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2. But, I know not how, my soaring soul always looked upon posterity in such a light, as if she was not to enjoy real life, till she had left the body. And, indeed, were not our souls immortal, never would it happen, that the souls of the best of men, should always be the most passionate after an immortality of glory. You see, that the wiser a man is, he goes with a greater calmness out of life; and the more stupid he is, he is the more disturbed by death.

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3. Are you not, then, sensible that the mind, which has the most comprehensive and the most penetrating view, perceives that it is going to a better place, which the dull eye of more blunted reason cannot discern? For my own part, I am transported with the hope of again seeing our fathers, whom, in life, I honored and loved. And I pant to meet not only with those with whom I have been acquainted in life; but with those of whom I have heard, of whom I have read, and of whom I myself have written.

4. It would be, indeed, a masterly power that should hinder my journey to them, even though it should again grind me into youth. Nay, should a god give me the boon of going at this my age, into second childhood, and of puling in the cradle, yet would I reject it; for I have no notion of beginning anew the race I have finished, or of being set back to the starting post, just as I have run round the course. Can any man think that the pleasures overbalance the toils of living? But, supposing they do; yet still pleasures will cloy, and they must end. And yet I have no mind to complain, as many learned men have done, of life; neither do I repent that I have lived, because I have lived so as to answer life's purposes.

5. And I leave life, not as I would do my home, but as I would an inn; for nature gave it to us, not as our dwelling, but our lodging place. O, glorious day! when I shall arrive at that divine senate and society of departed spirits, when I shall bid adieu to the bustle and pollution of this world! Then I will repair, not only to the great men to whom I have alluded, but to my Cato, to my son, a man never exceeded by any, either in the goodness of his heart, or the excellency of his morals.

6. His body I burnt; these old hands performed for him the duties which he ought to have paid to me. Yet did not his soul forsake me! No; it is still looking back upon his father, and assuredly inhabits those mansions, to which he knew I

would follow him. If I seem to bear my loss with fortitude, it is not because I am indifferent about it, but because I comfort myself with thoughts, that we shall not long be separated from one another.

7. Scipio, it is by these means, that old age is lightsome to me; nay, it is so far from being a trouble, that it is a pleasure to me. As to my opinion, that the souls of men are immortal; if it is a mistake, it is a mistake of the most pleasing nature; and never while I breathe, shall I be willing to be cured of an imposition that gives me so much delight. But if, as some minute philosophers hold, all consciousness is at an end with life, I shall not be afraid of being laughed at by the dead philosophers.

8. But, suppossing we are not to be immortal, yet a man ought to wish to leave the world at a proper time. For nature, as she prescribes bounds to everything else, has likewise prescribed a period for our living. Now, old age, like the winding up of a play, winds up our life, the tiresomeness of which we ought to avoid, especially if we are satiated with living.

The belief in the immortality of the soul is of great antiquity. It obtained very generally among mankind, in the earliest ages of the world. Cicero was not the first promulgator of the doctrine. Socrates, who lived 400 years before his day, said: "I am in good hope, that there is something remaining for those that are dead; and that, as hath been said of old, it is much better for good than for bad men." ." Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch, represent it as an opinion "So old, that no man knows when it began." Cicero himself remarks, that "all the ancients believed in the immortality of the soul, who were the more worthy of credit, and the more likely to know the truth, the nearer they approached to the first rise of man, and to their divine original." Some of the ancients used at their funerals, the rosemary,-an evergreen which they put up over the grave, as an emblem of the soul's immortality. They had not those full assurances with which we are furnished, by the christian revelation; but many of them maintained the doctrine with arguments, that are abundantly sufficient, to preponderate the scale in its favor. Socrates, Plato, and Cicero, appear to have been almost certain of its truth. When Crito inquired of Socrates, how he would be buried,-he answered: "Just as you please, if you can but catch me, and if I do not give you the slip. Let it not be said at my funeral, Socrates is laid out,-Socrates is interred. You should say that my body is dead. That you may inter in the manner that's most conformable to our laws and customs." Our friend, our parent, our child, our companion is not dead, although the forms of popu lar speech thus announce their exit. They are "not lost but gone before." The above extract is from "Cicero's Treatise, concerning the moral duties of mankind, a future state, and the means of making old age happy." All who may read it, will say of Cicero, as Cato did of Plato: "Thou reasonest well." The last phrase in the first and second lines of the sixth

verse, is part of the inscriptions that were put upon monuments which parents erected for their children. How deeply interesting are the views which he took of the destiny that awaited him; and with what eloquence does he express them. The anticipation of a re-union with good men in eternity, inspired the great Roman orator with delight, and even transport. Nothing could reconcile him, nor can any thing reconcile us, to the loss of the society of relatives and friends, but the confident hope of meeting and recognizing again, in a future state "those whom we have loved and lost; and whom we shall still love and never lose them again." It is not all of life to live. If it were," what man would not wish, he had never been born?"

"If that high world which lies beyond
Our own, surviving love endears;
If there the cherished heart be fond,
The eye the same, except in tears;
How welcome those untrodden spheres !
How sweet this very hour to die!-
To soar from earth, and find all fears
Lost in thy light-eternity."

111. OF ELOCUTION.-Thelwal.

1. Elocution is the art or the act of so delivering our own thoughts and sentiments, or the thoughts and sentiments of others, as not only to convey to those around us, with precision, force, and harmony, the full purport and meaning of the words and sentences in which these thoughts are clothed; but also to excite and to impress upon their minds, the feelings, the imaginations, and the passions by which those thoughts are dictated, or with which they should naturally be accompanied.

2. Elocution, therefore, in its more ample and liberal signification, is not confined to the mere exercise of the organs of speech. It embraces the whole theory and practice of the exterior demonstration of the inward workings of the mind.

3. To concentrate what has been said by an allegorical recapitulation; eloquence may be considered as the soul, or animated principle of discourse; and is dependent on intellectual energy, and intellectual attainments. Elocution is the embodying form, or representative power; dependent on exte rior accomplishments, and on the cultivation of the organs. Oratory is the complicated and vital existence, resulting from the perfect harmony and combination of eloquence and elocution.

4. The vital existence, however, in its full perfection, is one of the choicest rarities of nature. The high and splendid accomplishments of oratory, even in the most favored age, and the most favored countries, have been attained by few; and many are the ages, and many are the countries, in which these accomplishments have never once appeared. Generations have succeeded to generations, and centuries have rolled after centuries, during which, the intellectual desert has not exhibited even one solitary specimen of the stately growth, and flourishing expansion of oratorical genius.

5. The rarity of this occurrence is, undoubtedly, in part, to be accounted for, from the difficulty of the attainment. The palm of oratorical perfection is only to be grasped-it is, in reality, only to be desired, by aspiring souls, and intellects of unusual energy.

6. It requires a persevering toil which few would be contented to encounter; a decisive intrepidity of character, and an untameableness of mental ambition, which very, very few can be expected to possess. It requires, also, conspicuous opportunities for cultivation and display, to which few can have the fortune to be born, and which fewer still will have the hardihood to endeavor to create.

In ancient times, elocution implied the matter of a discourse; but since the days of Sheridan and Walker, it has been generally and almost universally understood to mean, the manner of reading and speaking,-the tongue and not the pen. No modern author, excepting John Quincy Adams, has, to my knowledge, presented the subject in any other light. He maintains in his lectures on rhetoric and oratory, that elocution now as formerly, implies the diction, and not the delivery.

In Greece and Rome, teachers of oratory were called rhetoricians. They are now called elocutionists. In the days of Quintilian, Demosthenes, and Cicero, practitioners of law were called actors. That appellation is now given exclusively to theatrical performers; and those who devote themselves to the legal profession, are designated by the various appellations of lawyers, barristers, attorneys, counsellors, &c. The writer greatly admires Mr. Adams's distinguished abilities; but notwithstanding the great deference which he has for the opinions of that great and good man, he cannot help thinking, that we might with as much propriety, call gentlemen of the bar of our own times, actors, as to say that elocution, now, as anciently, means the matter, and not the manner. Aside from this objection, his lectures are very excellent, superior, in some respects, to those of Dr. Blair. In 1827, Dr. Rush's work, referred to in the introductory part of this book, appeared, a treatise that enters more largely into the principles, which pertain to the philosophy of the voice, than any other. Anterior to that publication, elocution was regarded only as an He erected its materials into a science. He classified and divided

art.

the elementary sounds of the English language,-making however but thirty-five. The author of this book believes there are forty, and only forty sounds, represented by the twenty-six letters of our alphabet, as single letters, or combinations of two letters.

In the year 1834, the author of this "Practical Elocution," commenced teaching phonology, reading, and oratory, in the state of New-York; and during the many years that have since elapsed, he has given hundreds of lectures and lessons, and had thousands of hearers and pupils. And he thinks that dividing letters into vowels and consonants, mutes and semivowels, diphthongs, diagraphs, triphthongs, labials, dentals, palatals, &c. as is done in some spelling books, works on Orthography," and “Grammars," affords the pupil no valuable knowledge. Such divisions and subdivisions, produce an effect upon the mind, similar to that occasioned by the contusion of tongues at Babel. Let the pupil bend all the energies of his voice, to a clear, distinct, and full developement of the forty elements, as the only correct basis of all good reading and speaking.

112. DIVINELY INSPIRED SPEAKERS; THEIR ELOCUTION.—~Rev. David Marks.

1. One of the remarkable characteristics of the Bible, is, its silence in relation to small or unimportant things. No matter how warmly men were attached to the trifles of those ages in which the scriptures were written, the sacred pages scarcely allude to them. And as we are accustomed to appeal to the "law and testimony," for authority in all important religious concerns, it may be well to reflect, that the Holy Spirit, who moved the sacred writers to record for us only the things of importance, has not passed the subject of elocution in silence. So far from this, several important specimens of the manner in which the prophets, apostles, and the blessed Savior spoke to men, suited to different circumstances and occasions, are given for our instruction and improvement. How then can a minister of the gospel excuse himself, in neglecting to search the scriptures for the purpose of understanding and reducing to practice, the unerring principles which the great God has taught, with regard to the manner of delivering his truth?

2. Moses, though free from the vanity of ostentation, considered the fact of his being "slow of speech," a sufficient fault to exclude him from the office of a public speaker; and, though the Lord reproved his unbelief in supposing that He who sent him, would not either remove or counterbalance this defect, yet He seems to have approved of Moses' opinion, that slow

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