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PIECES FOR PRACTICE

IN READING AND DECLAMATION.

EXERCISE I.-LEGEND OF THE SEVEN SLEEPERS.-Lyell.

[As an exercise in elocution, this piece is designed for practice in the reading of plain narrative. The faults to be avoided, are monotony or formality, on the one hand, and undue familiarity, or affected animation, on the other: the points of style to be aimed at, are simplicity and dignity, as in serious and elevated conversation.]

THE scene of this popular fable, was placed in the two centuries which elapsed between the reign of the emperor Decius, and the death of Theodosius the younger. In that interval of time, between the years 249 and 450 of our era, the union of the Roman empire had been dissolved, and some of its fairest provinces overrun by the barbarians of the north. The seat of government had passed from Rome to Constantinople; and the throne, from a pagan persecutor to a succession of Christian and orthodox princes. The genius of the empire had been humbled in the dust; and the altars of Diana and Hercules were on the point of being transferred to Catholic saints and martyrs.

The legend relates, that, "when Decius was still persecuting the Christians, seven noble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a spacious cavern, in the side of an adjacent mountain, where they were doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should be firmly secured by a pile of huge stones. The youths immediately fell into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged, without injuring the powers of life, during a period of one hundred and eighty-seven years.

At the end of that time, the slaves of Adolius, to whom the inheritance of the mountain had descended, removed the stones, to supply materials for some rustic edifice the light of the sun darted into the cavern; and the seven sleepers were permitted to awake. After a slumber, as they thought, of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger,

and resolved that Jamblichus,* one of their number, should secretly return to the city, to purchase bread for the use of his companions.

The youth could no longer recognise the once familiar aspect of his native country; and his surprise was increased by the appearance of a large cross, triumphantly erected over the principal gate of Ephesus. His singular dress, and obsolete language, confounded the baker, to whom he offered an ancient medal of Decius,† as the current coin of the empire; and Jamblichus, on the suspicion of having discovered and appropriated a secret treasure, was dragged before the judge.

Mutual inquiries produced the amazing discovery, that two centuries were almost elapsed, since Jamblichus and his friends had escaped from the rage of a pagan tyrant."

This legend was received as authentic, throughout the Christian world, before the end of the sixth century, and was afterwards introduced by Mohammed, as a divine revelation, into the Koran, and hence was adopted and adorned by all the nations, from Bengal to Africa, which professed the Mohammedan faith. Some vestiges of a similar tradition have been discovered in Scandinavia.

This casy and universal belief,-so expressive of the sense of mankind,-may be ascribed to the genuine merit of the fable itself. We imperceptibly advance from youth to age, without observing the gradual, but incessant, change of human affairs; and, even in our larger experience of history, the imagination is accustomed, by a perpetual series of causes and effects, to unite the most distant revolutions. But if the interval between the two memorable eras could be instantly annihilated; if it were possible, after a momentary slumber of two hundred years, to display the new world to the eyes of a spectator who still retained a lively and recent impression of the old, his surprise and his reflections would furnish the pleasing subject of a philosophical

romance.

EXERCISE II.-EVENING ON THE OCEAN.-. -Montgomery.

[The tone of the voice, in the reading of this piece, should not be allowed to become prosaic, yet should be kept free from 'singing.']

Light as a flake of foam upon the wind,
Keel upward, from the deep emerged a shell,

* Pronounced Jam'blicus.

†Pronounced Desheus.

Shaped like the moon ere half her horn is filled:
Fraught with young life, it righted as it rose,
And moved at will along the yielding water.
The native pilot of this little bark

Put out a tier of oars, on either side,
Spread to the wafting breeze a two-fold sail,
And mounted up, and glided down, the billow,
In happy freedom, pleased to feel the air,
And wander in the luxury of light.
Worth all the dead creation, in that hour,
To me appeared this lonely nautilus,—
My fellow-being, like myself-alive.
Entranced in contemplation vague yet sweet,
I watched its vagrant course and rippling wake,
Till I forgot the sun amidst the heavens:

It closed, sank, dwindled to a point, then-nothing.
While the last bubble crowned the dimpling eddy,
Through which mine eye still giddily pursued it,
A joyous creature vaulted through the air:
The aspiring fish that fain would be a bird,-
On long light wings, that flung a diamond shower
Of dew-drops round its evanescent form,-
Sprang into light, and instantly descended.
Ere I could greet the stranger as a friend,
Or mourn his quick departure, on the surge,
A shoal of dolphins, tumbling in wild glee,
Glowed with such orient tints, they might have been
The rainbow's offspring, when it met the ocean
In that resplendent vision I had seen.
While yet in ecstacy I hung o'er these,
With every motion pouring out fresh beauties,
As though the conscious colours came and went
At pleasure, glorying in their subtle changes,-
Enormous o'er the flood, Leviathan

Looked forth, and from his roaring nostrils sent
Two fountains to the sky, then plunged amain
In headlong pastime through the closing gulf.

These were but preludes to the revelry
That reigned at sunset: then the deep let loose
Its blithe adventurers to sport at large,

As kindly instinct taught them; buoyant shells,
On stormless voyages, in fleets or single,
Wherried their tiny mariners; aloof,
On wing-like fins, in bow-and-arrow figures
The flying fishes darted to and fro;

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