2. RHETORICAL ARRANGEMENT.

Exercise 31.

Change the grammatical into the rhetorical arrangement in the following passages :—

EXAMPLE..

You may set my fields on fire, and give my children to the sword; you may drive myself forth a houseless, childless beggar, or load me with the fetters of slavery; but you never can conquer the hatred I feel to your oppression.

My fields you may set on fire, my children you may give to the sword; myself you may drive forth a houseless, childless beggar, or load with the fetters of slavery; but the hatred I feel to your oppression conquer you never can.

1. All the Jews, who knew me from the beginning, if they would testify, know my manner of life from my youth, which was at the first among mine own nation at Jerusalem, that I lived a Pharisee after the straitest sect of our religion.

2. I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny the atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honourable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me; and I will not assume the province of determining whether youth can be attributed to any man as a reproach.

3. I weep for Cæsar, as he loved me; I rejoice, as he was fortunate; I honour him, as he was valiant; but I slew him, as he was ambitious.

4. The Redeemer has made His followers free from the bondage of fear. He has disarmed death of his sting, by making an atonement for their sins; and He has secured to them the victory over the grave, by rising as the first fruits of them that sleep.

5. Slavery! disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, still, thou art a bitter draught; and thou art no less bitter, though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee. Liberty! it is thou, whom all worship in public or in private, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till nature herself shall change. No tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle,

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nor chymic power turn thy sceptre into iron. The swain, with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled.

6. The noon of day is calm. The inconstant sun flies over the green hill. The stream of the mountain comes down red, through the stony vale. O Morar! thou wert tall on the hill; fair among the sons of the plain. Thy wrath was as the storm; thy sword, in battle, as lightning in the field. Thy voice was like thunder on distant hills. But how peaceful was thy brow when thou didst return from war! Thy face was like the sun after rain; calm as the breast of the lake when the loud wind is hushed into repose. Thy dwelling is narrow now; the place of thine abode is dark. O thou who wast so great before! I compass thy grave with three steps.

7. Thou wast, not long since, what I am now, one of the actors in this passing scene. I lent a pitying ear to all thy sighs, and my heaving bosom beat responsive to thy sad complaints. My tears were mingled with thine in the hour of affliction; and, when joy brightened thy countenance, my heart felt a kindred pleasure. I sat with thee, or walked by the way, and held sweet converse. My soul was knit to thee by the ties of cordial amity and soft endearment. Thou hast now left me to mourn the loss of thee in pensive silence. I drop the tender tear on thy hallowed grave, and bid thy sacred ashes rest in peace. I shall join thee in thy dark abode ere long, thy companion in the dust, till we be called forth to stand in our lot in the end of days. I was united to thee in life; I shall soon lie in the same cold arms of death; and (O transporting thought!) we shall rise together, to feel no more the agony of parting.

3. PROSE ARRANGEMENT.

Exercise 32.

Change the following passages of poetry into prose, making such alterations, both in arrangement and in structure, as the meaning and harmony of the sentences require :—

EXAMPLE.

A solitary blessing few can find;

Our joys with those we love are intertwined;
And he whose wakeful tenderness removes

Th' obstructing thorn which wounds the friend he loves, Smooths not another's rugged path alone,

But scatters roses to adorn his own.

Few can find a solitary blessing; our joys are intertwined with those whom we love; and he whose wakeful tenderness removes the thorn which wounds his friend, not only smooths the rugged path of another, but scatters roses to adorn his own.

1. Heaven gives us friends to bless the present scene; Resumes them, to prepare us for the next.

2.

All evils natural are moral goods;

All discipline indulgence on the whole.

Never man was truly blest,
But it composed and gave him such a cast,
As folly might mistake for want of joy.

3. Riches are oft by guilt and baseness earned.
But for one end, one much neglected use,
Are riches worth our care (for nature's wants
Are few, and without opulence supplied);
This noble end is, to produce the soul;
To show the virtues in their fairest light,
And make humanity the minister

Of bounteous Providence.

4. But yonder comes the powerful king of day,
Rejoicing in the east. The lessening cloud,
The kindling azure, and the mountain's brow
Illumed with fluid gold, his near approach
Betoken glad. Lo! now, apparent all,
Aslant the dew-bright earth, and coloured air,
He looks in boundless majesty abroad;

And sheds the shining day, that burnished plays

On rocks, and hills, and towers, and wandering streams High gleaming from afar.

5. No radiant pearl which crested fortune wears,

No gem, that twinkling hangs from beauty's ears,
Nor the bright stars, which night's blue arch adorn,
Nor rising suns, that gild the vernal morn,

Shine with such lustre, as the tear that breaks,
For others' woe, down Virtue's manly cheeks.
6. Fear not when I depart; nor therefore mourn
I shall be nowhere, or to nothing turn;
That soul which gave me life was seen by none,
Yet by the actions it designed was known;
And though its flight no mortal eye shall see,
Yet know, for ever it the same shall be;
That soul, which can immortal glory give
To her own virtues, must for ever live.

7. But most by numbers judge a poet's song;

And smooth or rough, with them is right or wrong;
In the bright muse, though thousand charms conspire,
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire;

Who haunt Parnassus but to please the ear,
Not mend their minds; as some to church repair,
Not for the doctrine, but the music there.

8. 'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill
Appear in writing, or in judging ill;
But, of the two, less dangerous is the offence
To tire our patience, than mislead our sense;
Some few in that, but numbers err in this;
Ten censure wrong, for one who writes amiss.
A fool might once himself alone expose;
Now one in verse makes many more in prose.
"Tis with our judgments as our watches, none
Go just alike, yet each believes his own.

9. Of chance or change, O let not man complain,
Else shall he never, never cease to wail;

For, from the imperial dome, to where the swain
Rears the lone cottage in the silent dale,
All feel the assault of fortune's fickle gale;
Art, empire, earth itself, to change are doomed;
Earthquakes have raised to heaven the humble vale,
And gulphs the mountain's mighty mass entombed,
And where the Atlantic rolls wide continents have bloomed.
But sure to foreign climes we need not range,
Nor search the ancient records of our race,
To learn the dire effects of time and change,
Which in ourselves, alas! we daily trace.
Yet at the darkened eye, the withered face,
Or hoary hair, I never will repine :

But spare, O Time, whate'er of mental grace,
Of candour, love, or sympathy divine,
Whate'er of fancy's ray or friendship's flame is mine.

SECTION V.-EXPRESSION OF IDEAS.

The same idea may be expressed in a variety of forms. We may vary the expression by using cognate words—that is, words from the same root, but of a different part of speech; and by using synonymous words and phrases. Ideas are also suggested by the principle of association. The name of an object suggests the attributes, or qualities and actions, which distinguish that object. By this method, original sentences may be written.

1. COGNATE Words.

Exercise 33.

Vary the expression in the following sentences by changing the parts of speech :