two or three thousand, in the face of a mountain eleven thousand feet high, and tumbling, crashing, thundering down, with a continuous din of far greater sublimity than the sound of the grandest cataract. 10. The roar of the falling mass begins to be heard the moment it is loosened from the mountain; it pours on with the sound of a vast body of rushing water; then comes the first great concussion, a booming crash of thunders, breaking on the still air in mid-heaven; your breath is suspended, as you listen and look; the mighty glittering mass shoots headlong over the main precipice, and the fall is so great, that it produces to the eye that impression of dread majestic slowness, of which I have spoken, though it is doubtless more rapid than Niagara. But, if you should see the cataract of Niagara itself coming down five thousand feet above you in the air, there would be the same impression. The image remains in the mind, and can never fade from it; it is as if you had seen an alabaster cataract from heaven. 11. The sound is far more sublime than that of Niagara, bēcause of the preceding stillness in those Alpine solitudes. In the midst of such silence and solemnity, from out the bosom of those glorious, glittering forms of nature, comes that rushing, crashing, thunder-burst of sound! If it were not that your soul, through the eye, is as filled and fixed with the sublimity of the vision, as through the sense of hearing with that of the audible report, methinks you would wish to bury your face in your hands, and fall prostrate, as at the voice of the Eternal. LESSON LVI. DIRECTION.-In reading or speaking the following sublime composition, the elocution should be slow, full, and distinct, expressing emotions of sublimity and reverence. THE MOUNTAIN HYMN. COLERIDGE 1. (%) O DREAD and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee, Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought;-entranced in prayer, I worshiped the INVISIBLE alone. Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody, So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, As in her natural form, swelled vast to heaven! Voice of sweet song! ( awake, my heart, awake! 3. Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the vale! Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink! Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,- And who commanded, and the silence came,- 5. Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven 6. Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Utter forth-"GOD!" and fill the hills with praise ! 7. Thou, too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose brow the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, LESSON LVII. EXPLANATORY NOTE.-1. WILLIAM TELL, a peasant of Switzerland, is celebrated for his resistance to the tyranny of the Austrian Governor, GESLER, and as one of the heroes who restored liberty to his oppressed country in 1307. For want of obedience to the mandate of Gesler, in bowing to his hat, Tell was condemned to shoot an apple from the head of his own son. He succeeded without harming his boy, but confessed that the second arrow which he had concealed, was intended, in case he failed, to shoot the tyrant himself. TELL ON THE ALPS. 1. ONCE more I breathe the mountain air; once more 2. I tread my own free hills! My lofty soul Throws all its fetters off; in its proud flight, 'Tis like the new-fledged eaglet, whose strong wing The tyrant passed in safety. God of Heaven! O, liberty! Thou choicest gift of Heaven, and wanting which Thy native home? Must the feet of slaves Of these dark caves, and bid the wild flowers bloom These beetling cliffs. Some hearts still beat for thee, Ay, and shall live, when even the very name A Upon the mist that wreathes yon mountain's brow, O! is not this a presage of the dawn Of freedom o'er the world? Hear me, then, bright Oh! with what pride I used To walk these hills, and look up to my God, Its very storms! Yes, I have sat and eyed 5. Ye know the jutting cliff, round which a track And I have thought of other lands, where storms Have wished me there-the thought that mine was free, And cried in thralldom to that furious wind, Blow on! THIS IS THE LAND OF LIBERTY! KNOWLES |