression of tone, and vivacity of manner, which in reading the former account would appear bombastic and absurd. The elevation of language is admirably accommodated to the solemnity and importance of the event, and the harmonious construction of the sentences kindles a glow of enthusiasm that a reader of sensibility will instinctively impart to his enunciation.

In the reading of narrative Prose, what is deficient in the jingle of rhyme, or in the prosodiacal correctness of metrical har

mony, is compensated by the freedom which is given to expression, and the force which it derives from the natural and colloquial construction of language.

The spirit therefore, and energy of expression in a reader, must be accommodated to the style of the author, and the importance of the incidents recorded.

With respect to the reading and recitation of Dialogue, the field of action is as unbounded as the diversity of the human character, and the versatility of the human mind. It involves every possible gradation of intellect, from the uncouth and unlet. tered peasant, to the urbane, and polished courtier and the refined and dignified gentleman. A correct reader of Dialogue will regulate his emphasis and the tones of his voice by the nature of the subject and the character of the persons who are speaking; hence he will have a different modulation of voice for every speaker. To read a dialogue well, he must feel himself to be, and assume the peculiar expression of every speaker who is introduced, whether of the serious or comic cast: otherwise, he will never attract attention, or excite emotion in the hearer. Hence we see the wonderful power of a Garrick, a Siddons, a Foote, and a Kemble, in commanding the passions and feelings of an audience composed of every description of age and character: their astonishing versatility and force of expression arising from an exquisite sensibility, which enabled them to adopt the sentiments as their own, and consequently to give them that pathos and energy which nature invariably dictates to those whom she endows with the capacity of fully conceiving and communicating them. Such characters however are very sparsely scattered in a community; of course we meet with few elegant readers, and still fewer accomplished and commanding orators, in the senate or the pulpit, at the bar, or on the stage.

The dialogues in genteel comedy, as they exhibit polite conversation, or familiar and domestic scenes, require that calmness and native ease both of manner and of voice, which is suited to the peculiarity of existing character. The following dialogue between two well bred gentlemen is a specimen of polite conversation, which, as it awakens no passion, should be read with

a sedate countenance, in the common colloquial key, and with no other variation of tone than is sufficient to mark the different speakers.

Belcour and Stockwell.

Stock. Mr. Belcour, I am rojoiced to see you; you are welcome to England.

Bel. I thank you heartily, good Mr. Stockwell; you and I have long conversed at a distance, now we are met; and the pleasure this meeting gives me, amply compensates for the perils I have run through in accomplishing it.

Stock. What perils, Mr. Belcour? I could not have thought you would have met with a bad passage at this time o'year.

Bel. Nor did we: courier like, we came posting to your shores upon the pinions of the swiftest gales that ever blew; it is upon English ground all my difficulties have risen; it is the passage from the river side I complain of.

Stock. Ay, indeed! what obstructions can you have met between this and the river side?

Bel. Innumerable. Your town is as full of defiles as the Island of Corsica, ,and I believe they are as obstinately defended; so much hurry, bustle, and confusion on your quays; so many sugar casks, porter butts, and common council men, in your streets, that unless a man marched with artillery in his front, it is more than the labour of a Hercules can effect to make any tolerable way through your town.

Stock. I am sorry you have been so incommoded.

Bel. Why indeed it was all my own fault, accustomed to a land of slaves, and out of patience with the whole tribe of custom-house extortioners, boatmen, tide-waiters, and water bailiffs, that beset me on all sides, worse than a swarm of musquittoes, I proceeded a little too roughly to brush them away with my rattan; the sturdy rogues took this in dudgeon, and beginning to rebel, the mob took different sides, and a furious scuffle ensued, in the course of which my person and apparel suffered so much that I was obliged to step into the first tavern to refit, before I could make my approaches in any decent trim.

Stock. Well, Mr. Belcour, it is a rough sample you have had of my countrymen's spirit; but I trust you will not think the worse of them for it.

Bel. Not at all; not at all; I like them the better. Were I only a visitor I might perhaps, wish them a little more tractable; but as a fellow subject and a sharer in their freedom, I applaud their spirit, tho' I feel the effects of it in every bone of my skin.-Well Mr. Stockwell, for the first time in my life, here am I in England, at the fountain head of pleasure, in the land of beauty, of arts and elegancies. My happy stars have given me a good estate, and the con spiring winds have blown me hither to spend it.

Stock. To use it, not to waste it, I should hope; to treat it Mr Belcour, not as a vassal over whom you have a despotic power, but as a subject which you are bound to govern with a temperate and restrained authority.

Bel. True, Sir; most truly said; mine's a commission, not a right. While I have hands to hold, I will hold them open to all mankind. But, sir, my passions are my masters, they take me where they will; and oftentimes they leave to reason and virtue nothing but my wishes and my sighs.

Stock. Come, come, the man who can accuse corrects himself.

Bel. Ah! that is an office I am weary of, I wish a friend would take it up, I would to heaven you had leisure for the employ! but did you drive a trade to the four corners of the world, you would not find the task so toilsome as to keep me free from faults.

Stock. Well I am not discouraged: this candour tells me I should not have the fault of self-conceit to combat; that, at least, is not among the number. Bel. No. If I knew that man on earth who thought more humbly of me than I do of myself, I would take up his opinion and forego my own.

Stock. And were I to chuse a pupil it should be one of your complexion: so if you will come along with me we will agree upon your admission, and enter upon a course of lectures directly.

Bel. With all my heart.

WEST INDIAN.

Compare this, with the impassioned addresses in the following dialogue; and the necessary diversity of tone, of countenance, and of gesture, will be strikingly evident; more especially if you attempt to read it in the same dispassionate manner as the dialogue between Belcour and Stockwell should either be read or recited.

In Congreve's Mourning Bride, the dialogue between Almeria and Leonora in the aisle of the temple, exhibits a striking contrast to the calm colloquy between Belcour and Stockwell: 'tis impossible to read it without experiencing the mingled emotions of terror, grief, astonishment, and almost frantic joy, and if pronounced with appropriate expression, cannot fail to excite those passions in the breasts of the hearers. Of the discription of the temple, Dr. Johnson used to say, that it was the finest poetical passage he had ever read, and that he recollected none in Shakspeare like it.

ACT 2, SCENE 3.

Almeria and Leonora.

Alm. It was a fanci'd noise, for all is hush'd.

Leo. It bore the accent of a human voice.

Alm. It was thy fear or else some transient wind

Whistling thro' hollows of this vaulted aisle. We'll listen—

Leo. Hark!

Alm. No, all is hush'd, and still as death-'tis dreadful!

How reverend is the face of this tall pile,

Whose antient pillars rear their marble heads,
To bear aloft its arch'd and pond'rous roof,
By its own weight made steadfast and immovable,
Looking tranquillity. It strikes an awe
And terror on my aking sight; the tombs
And monumental caves of death look cold,
And shoot a chillness to my tremb'ling heart.
Give me thy hand, and let me hear thy voice;
Nay, quickly speak to me, and let me hear
Thy voice;-my own affrights me with its echoes.
Leo. Let us return, the horror of this place

And silence, will increase your melancholy.

Alm. It may my fears, but cannot add to that.

No. I will on: shew me Anselmo's tomb.

Lead me o'er bones and skulls and mould'ring earth

Of human bodies; for I'll mix with them,

Or wind me in the shroud of some pale corse

Yet green in earth, rather than be the bride
Of Garcia's more detested bed: that thought
Exerts my spirit, and my present fears
Are lost in dread of greater ill. Then shew me,
Lead me, for I'm bolder grown; lead on
Where I may kneel, and pay my vows again
To him, to heav'n, and my Alphonso's soul,
Leo. Behold the sacred vault, within whose womb
The poor remains of good Anselmo rest,
Yct fresh and unconsumed by time or worms.
What do I see? O heav'n! either my eyes
Are false or still the marble door remains

Unclos'd; the iron grates that lead to death
Beneath, are still wide stretch'd upon their hinge,
And staring on us with unfolded leaves.

Alm. Sure 'tis the friendly yawn of death for me;
And that dumb mouth, significant in shew,
Invites me to the bed, where I alone

Shall rest; shew me the grave, where nature weary
And long oppressed with woes and bending cares,

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