Of poverty, that thus he may procure

His thousands, weary of penurious life,

A splendid opportunity to die?

Miscellaneous Examples of Definite Interrogatives.

Can gray hairs make folly venerable? and is not their period to be reserved for retirement and meditation?

Does he suppose me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light in Massachusetts, instead of South Carolina?

Has the gentleman discovered in former controversies with the gentleman from Missouri that he is overmatched by that senator; and does he hope for an easy victory over a more feeble adversary?

Is it then, for a sovereign state to fold her arms and stand still in submissive apathy, when the loud clamors of the people, whom Providence has committed to her charge, are ascending to heaven for justice?

Can all the illusions of ambition realized, can all the wealth of universal commerce, can all the achievements of successful heroism, or all the establishments of this world's wisdom, secure to empire the permanency of its possessions?

Have any alarms been occasioned by the emancipation of our Catholic brethren; has the bigoted malignity of any individual been crushed; or has the stability of the government, or that of the country been weakened; or is one million of subjects stronger than four millions?

Would it have been quite amiable in me, sir, to interrupt the excellent good feeling? must I not have been absolutely malicious, if I could have thrust myself forward to destroy sensations thus pleasing? was it not much better and kindlier, both to sleep upon them myself, and to allow others, also, the pleasure of sleeping upon them?

Has not Philip, contrary to all treaties, insulted you in Thrace: does he not at this instant, straiten and invade your confederates, whom you have solemnly sworn to protect: is he not an implacable enemy, a faithless ally, the usurper of provinces to which he has no title nor pretence, a stranger, a barbarian, a tyrant ?

Do you think, as honest men, anxious for the public tranquillity, conscious that there are wounds not yet completely cicatrized, that you ought to speak this language, at this time, to men who are too much disposed to think that in this very emancipation they have been saved from their own parliament by the humanity of their Sovereign?

Can a man, who by divine meditation, is admitted, as it were, into the conversation of this ineffable, incomprehensible Majesty,

think days, or years, or ages, too long for the continuance of so ravishing an honor; shall the trifling amusements, the palling pleasures, the silly business of the world, roll away our hours too swiftly from us; and shall the space of time seem sluggish to a mind exercised in studies so high, so important, and so glorious?

Must I wound his ear with the news of your revolt: must he hear from me, that neither the soldiers raised by himself, nor the veterans who fought under him, are willing to own his authority: must he be told that neither dismissions from the service, nor money lavishly granted, can appease the fury of ungrateful men: must I inform him that here centurions are murdered; that, in this camp, the tribunes are driven from their posts; that here the ambassadors of Rome are detained as prisoners; that the intrenchments present a scene of slaughter; that rivers are discolored with our blood; and that a Roman general leads a precarious life, at the mercy of men inflamed with an epidemic madness?

Do not you, and did not they, feel, that this life cannot be man's only abiding-place? that this spirit cannot pass, upon the hasty and uncertain waves of time, to an eternal nothing? that the restless, irrepressible, and unsatisfied leapings of the heart and the affections, after that which is higher and beyond all that surrounds us, demand that we should credit something which belongs not to the passing hour? that all the economy of nature, the beauty of the earth, the brilliancy of the stars, the glory of the lights of the day and the night, the forms of human strength and loveliness, cannot be taken from us and pass forever from our sight and our enjoyment? that there must be a continued, a prolonged existence, where the eye shall see, the ear hear, beauty fade not, the affections of the heart be not blasted, and the glorious panoply of nature be spread out forever?

Is the world to gaze in admiration on this fine spectacle of virtue; and are we to be told that the Being, who gave such faculties to one of his children, and provides the theatre for their exercise, that the Being, who called this moral scene into existence, and gave it all its beauties, that he is to be forgotten, and neglected as of no consequence ?

Are you Christians; and, by upholding duellists, will you deluge the land with blood, and fill it with widows and orphans?

Will you bestow your suffrage, when you know that by withnolding it, you may arrest this deadly evil?

And have not prison gloom,

And taunting foes, and threatened doom
Obscured thy courage yet?

Hear ye the sounds that the winds on their pinions

Exultingly roll from the shore to the sea,

With a voice that resounds through her boundless dominions?
Has earth a clod

Its maker meant not should be trod
By man, the image of his God,
Erect and free,

Unscourged by superstition's rod,
To bow the knee?

Is not the lovely woman

I met in the adjacent hall, who, with

An air and port and eye which would have better
Beseemed this palace in its brightest days,
Though in a garb adapted to its present
Abandonment, returned my salutation,—
Is not the same your spouse?

Art thou that traitor angel, art thou he
Who first broke peace in heaven, and faith, till then
Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms

Drew after him the third part of heaven's sons,
Conjured against the Highest; for which both thou
And they, outcast from God, are here condemned
To waste eternal days in woe and pain?

Is it a time to wrangle, when the props
And pillars of our planet seem to fail,
And Nature with a dim and sickly eye
To wait the close of all?

Canst thou, the tear just trembling on thy lids,
And while the dreadful risk foreseen forbids,
Free too, and under no constraining force,
Unless the sway of custom warp thy course,
Lay such a stake upon the losing side
Merely to gratify so blind a guide?

Shall yon exulting peak,
Whose glittering top is like a distant star,
Lie low beneath the boiling of the deep,
No more to have the morning sun break forth,
And scatter back the mists in floating folds
From its tremendous brow: no more to have
Day's broad orb drop behind its head at even;
Leaving it with a crown of many hues:
No more to be the beacon of the world

For angels to alight on, as the spot
Nearest the stars?

[Oh earth!] dost thou too sorrow for the past
Like man thy offspring; do I hear thee mourn
Thy childhood's unreturning hours, thy springs
Gone with their genial airs and melodies,
The gentle generations of thy flowers,
And thy majestic groves of olden time,
Perished with all their dwellers; dost thou wail
For that fair age of which the poets tell,
Ere the rude winds grew keen with frost, or fire
Fell with the rains, or spouted from the hills,
To blast thy greenness, while the virgin night
Was guiltless and salubrious as the day;
Or, haply, dost thou grieve for those that die :
For living things that trod awhile thy face,

The loved of thee and heaven?

2. INDEFINITE INTERROGATIVE SENTENCES.

1. Close.

RULE XIII. This interrogative should be delivered either with an uninterrupted downward slide, (see Plate, Fig. 4,) or with the downward slide at the beginning, passing into a level tone of voice through the middle, and terminating with the downward slide at the end: (see Plate, Fig. 16 :) when it has two or more members similarly constructed at the beginning, or either of these members has sub-members of similar construction, these members are successively delivered in the same manner, but in a slightly lower tone of voice. (See Chap. III. Modulation, Slides.)

Of the two methods spoken of in the beginning of the rule, the first is to be preferred if practicable; but when the sentence is too long for a continuous downward slide, the second must of necessity be adopted: even then the level should rather be comparative than absolute, and the voice perceptibly fall: just perceptibly, and no more.

Examples.

What citizen of our republic is not grateful in view of the contrast which our history presents!

Who ever sought honor, glory, praise or fame of any kind with the same ardor that we fly those most cruel of afflictions, ignominy, contumely and scorn!

How can it enter into the thoughts of man, that the soul, which

is capable of such immense perfections, and of receiving new im provements to all eternity, shall fall away into nothing almost as soon as it is created!

Where is the man who has not his wrong tendencies to lament ! Whence is it that veteran troops face an enemy with almost as little concern as they perform their exercise!

Which of those faculties or affections, which heaven can be supposed to gratify, have you cultivated and improved!

When was it that Rome attracted most strongly the admiration of mankind, and impressed the deepest sentiment of fear on the hearts of her enemies!

Who can say for how many centuries, safe in their undiscovered fastnesses, they had decked their war-chiefs with the feathers of the eagle's tail and listened to the counsels of their beloved old

men !

Why did they not, in the next breath, by way of crowning the climax of their vanity, bid the magnificent fire-ball to descend from its exalted and appropriate region, and perform its splendid tour along the surface of the earth!

What rank or condition of youth is there, that has not daily and hourly opportunities of laying in supplies of knowledge and virtue, that will in every station of life be equally serviceable and ornamental to themselves and beneficial to mankind!

What time can suffice for the contemplation and worship of that glorious, immortal and eternal Being, among the works of whose stupendous creation those numberless luminaries which we may here behold spangling all the sky, may possibly appear but as a few atoms, opposed to the whole earth which we inhabit !

What eye has been permitted to see, what ear to hear, what heart to conceive, those things which God has in preparation for them that love him!

Who that has a memory to look back over the past, who that has a mind to comprehend all the present, who that has an imagination to embody the dim visions of the future, will despair f

Who does not feel, what reflecting American does not acknowledge, the incalculable advantages derived to this land out of the deep foundations of civil, intellectual and moral truth, from which we have drawn in England!

Who that has a heart to love his family, his state, the nation, the living or the unborn world, and who that has a soul that ascends in thought to the throne of God, the mansions of angels, and the habitations of the just made perfect, will despair of the literature of his country!

Who can tell how much of his good or ill success in life, how much of the favor or disregard with which he himself has been