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illustrious examples to incite us to noble aspirations and noble deeds."

IV.—THE PARTICIPATORS IN THE BOSTON

MASSACRE.

JOHN HANCOCK.

In the following spirited extract, John Hancock denounces the British soldiery and their leaders in Boston, Mass., for their participation in the "Boston Massacre." This conflict between the citizens and British troops occurred March 5th, 1770, and was one of the occasions that hastened forward the enterprise of American Independence. The extract requires great force, with the explosive radical stress. In the most intense parts, the quality becomes impure :

Tell me, ye bloody butchers! ye villains high and low! ye wretches who contrived, as well as you who executed, the inhuman deed! do you not feel the goads and stings of conscious guilt pierce through your savage bosoms? Though some of you may think yourselves exalted to a height that bids defiance to the arms of human justice, and others shroud yourselves beneath the mask of hypocrisy, and build your hopes of safety on the low arts of cunning, chicanery, and falsehood; yet do you not sometimes feel the gnawings of that worm which never dies? Do not the injured shades of Maverick, Gray, Caldwell, Attucks, and Carr attend you in your solitary walks, arrest you even in the midst of your debaucheries, and fill even your dreams with terror?

Ye dark, designing knaves! ye murderers! parricides! how dare you tread upon the earth which has drunk in the blood of slaughtered innocents, shed by your wicked hands? How dare you breathe that air which wafted to the ear of Heaven the groans of those who fell a sacrifice to your accursed ambition? But, if the laboring earth does not expand her jaws; if the air you breathe is not commissioned to be the minister of death; yet hear it, and tremble! the eye of Heaven penetrates the darkest chambers of the soul; traces the leading clew through all the labyrinths which your industrious folly has devised; and you, however you may have screened yourselves from human eyes, must be arraigned, must lift your hands, red with the blood of those whose deaths you have procured, at the tremendous bar of God.

V. OUR HEROES SHALL LIVE.

HENRY W. BEECHER.

In the following touching extract, Henry Ward Beecher suggests to the friends of those who fell in the War for the Union, during the years from 1861 to 1865, the high consolations that arise from the sacredness of the cause in which their dear ones died. The extract requires full, pure tones, moderately high pitch, slow utterance, and median stress :

Oh, tell me not that they are dead-that generous host, that airy army of invisible heroes. They hover as a cloud of witnesses above this nation. Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society, and inspire the people with nobler motives, and more heroic patriotism?

Ye that mourn, let gladness mingle with your tears. It was your son, but now he is the nation's. He made your household bright: now his example inspires a thousand households. Dear to his brothers and sisters, he is now brother to every generous youth in the land. Before, he was narrowed, appropriated, shut up to you. Now he is augmented, set free, and given to all. Before, he was yours he is ours. He has died from the family, that he might live to the nation. Not one name shall be forgotten, or neglected and it shall by and by be confessed of our modern heroes, as it is of an ancient hero, that he did more for his country by his death, than by his whole life.

VI.-GIVE ME THREE GRAINS OF CORN,

MOTHER. belle CICA
aberd

MISS EDWARDS.

The following is given as the prayer of a young Irish lad, dying with hunger during the famine in that country. The tones should be soft, and expressive of bodily weakness, the pitch high, and the rate of speed slow. if faithfully drilled upon, it will be found very useful in giving softness and purity to the voice.

Give me three grains of corn, mother,

Only three grains of corn;

It will keep the little life I have,

Till the coming of the morn.

I am dying of hunger and cold, mother,
Dying of hunger and cold,

And half the agony of such a death
My lips have never told.

It has gnawed like a wolf, at my heart, mother,
A wolf that is fierce for blood,-

All the livelong day, and the night beside,
Gnawing for lack of food.

I dreamed of bread in my sleep, mother,
And the sight was heaven to see ;
I awoke with an eager, famishing lip,
But you had no bread for me.

How could I look to you, mother,
How could I look to you,

For bread to give to your starving boy,

When you were starving too?
For I read the famine in your cheek,
And in your eye so wild,

And I felt it in your bony hand

As you

laid it on your child.

The queen has lands and gold, mother,
The queen has lands and gold,

While you are forced to your empty breast
A skeleton babe to hold,—

A babe that is dying of want, mother,

As I am dying now,

With a ghastly look in its sunken eye,
And famine upon its brow.

What has poor Ireland done, mother,

What has poor Ireland done,

That the world looks on, and sees us starve,

Perishing, one by one?

Do the men of England care not, mother,

The great men and the high,

For the suffering sons of Erin's isle,

Whether they live or die?

There is many a brave heart, here, mother,
Dying of want and cold,

While only across the channel, mother,

Are many that roll in gold;

There are rich and proud men there, mother,

With wondrous wealth to view,

And the bread they fling to their dogs to-night,
Would give life to me and you.

Come nearer to my side, mother,
Come nearer to my side,

And hold me fondly, as you held

My father when he died;

Quick, for I cannot see you, mother;

My breath is almost gone;

Mother! dear mother! ere I die,
Give me three grains of corn.

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VII-REBUKE TO THE NEAPOLITANS.

THOMAS MOORE.

In 1820, the people of Naples revolted against King Ferdinand, who had been imposed upon them by the Austrians. But in 1821, an Austrian army marched into Naples with little opposition. In the following stanzas, Thomas Moore, the poet, expresses his indignation at this want of courage. They should be read with much force, with the vanishing stress, and with impure quality of voice.

Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are !
From this hour let the blood in their dastardly veins,
That shrunk from the first touch of Liberty's war,
Be sucked out by tyrants, or stagnate in chains!

On, on, like a cloud, through their beautiful vales,
Ye locusts of tyranny!-blasting them o'er :
Fill, fill up their wide, sunny waters, ye sails,

From each slave-mart in Europe, and poison their shore.

May their fate be a mockword-may men of all lands Laugh out with a scorn that shall ring to the poles, When each sword that the cowards let fall from their hands, Shall be forged into fetters to enter their souls!

And deep, and more deep, as the iron is driven,

Base slaves! may the whet of their agony be,

To think-as the damned haply think of the heaven They had once in their reach,-that they might have been free.

Shame! shame! when there was not a bosom whose heat
Ever rose o'er the zero of Castlereagh's heart,
That did not, like Echo, your war-hymn repeat,

And send back its prayers with your Liberty's start!

Shame! shame! that in such a proud moment of life,
Worth ages of history-when, had you but hurled
One bolt at your bloody invader, that strife

Between freemen and tyrants had spread through the
world!

That then-O, disgrace upon manhood! e'en then

You should falter,—should cling to your pitiful breath, Cower down into beasts, when you might have stood men, And prefer a slave's life to a glorious death!

It is strange !—it is dreadful! Shout, Tyranny, shout Through your dungeons and palaces, "Freedom is o'er "

If there lingers one spark of her fire, tread it out,
And return to your empire of darkness once more.

For if such are the braggarts that claim to be free,
Come, Despot of Russia, thy feet let me kiss;
Far nobler to live the brute-bondman of thee,
Than sully e'en chains by a struggle like this.

VIII. THE BATTLE OF IVRY.

T. B. MACAULAY.

During the latter part of the sixteenth century, France was rent by civil troubles. The king, Henry IV, called Henry of Navarre, was opposed by the Catholic nobles and many of the people. The king of Spain, and other foreign princes, united with the malcontents, and Henry found himself opposed by armies larger than his own. Among

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