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"There is no punishment equal to the punishment of being base. To sink from sin to sin, from infamy to infamy, that is the fearful retribution which is executed in the spiritual world. You are safe, go where you will, from the viper: as safe as if you were the holiest of God's children. The fang is in your own soul." — Rob

ertson.

SERIES.

A Series is a list of particulars expressed by simple words, or parts of sentences following each other in regular succession; as,

"To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper light,

To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,

Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.' -Shakespeare.

A Simple Series is a list of particulars expressed by single words, following each other in regular succession;

as,

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Knowledge, truth, love, beauty, goodness, faith alone give vitality to the mechanism of existence."James Martineau.

A Compound Series is a list of ideas expressed by phrases, or parts of sentences following each other in similar succession; as,

"The laugh of mirth that vibrates through the heart, the tears that freshen the dry wastes within, the music that brings childhood back. the prayer that calls the future near, the doubt which makes us meditate, the death which startles us with mystery, the hardship which forces us to struggle, the anxiety that ends in trust, are the true nourishments of our natural being.". Martineau.

A Series of Series is a list of series, or, it is the recurrence of ideas expressed by phrases or clauses, which in themselves contain a series; as,

"To eat and drink and sleep; to be exposed to the darkness and the light; to pace round in the mill of habit, and turn the wheel

of wealth; to make reason our book-keeper, and turn thought into an implement of trade, - this is not life."

Martineau.

A Commencing Series is one in which the sense is merely commenced, or left incomplete at every word or clause, the whole being introductory to a following clause; as,

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"The painful service,

The éxtreme dangers, and the drops of blood
Shed for my thankless country, are requited
But with that surname." Shakespeare.

A Concluding Series is one which is so formed that each of its members concludes a distinct portion of the sense, so that the sentence might terminate at any of these members, without leaving the impression of an imperfect idea or an unfinished sentence; as,

"The poet in a golden clime was born,

With golden stars above;

Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,
The love of love."-- Tennyson.

In a commencing series, the last member generally closes with the rising inflection, and the others with the falling.

In a concluding series, the next to the last generally closing with the rising, and the others with the falling inflection.

The inflections applied to the different members of a series are termed inflections of taste. In forcible enunciation, each member closes with the falling inflection, but in narrative and poetic styles, the rising is frequently employed.

A series, when written in the form of a climax, should be read with gradually increasing force and earnestness until the last member, which being the most important, should receive most stress.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

Commencing Series.

"If truth, and faith, and honor, and justice, have fled from every other part of our country, we shall find them here. If not, our sun has gone down in treachery, blood, and crime, in the face of the world; and, instead of being proud of our country, as heretofore, we may well call upon the rocks and mountains to hide our shame from earth and from heaven."

AN APPEAL FOR THE CHEROKEE NATION. - Wm. Wirt.

"Our own selfishness, our own neglect, our own passions, and our own vices, will furnish the elements of our destruction. With our ɔwn hands we shall tear down the stately edifice of our glory. зhall die by self-inflicted wounds."

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G. S. Hillard.

'After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing

Can touch him further!”. Macbeth.

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"To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven.
As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form,

Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm;
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head."

THE DESERTED VILLAGE.-Goldsmith.

Concluding Series.

"Now I am cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in

To saucy doubts and fears." - Shakespeare.

"Strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

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"land of beauty, virtue, valor, truth,
Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth."

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"When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the color-petals out of a fruitful flower; when they are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse to the body." — Ruskin.

Series of Series.

"Of Law, there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God; her voice the harmony of the world. All things in heaven and earth do her homage; the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both angels and men, and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy."- Hooker.

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"Holy intention is to the actions of a man that which the soul is to the body, or form to its matter, or the root to its tree, or the sun to the world, or the fountain to a river, or the base to a pillar; for without these, the body is a dead trunk, the matter is sluggish, the tree is a block, the river is quickly dry, and the pillar rushes into flatness or ruin, and the action is sinful, or unprofitable, or vain."Jeremy Taylor.

"A crowd of spirits from the realm of the deathless come thronging around us; - from the battle-field, where Liberty went down under the brutal hoofs of Power, its immortal image trampled in the dust, from the legislative hall, where, amid the collision of adverse intellects, the orator poured his torrents of fire, - from the rack and the stake, where the spirit of man hanted rapturous hymns in its fierce agonies, and met death smiling, - from the cell of the thinker, where mind grappled with the mysterious unknown, piercing, with its thought of light, the dark veil of unrealized knowledge and possible combinations; — from every place where the soul has been really alive, and impatiently tossed aside the material conditions which would stifle or limit its energies, come the Genii of Thought and Action, to rouse us from our sleep of death, to tear aside the thin delusions of our conceit, and to pour into the shrunken veins of our discrowned spirits, the fresh tides of mental life."-E. P. Whipple.

19*

CADENCE.

Cadence is the closing tone of a sentence.

When three syllables successively descend in their radical pitch, at the close of a sentence, (being a falling tritone,) the phrase may be called the Cadence, or Triad of the Cadence.

"The completion of a thought is expressed, not only by the long pause which takes place at the end of a sentence, but usually by a falling of the voice, on the closing words to a lower pitch than that which prevailed in the body of the sentence. This closing descent in the tone is used to prevent the abruptness and irregularity of sound which would be produced by continuing the prevailing pitch to the close of the sentence, which, from exciting expectation of further expression, would be at variance both with harmony and meaning."

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Partial Cadence takes place when a distinct portion of the sense is completed, although the whole sentence is not finished; thus, after "are," in the sentence,

"Clear writers, like clear fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound."

Distinct Cadence should be given when both the sentence and the sentiment are fully completed; as, after "profound," in the preceding example.

"Whoever closely observes the character of speech, in the common dialogue of life, must perceive that the earnest interests which govern it, the sharp replications and interruptions of argument, and the piercing pitch of mirth and anger exclude, in a great measure, the terminating repose of the cadence. This is particularly the case with children and with the ignorant, who rarely employ any other than the wider and more expressive intervals of intonation. When, therefore, attempting to read with the serious purpose of a dignified elocution, the impassioned habit is too inveterate to be at once laid aside; and a disposition to keep up the colloquial characteristic of speech, extending itself to the place of the cadence, defers, for a long time, the ability to give, with propriety and taste, the more composed and the graver intonation of the terminative phrase." Rush.

"The unmeaning and mechanical style of reading, which is too generally exemplified at schools and in professional performances, is chiefly characterized by a continually returning fall of voice at the end of every sentence, so uniform that it might be used as a guide by which to count the exact number of sentences read. A whole paragraph is read as so many detached and independent sentences, forming distinct and unconnected propositions or maxims. Animated, natural, and appropriate reading, on the contrary, avoids this frequent fall, and keeps up that perpetual variety which the change in sense requires; this effect being produced by modifying the close of every sentence according to its meaning in connection with the rest; each sentence being read as a dependent part of a connected whole, and unity and harmony thus given to a train of thought. This effect the reader attains by disregarding the arbitrary rule for a fall of the voice at every period, and seeking his guidance from the sense of

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