225. Let those deplore their doom whose hopes still grovel in this dark sojourn: but lofty souls who look beyond the tomb, can smile at fate and wonder why they

mourn.

226. If for my faded brow thy hand prepare some future wreath, let me the gift resign: transfer the rosy garland: let it bloom around the temples of that friend beloved, on whose maternal bosom, even now, I lay my aching head.

227. We do not understand these things: we are told that your religion was given to your forefathers, and has been handed down from father to son. We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers, and has been handed down to us: it teaches us to be thankful for all favors received, to love each other, and to be united : we never quarrel about religion.

LESSON XV.

THE COLON, continued.

In this Lesson the passages ending with a colon are to be read with the voice suspended. (See Lesson 9th.)

228. Do not flatter yourselves with the hope of perfect happiness there is no such thing in the world.

229. He was often heard to say: I have done with the world; and I am willing to leave it.

229. Be not a niggard of your speech: how goes it? 229. Those will be bad days to acquire and cultivate the spirit of devotion: But the spirit of devotion acquired and cultivated and confirmed before, will convert those bad days into good ones.

230. But, when old age has on your temples shed her silver frost, there's no returning sun: swift flies our summer, swift our autumn's fled, when youth and spring and golden joys are gone.

231. A divine legislator uttering his voice from heaven; an almighty governor, stretching forth his arm to punish or reward; informing us of perpetual rest prepared hereafter for the righteous, and of indignation and wrath

awaiting the wicked: these are the considerations which overawe the world, which support integrity, and check guilt.

232. Not to the rosy maid, whom former hours beheld me fondly covet, tune I now the melancholy lyre but 'tis to thee O sickness! 'tis to thee I wake the silent strings.

233. A boy at school is by no means at liberty to read what books he pleases: he must give attention to those which contain his lessons; so that when he is called upon to recite, he may be ready, fluent and accurate in repeating the portion assigned him.

233. A poet is by no means at liberty to invent what system of the marvellous he pleases he must avail himself either of the religious faith, or the superstitious credulity of the country wherein he lives; so as to give an air of probability to events which are most contrary to the common course of nature.

234. It is not only in the school-room, that attention should be given to your books: there is a place, one not like a school-room; I mean your own chamber where you can find many opportunities of acquiring knowledge.

234. It is not only in the sacred fane that homage should be paid to the Most High: there is a temple, one not made with hands; the vaulted firmament: far in the woods, almost beyond the sound of city-chime, at intervals. heard through the breezeless air.

235. As we perceive the shadow to have moved along the dial, but did not perceive its moving; and it appears that the grass has grown, though nobody ever saw it grow so the advances we make in knowledge, as they consist of such minute steps, are perceivable only by the distance gone over.

236. When the proud steed shall know why man restrains his fiery course, or drives him o'er the plains; when the dull ox, why now he breaks the clod, is now a victim, and now Egypt's God: then shall man's pride and dullness comprehend his actions', passions', beings' use

and end.

237. Jehovah, God of Hosts, hath sworn, saying: surely as I have devised so shall it be; and as I have purposed so shall it stand.

238. That day he wore a riding coat, but not a whit the warmer he another was on Thursday brought, and ere the Sabbath he had three.

239. George, you must not laugh at me; I will not bear it.

You forget what you are about when you ridicule me: I know more than you do about the lessons.

239. Brutus, bay not me: I'll not endure it. You forget yourself, to hedge me in: I am a soldier, older in practice, abler than yourself to make conditions.

240. I never heard a word about it before, said George, yesterday who told you about it, Charles?

:

240. I never heard one word of it before, said my uncle Toby, hastily: how came he there, Trim?

241. Thou shalt pronounce this parable upon the King of Babylon; and shalt say: How hath the oppressor ceased.

LESSON XVI.

THE PARENTHESIS, CROTCHETS, AND BRACKETS.

A Parenthesis is a sentence, or part of a sentence enclosed between two curved lines like these ()

The curved lines in which the parenthesis is enclosed are called Crotchets.

is

The parenthesis, with the crotchets which enclose it, generally inserted between the words of another sentence; and may be omitted without injuring the sense.

The parenthesis should generally be read in a quicker and lower tone of voice than the other parts of the sentence in which it stands.

Sometimes a sentence is enclosed in marks like these [ ] which are called Brackets.*

*

Although the Crotchet and the Bracket are sometimes indiscriminately used, the following difference in their use may generally be noticed: Crotchets are used to enclose a sentence, or part of a sentence, which is inserted between the parts of another sentence: Brackets are generally used to separate two subjects, or to enclose an explanation, note, or observation, standing by itself. When a parenthesis occurs within another parenthesis, Brackets enclose the former, and Crotchets enclose the latter. See No. 263.

Sentences which are included within Brackets, should generally be read like a parenthesis, in a quicker and lower tone of voice.

EXAMPLES.

242. I asked my eldest son (a boy who never was guilty of a falsehood) to give me a correct account of the matter. 243. The master told me that the lesson (which was a very difficult one) was recited correctly by every pupil in the class.

244. When they were both turned of forty (an age in which, according to McCowley, there is no dallying with life) they determined to retire, and pass the remainder of their days in the country.

245. Notwithstanding all this care of Cicero, history informs us, that Marcus proved a mere blockhead; and that nature (who, it seems, was even with the son for her prodigality to the father) rendered him incapable of improving, by all the rules of eloquence, the precepts of philosophy, his own endeavors, and the most refined conversation in Athens.

246. Natural historians observe (for whilst I am in the country I must fetch my allusions from thence) that only the male birds have voices; that their songs begin a little before breeding-time, and end a little after.

247. Dr. Clark has observed, that Homer is more perspicuous than any other author; but if he is so (which yet may be questioned) the perspicuity arises from his subject, and not from the language itself in which he writes.

248. The many letters which come to me from persons of the best sense of both sexes (for I may pronounce their characters from their way of writing) do not a little encourage me in the prosecution of this my undertaking.

249. It is this sense which furnishes the imagination with its ideas; so that by the pleasures of the imagination, or fancy (which I shall use promiscuously) I here mean such as arise from visible objects.

250. The stomach (cramm'd from every dish, a tomb of boiled and roast, and flesh and fish, where bile, and wind, and phlegm, and acid jar, and all the man is

one intestine war) remembers oft the school-boy's simple fare, the temperate sleeps, and spirits light as air.

251. William Penn was distinguished from his companions by wearing a blue sash of silk network, (which it seems is still preserved by Mr. Kett of Seethinghall, near Norwich) and by having in his hand a roll of parchment, on which was engrossed the confirmation of the treaty of purchase and amity.

252. Again, would your worship a moment suppose, ('tis a case that has happened and may be again) that the visage or countenance had not a nose, pray who would, or who could, wear spectacles then?

253. Upon this the dial-plate (if we may credit the fable) changed countenance with alarm.

254. To speak of nothing else, the arrival of the English in her father's dominions must have appeared (as indeed it turned out to be) a most portentous phenome

non.

255. Surely, in this age of invention something may be struck out to obviate the necessity (if such necessity exists) of so tasking the human intellect.

256. I compassionate the unfortunates now (at this very moment, perhaps,) screwed up perpendicularly in the seat of torture, having in the right hand a fresh nibbed patent pen, dipped ever and anon into the ink bottle, as if to hook up ideas, and under the outspread palm of the left hand a fair sheet of best Bath post, (ready to receive thoughts yet unhatched,) on which their eyes are rivetted with a stare of disconsolate perplexity, infinitely touching to a feeling mind.

257. Oh the unspeakable relief (could such a machine be invented) of having only to grind an answer to one of one's dear five hundred friends.

258. Have I not groaned under similar horrors, from the hour when I was first shut up (under lock and key, I believe,) to indite a dutiful epistle to an honored aunt?

259. To such unhappy persons, then, I would fain offer a few hints, (the fruit of long experience) which may prove serviceable in the hour of emergency.

260. If eger you should come to Modena, (where among other relics you may see Tassoni's bucket) stop at a palace near the Beggio gate, dwelt in of old by one of the Donati.