he may take breath, without which he cannot proceed far in delivery; and that he may, by these temporary rests, relieve the organs of speech, which otherwise would be soon tired by continued action: to the hearer, that the ear also may be relieved from the fatigue, which it would otherwise endure from a continuity of sound; and that the understanding may have sufficient time to mark the distinction of sentences, and their several members.

There are two kinds of pauses; first, emphatical pauses ; and next, such as mark the distinctions of sense. An emphatical pause is generally made, after something has been said of peculiar moment, and on which we desire to fix the hearer's attention. Sometimes, before such a thing is said, we usher it in with a pause of this nature. Such pauses have the same effect as a strong emphasis; and are subject to the same rules; especially to the caution, of not repeating them too frequently. For as they excite uncommon attention; and of course raise expectation, if the importance" of the matter be not fully answerable to such expectation, they occasion disappointment and disgust.

But the most frequent and the principal use of pauses, is, to mark the divisions of the sense, and at the same time to allow the reader to draw his breath; and the proper and delicate adjustment of such pauses, is one of the most nice and difficult articles of delivery. In all reading, the management of the breath requires a good deal of care, so as not to oblige us to divide words from one another, which have so intimate a connection, that they ought to be pronounced with the same breath, and without the least separation. Many a sentence is miserably mangled, and the force of the emphasis totally lost, by divisions being made in the wrong place. To avoid this, every one, while he is reading, should be very careful to provide a full supply of breath for what he is to utter. It is a great mistake to imagine, that the breath must be drawn only at the end of a period, when the voice is allowed to fall. It may easily be gathered at the intervals of the period, when the voice is suspended only for a moment; and, by this management, one may always have a sufficient stock for carrying on the longest sentence, without improper interruptions.

Pauses in reading must generally be formed upon the manner in which we utter ourselves in ordinary, sensible conversation; and not upon the stiff artificial manner, which

is acquired from reading books according to the common punctuation. It will by no means be sufficient to attend to the points used in printing; for these are far from marking all the pauses, which ought to be made in reading. A me. chanical attention to these resting places, has perhaps been one cause of monotony, by leading the reader to a similar tone at every stop, and a uniform cadence at every period. The primary use of points, is to assist the reader in discerning the grammatical construction; and it is only as a secondary object, that they regulate his pronunciation. On this head, the following direction may be of use: "Though in readings great attention should be paid to the stops, yet a greater should be given to the sense; and their correspondent times occasionally lengthened beyond what is usual in common speech."

To render pauses pleasing and expressive, they must not only be made in the right place, but also accompanied with a proper tone of voice, by which the nature of these pauses is intimated; much more than by the length of them, which can seldom be exactly measured. Sometimes it is only a slight and simple suspension of voice that is proper; some times a degree of cadence in the voice is required; and sometimes that peculiar tone and cadence which denote the sentence to be finished. In all these cases, we are to regu late ourselves by attending to the manner in which Nature teaches us to speak, when engaged in real and earnest dis. course with others. The following sentence exemplifies thesuspending and the closing pauses: "Hope, the balm of life, sooths us under every misfortune." The first and second pauses are accompanied by an inflection of voice, that gives the hearer an expectation of something further to complete the sense the inflection attending the third pause, signifies that the sense is completed.

The preceding example is an illustration of the suspend.. ing pause, in its simple state: the following instance exhi bits that pause with a degree of cadence in the voice content cannot remove the disquietudes of mankind, it will at least alleviate them."

"If

The suspending pause is often, in the same sentence, attended with both the rising and the falling inflection of voice; as will be seen in this example; "Moderate exercise', habitual temperance', strengthen the constitution.*

and

The rising inflection is denoted by the acute, the falls by the grave accent,

As the suspending pause may be thus attended with both the rising and the falling inflection, it is the same with regards to the closing pause: it admits of both. The falling inflec tion generally accompanies it; but it is not unfrequently connected with the rising inflection. Interrogative senten ces, for instance, are often terminated in this manner; as, "Am I ungratefui'?" "Is he in earnest"?"

But where a sentence is begun by an interrogative pronoun or adverb, it is commonly terminated by the falling inflection: as, "What has he gained by his folly?" "Who will assist him?" "Where is the messenger?" "When did he arrive?"

Where two questions are united in one sentence, and cons nected by the conjunction or the first takes the rising, the second the falling inflection: as, "Does his conduct sup port discipline', or destroy it!?"

The rising and falling inflections must not be confoundedwith emphasis. Though they may often coincide, they are, in their nature, perfectly distinct. Emphasis sometimescontrols those inflections.

The regular application of the rising and falling inflec trons, confers so much beauty on expression, and is so neces sary to be studied by the young reader, that we shall inserts a few more examples, to induce him to pay greater atten tion to the subject. In these instances, all the inflections are not marked. Such only are distinguished as are most striking, and will best serve to show the reader their utility and importance.

"Manufactures, trade, and agriculture, naturally employ more than nineteen parts in twenty, of the human species "

"He who resigns the world, has no temptation to envy', hatred, malice', anger'; but is in constant possession of a serene mind: he who follows the pleasures of it, which are in their very, nature disappointing, is in constant search of care', solitude, remorse', and confusion."

"To advise the ignoraut', relieve the needy', comfort the afflicted', are duties that fall in our way almost every day of our lives."

"Those evil spirits, who, by long.custom, have contracted in the body habits of lust and sensuality', malice' and revenge; an aversion to every thing that is good. just," and laudabl, are naturally seasoned and prepared for pain and misery,"

"I am persuaded, that neither death', nor life' ; nor angels', nor principalities', nor powers'; nor things present', nor things to come'; nor height, nor depth'; nor any oth er creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God"

The reader who would wish to see a minute and ingenious investigation of the nature of these inflections, and the rules by which they are governed, may consult the first volume of Walker's Elements of Elocution.

LESSON XXVIII.

MANNER OF READING VERSE.

WHEN we are reading verse, there is a peculiar

difficulty in making the pauses justly. The difficulty arises from the melody of verse, which dictates to the ear pauses or rests of its own; and to adjust and compound these prop erly with the pauses of the sense, so as neither to hurt the ear, nor offend the understanding, is so very nice a matter, that it is no wonder we so seldom meet with good readers of poetry. There are two kinds of pauses that belong to the melody of verse: one is, the pause at the end of the line; and the other, the casural pause in or near the middle of it. With regard to the pause at the end of the line, which marks that strain or verse to be finished, rhyme renders this always sensible; and in some measure compels us to observe it in our pronunciation. In respect to blank verse, we ought also to read it so as to make every line sensible to the ear: for, what is the use of melody, or for what end has the poet composed in verse, if, in reading his lines, we suppress his numbers, by omitting the final pause; and degrade them, by our pronunciation, into mere prose? At the same time that we attend to this pause, every appearance of sing song and tone must be carefully guarded against. The close of the line, where it makes no pause in the meaning, ought not to be marked by such a tone as is used in finishing a sentence; but, without either fall or elevation of the voice, it should be denoted only by such a slight suspension of sound, s may distinguish the passage from one line to another, thout injuring the meaning.

The

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The other kind of melodious pause, is that which falls somewhere about the middle of the verse, and divides it into two hemistics; a pause, not so great as that which belongs to the close of the line, but still sensible to an or dinary ear. This, which is called the cæsural pause, may fall, in English heroic verse, after the 4th, 5th, 6th, or 7thsyllables in the line. Where the verse is so constructed, that this caesural pause coincides with the slightest pause or division in the sense, the line can be read easily; as in the two first verses of Pope's Messiah :

"Ye nymphs of 'Solyma !" begin the song;

"To heav'nly themes", sublimer strains belong.' But if it should happen that words which have such a strict and intimate connection, as not to bear even a momentary separation, are divided from one another by this caesural pause, we then feel a sort of struggle between the sense and the sound, which renders it difficult to read such lines har moniously. The rule of proper pronunciation in such cases, is to regard only the pause which the sense forms; and to read the line accordingly. The neglect of the caesural pause may make the line sound somewhat unharmoniously; but: the effect would be much worse, if the sense were sacrificed to the sound. For instance, in the following line of Milton, "What in me is dark,

"Illumine; what is low, raise and support." The sense clearly dictates the pause after illumine, at the endTM of the third syllable, which, in reading, ought to be madeaccordingly; though, if the melody only were to be regarded, illumine should be connected with what follows, and the pause not made till the fourth or sixth syllable. Som in the following line of Pope's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,

"I sit, with sad civility I read."

The ear plainly points out the caesural pause as falling after sad, the fourth syllable. But it would be very bad reading. to make any pause there, so as to separate sad and civility. The sense admits of no other pause than after the second syllable sit, which therefore must be the only pause made in reading this part of the sentence.

There is another mode of dividing some verses, by intro ducing what may be called demi ca uras, which require very slight pauses; and which the reader should manage

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