3. Writers should be careful not to use or, for nor 4. A sentence should neither close with of, nor on 5. When you came in, he went out.

EXERCISE I.

1. The character of Demosthenesa is vigor and austerity; that of Cicero, gentleness and insinuation. In the one, you find more manliness; in the other, more ornament. The one,

is more harsh, but more spirited and cogent; the other, more agreeable, but withal looser and weaker.

2. Europe was once a great field of battle, where the weak struggled for freedom, and the strong, for dominion. The king was without power, and the nobles, without principle. They were tyrants at home, and robbers, abroad.

3. Between fame and true honor, a distinction is to be made. The former is a blind and noisy applause; the latter, a more silent and natural homage. Fame floats on the breath; honor rests on the judgment. Fame may give praise, while it withholds esteem.

4. Delicacy and correctness, mutually imply each other. No taste can be exquisitely delicate, without being correct; nor can it be thoroughly correct, without being delicate. The power of delicacy is chiefly seen in discerning true merit; the power of correctness, in rejecting false pretensions. Delicacy leans more to feelings; correctness, more to reason and judgment. The former is more the gift of nature; the latter, more the product of culture and art. Among the ancient critics, Longinusc

Demosthenes, the most distinguished of the Grecian orators, born 381, B. C. Cicero, the greatest of Roman orators, and a consul of Rome. cLonginus, (Cas sius,) a Platonic philosopher, and rhetorician. He died A. D. 275.

possessed most delicacy; Aristotle,a most correctness Among the moderns, Addison b is a high example of the delicate; and had Dean Swift written on the subject, he would have giver A fair example of the correct.

5. One man relishes poetry most; another takes pleasure in nothing but history. One prefers comedy; another, tragedy. One admires the simple; another, the ornamental style. The young are amused with gay and sprightly compositions; the elderly are more entertained with those of a graver cast. Some nations delight in bold pictures of manners, and strong representations of passions; others incline to more correct and regular elegance, both in description and sentiment. French sermon is, for the most part, a warm, animated exhortation; an English one, is a piece of cool, instructive reasoning. The French preachers address themselves chiefly to the imagination and the passions; the English, almost solely to the understanding.

A

EXERCISE II.

HOMER AND VIRGIL. - BLAIR.d

1. Homer was the greater genius; Virgil,e the better artist: in one, we most admire the man; in the other, the work. Homer hurries us with commanding impetuosity; Virgil leads us with attractive majesty. Homer scatters with generous profusion; Virgil bestows with a careful magnificence.

a Aristotle, one of the most celebrated philosophers of Greece. He died 322, B. C. b Addison, (Joseph.) one of the finest writers of miscellany in England. He was born in 1672, and died in 1719. Dean Swift, born in Ireland, an eminent writer of great wit. d Blair, (Hugh,) a celebrated pulpit orator, a rhetorician and an author, born at Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1718, and died in 1800. Virgil, a very distinguished Roman poet, born at Andes, near Mantua, 70, B. C. The Æneid is his most celebrated work.

2. Upon the whole, as to the comparative merit of these two great princes of epic poetry, Homer and Virgil, the foriner must, undoubtedly, be admitted to be the greater genius; the latter, to be the more correct writer. Homer was an original in his art, and discovers both the beauties and the defects which are to be expected in an original author, more nature and ease, more sublimity and force, but greater irregularities and negligences in composition.

3. Virgil has, all along, kept his eye upon Homer: in many places, he has not so much imitated, as he has literally translated him. The description of the storm, for instance, in the first Æneid, and Æneas' a speech upon that occasion, are translations from the fifth book of the Odyssey; not to mention almost all the similes of Virgil, which are no other than copies of those of Homer.

4. The pre-eminence in invention, therefore, must, beyond doubt, be ascribed to Homer. As to the pre-eminence in judgment, though many critics are disposed to give it to Virgil, yet, in my opinion, it hangs doubtful. In Homer, we discern all the Greek vivacity; in Virgil, all the Roman stateliness. Homer's imagination is by much the most rich and copious; Virgil's, the most chaste and correct. The strength of the former lies in his power of warming the fancy; that of the latter, in his power of touching the heart.

5. Homer's style is more simple and animated; Virgil's, more elegant and uniform. The first has, on many occasions, a sublimity to which the latter never attains; but the latter, in return, never sinks below a certain degree of epic dignity, which cannot be so clearly pronounced of the former. Not, however, to detract from the admiration due to both these

& Æneas, the reputed son of Anchises and Venus: next to Hector, the bravest among the heroes of the Trojan war in 1184, B. C.

great poets, most of Homer's defects may reasonably be imputed, not to his genius, but to the manners of the age in which he lived; and, for the feeble passages of the Æneid, this excuse ought to be admitted, that it was left an unfinished work.

SECTION VII.

Emphatic Clause.

EMPHATIC CLAUSE signifies that several words in succession are emphatic, forming a clause or phrase.

EXAMPLE.

As to the present gentlemen-I cannot give them my confidence Pardon me, gentlemen,—confidence is a plant of slow growth.

Absolute Emphatic Clause.

NOTE. Clauses of this kind are subject to the same rules that have been given under Absolute Emphasis, when applied to single words.

EXAMPLES.

1. I warn you, do not DARE to lay your hand on the constitution. 2. Take courage; let your motto be, " Onward and upward, and true to the line."

3. The thunders of heaven are sometimes heard to roll in the voice of a united people.

4. American literature will find that her intellectual spirit is her tree of life; and the UNION OF THE STATES, her garden of Paradise.

QUESTIONS. What is emphatic clause? How should emphatic clauses be read?

no, no

thou wouldst not have me make a trial of my skill upon my child! Impossible! I do not guess your meaning.

2. We shall be forced, ultimately, to retract; let us retract while we CAN, and not, when we must. I say we must necessa

rily UNDO these violent, oppressive acts.

They must be repealed.

You WILL repeal them. I pledge myself for it; I stake my reputation on it. I will consent to be taken for an IDIOT, if they are not finally repealed.

3. Is this man possessed of talents adequate to the great occasion! Is this the man that made the earth to tremble? that shook kingdoms? He deserves to be treated with utter contempt.

4. You will again be restored to your firesides and homes; and your fellow-citizens, pointing you out, shall say, “There goes one who belonged to the army of Italy."

5. He is gone from painful labor to quiet rest; from unquiet desire to happy contentment; from sorrow to joy; and from transitory time to immortality.

6. I hope, sir, that gentlemen will deliberately survey the awful isthmus on which we stand. They may bear down all opposition; they may carry the measure triumphantly through the house; but if they do, sir, in my humble judgment, it will be a triumph of the military over the civil authority; a triumph over the powers of this house; a triumph over the constitution of the land; and, I pray, sir, most devoutly, that it may not prove, in its ultimate effects and consequences, a triumph over the liberties of the people.

7. Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But, if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier had spoken my lines. And do not saw the air too much with your hands, but