And I have loved thee, Ocean! and my joy

Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a boy
I wantoned with thy breakers-they to me
Were a delight; and if the freshening sea
Made them a terror,- 'twas a pleasing fear;

For I was, as it were, a child of thee,
And trusted to thy billows far and near,
And laid my hand upon thy mane-as I do here.
"Apostrophe to the Ocean."-"Childe Harold."

BYRON.

Lesson talk. This selection should be read throughout in round, full-toned voice. Avoid mere loudness. Here and there the voice should swell in keeping with the thought. Try to picture in the imagination just what you are describing. Fit your voice to the thought. The general rate should be deliberate, but the pausing should be frequent and varied. Do not necessarily pause at the end of a line. Carefully analyze the meaning of each phrase, and pause according to the thought, not according to the lines nor even the grammatical punctuation. Look up in your dictionary the pronunciation of every doubtful word. Are you sure of these: Nature, ne'er, blue, ruin, depths, leviathans, Armada, Trafalgar, Assyria, realms, azure, torrid, wantoned, terror?

2. Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, O sovereign Blanc !
The Arvé and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,

An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

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 worship'd the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,

Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought.
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy:
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing, there,

As in her natural form, swell'd vast to Heaven!

Awake, my soul! Not only passive praise
Thou owest! Not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole Sovereign of the Vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
Who fill'd thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad! Who call'd you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns call'd you forth,

Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
For ever shatter'd and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded (and the silence came)
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain-
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopt at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?—
GOD! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!

GOD! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they, too, have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, GOD!

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm! Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the elements!

Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!

Thou, too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene, Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast— Thou, too, again, stupendous Mountain! thou That as I raise my head, awhile bow'd low In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow traveling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,

To rise before me-Rise, O ever rise!

Rise like a cloud of incense, from the Earth!
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises GOD.
"Hymn to Mount Blanc."

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

Lesson talk. This selection demands great variety in expression-changes of pitch, force and inflection. It offers a particularly good exercise for breaking up monotony. Note the musical effect in many of the sound-combinations -as in "some sweet beguiling melody," "voice of sweet song," "soft and soul-like sounds," etc.-and try to bring this musical effect out in your voice. Not only picture the various thoughts, but try to realize them at the moment of expression. The rate is slow and measured, but animated in feeling. Be sure of the pronunciation of these: Sovereign, Arvé, Arveiron, ebon, dilating, ecstasy, countenance, perpetual, precipitous, jagged, invulnerable, avalanche, stupendous, mountain, suffused, hierarch.

3. What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this expunging? Is it to appease the wrath, and to heal the wounded pride of the Chief Magistrate? If he really be the hero that his friends represent him, he must despise all mean condescension, all groveling sycophaney, all self-degradation and self-abasement. He would reject with scorn and contempt, as unworthy of his fame, your black scratches, and your baby lines in the fair records of his country. Black lines! Black lines! Sir, I hope the secretary of the Senate will preserve the pen with which he may inscribe them, and present it to that Senator of the majority whom he may select, as a proud trophy, to be

transmitted to his descendants. And hereafter, when we shall lose the forms of our free institutions-all that now remain to us-some future American monarch, in gratitude to those by whose means he has been enabled, upon the ruins of civil liberty, to erect a throne, and to commemorate especially this expunging resolution, may institute a new order of knighthood, and confer on it the appropriate name of The Knight of the Black Lines.

But why should I detain the Senate, or needlessly waste my breath in future exertions? The decree has gone forth. It is one of urgency, too. The deed is to be done that foul deed, like the blood-stained hands of the guilty Macbeth, all ocean's waters will never wash out. Proceed, then, to the noble work which lies before you, and like other skilful executioners, do it quickly. And when you have perpetrated it, go home to the people, and tell them what glorious honors you have achieved for our common country. Tell them that you have extinguished one of the brightest and purest lights that ever burned at the altar of civil liberty. Tell them that you have silenced one of the noblest batteries that ever thundered in defense of the Constitution, and bravely spiked the cannon. Tell them that henceforth, no matter what daring or outrageous act any President may perform, you have forever hermetically scaled the mouth of the Senate. Tell them that he may fearlessly assume what power he pleases, snatch from its lawful custody the public purse, command a military detachment to enter the hall of the Capitol, overawe Congress, trample down the Constitution, and raze every bulwark of freedom; but that the Senate must stand mute, in silent submission, and not dare to raise its opposing voice; that it must wait until a House of Representatives, humbled and subdued like itself, and a majority of it composed of the partizans of the President, shall prefer articles of impeachment. Tell them, finally, that you have restored the glorious doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance; and if the people do not pour out their indignation and imprecation, I have yet to learn the character of American freemen.

"The Expunging Resolution."

HENRY CLAY.