This cottage is a wretched place, Ella. I think we

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might find something better for you.

Let him ask reason to point out a means of recon

ciliation and a refuge of safety. Reason hesitates as she replies, "The Deity may, perhaps, accept our sup

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plications and grant forgiveness." But the Scriptures

leave us not to the sad uncertainty of conjecture; they

speak the language of clear assurance.

Cromwell. I'm glad your Grace has made that

right use of it.

Wolsey. I hope I have.

One day he lighter seemed, and they forgot The care, the dread, the anguish of their lot; They spoke with cheerfulness, and seemed to think, Yet said not so-Perhaps he will not sink.-Crabbe. Go to now, ye that 66 say, To-day or to-morrow we

will go into such a city, and continue there a year,

and buy and sell and get gain;" whereas ye know not

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what shall be on the morrow.*-—James iv. 13, 14.

V. Supplication.

* In this and the preceding example there is a double reason for the rising inflection, since the clauses are nega

tive.

EXAMPLES.

O gently on thy suppliant's head,

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand.-Gray

Yet look upon me with an eye of mercy.

Venice Preserved.

Ah treat them kindly! Rude as thou appear'st,
Yet shew that thou hast mercy.-Cowper.

VI. The plaintive and poetical.

This has been noticed before when treating of the series, p. 59.

EXAMPLES.

"How sad he looked," said Francesca, "before

he saw us just now! He will never get over his fa

ther's death." "Poor youth! the cares of the world have come early upon him," observed her father.

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I will suppose his summons from life to arrive,

while it has still all its attractions; while nature within is able to meet the smile, and to join the shouting of nature without; while the senses are susceptible of vivid impressions from surrounding things. Death, in such circumstances, must be confessed to be a formidable event. To quit this ground upon which we have stood so long; upon which we have seen so

often and with such delight the flowers appear, the hills rejoice, and the valleys laugh and sing; to take an eternal leave of the light, so dear and so delicious to our eyes; to bid a last adieu to that beautiful sun,

which has been so long beheld with rapture; and to ノ drop our share in all that is done under it; to have

knowledge of this system, by which we are surrounded, ノ shut out at once at every entrance; to suffer what, when confined to one, is sufficiently afflicting, the de

privation of all our senses; to say to all the world, to I+ all mankind, and all terrestrial things, what it affects us with melancholy to say to almost any single person, to almost any single thing, Farewell, for ever! there is in this what it sinks the spirit of a man to think of.— Fawcett's Sermons, Vol. I. p. 105.

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From what has been said in this and the preceding chapter, it appears that Emphasis and Inflection are a kind of supplement to written language. Since vivacity and force depend greatly on brevity, and brevity naturally borders on obscurity, in order to preserve the meaning without losing the force, these two accidents of speech

For the sake of melody and variety.
The emphasis of sense.

interpose, and, as it were, supply the ellipsis in the written words by a stress and an inflection of voice, which imply what belongs to the sense, but what is not sufficiently obvious without oral utterance. Hence we may conclude that language is never perfect till it is delivered: a just emphasis and inflection bring out its latent and elliptical senses, without clogging it with repetitions which would retard its communication and enfeeble its strength.

RULE I. The first and most general rule which applies to the reading of verse, is, that the necessary inflections must be the same in it as in prose, though they must be less strongly marked. If, therefore, we are at a loss for the true inflection of voice on any word in poetry, we should reduce it to earnest conversation, and pronounce it in the most familiar and prosaic manner, and we shall, for the most part, fall into those very inflections, which we ought to adopt in reading

verse.

As one application of this rule, it may be observed that, wherever any member of a sentence would necessarily have the falling inflection in prose, it ought to have the same inflection in poetry; for, although we frequently suspend the voice by the rising inflection in verse, where, if the composition were prose, we should adopt the falling, yet in those parts where emphasis, contrast, a portion of perfect sense, or the conclusion of a declarative sentence, requires the falling inflection, the same inflection must be adopted both in verse and prose. Thus in Milton's description of the Deluge, in Paradise Lost: