fashions; and they are so ridiculous in their imitations of them. I was quite diverted to see Molly, the pastry-cook's girl, tossing her head about in a hat and riband which I dare say she thought very fashionable; but such a caricature of the mode! I was so diverted!

Mrs. B. You may be diverted with a safer conscience when I assure you that the laugh goes round. London laughs at the country; the court laughs at the city; and I dare say your pastry-cook's girl laughs at somebody who is distanced by herself in the race of fashion.

Harriet. But every body says, and I have heard you say, mamma, that the kind of people I mean, and servants particularly, are very extravagant in dress.

Mrs. B. That unfortunately is true: they very often are so; and when they marry they suffer for it severely; but do not you think many young ladies are equally so? Did you not see, at your last dancing-school ball, many a girl whose father cannot give her a thousand pounds, covered with lace and ornaments?

Harriet. It is very true.

Mrs. B. Are not duchesses driven by extravagance to pawn their plate and jewels?

Harriet. I have heard so.

Mrs. B. The only security against improper expense, is dignity of mind, and moderation: these are not common in any rank; and I do not know why we should expect them to be more common among the lower and uneducated classes than among the higher. To return to your gardener. He has certainly a right to dress his girl as he pleases, without asking you or me: but I shall think he does not make a wise use of that right, if he lays out his money in finery, instead of providing the more substantial comforts and enjoyments of life. And I should think exactly the same of my neighbour in the great house in the park. The feelings of vanity are exactly the same in a countess's daughter dancing at court, and a milkwoman figuring at a country hop.

Harriet. But surely, mamma, the countess's daughter will be more really elegant ?

Mrs. B. That will depend very much upon individual taste. However, the higher ranks have so many advantages for cultivating taste, so much money to lay out in decoration, and are so early taught the graces of air and manner, to set off those decorations, that it would be absurd to deny their

superiority in this particular. But taste has one great enemy to contend with.

Mrs. B. Fashion, an arbitrary and capricious tyrant, who reigns with the most despotic sway over that department which taste alone ought to regulate. It is fashion that imprisons the slender nymph in the vast rotunda of the hoop, and loads her with heavy ornaments, when she is conscious, if she dared rebel, she should dance lighter, and look better, in a dress of one tenth part of the price. Fashion sometimes orders her to cut off her beautiful tresses, and present the appearance of a cropped schoolboy; and though this is a sacrifice which a nun going to be professed, looks upon as one of the severest she is to make, she obeys without a murmur. The winter arrives, and she is cold; but fashion orders her to leave off half her clothes, and be abroad half the night. She complies, though at the risk of her life. A great deal more might be said about this tyrant; but as we have had enough grave conversation for the present, we will here drop the subject.

of

EXERCISE LIX.

THE DEATH OF THE FLOWERS.

W. C. Bryant.

[The tone of pensive melancholy which pervades this piece, requires the "subdued" form of "pure tone," with a deeper note than the "expression" of pathos, merely; as the element of regret is added. Prolonged "quantities,” in the prosodial effect, with slow "median" swell and decreasing "vanish," long pauses and prevailing semitones, and the "minor third" in the cadence of the stanza, are, in all such cases, the vocal accompaniments of true feeling.

Nothing can be farther from nature and truth, than the mechanical, automaton-like utterance which is sometimes exemplified in the school style of reading such pieces.]

THE melancholy days are come,
The saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds, and naked woods,
And meadows brown and sear.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove,
The withered leaves lie dead;

They rustle to the eddying gust,

And to the rabbit's tread.

The robin and the wren are flown,
And from the shrubs the jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow,
Through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers,
That lately sprang and stood

In brighter light and softer airs,

A beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves;
The gentle race of flowers
Are lying in their lowly beds, -
With the fair and good of ours.
The rain is falling where they lie,
But the cold November rain
Calls not, from out the gloomy earth,
The lovely ones again.

The wind-flower and the violet,

They perished long ago,

And the brier-rose and the orchis died,

Amid the summer glow;

But on the hill the golden-rod,

And the aster in the wood,

And the yellow sun-flower by the brook,
In autumn beauty stood,

Till fell the frost from the clear, cold heaven,
As falls the plague on men;

And the brightness of their smile was gone,
From upland, glade, and glen.

And now, when comes the calm, mild day,
As still such days will come,

To call the squirrel and the bee
From out their winter home;

When the sound of dropping nuts is heard,
Though all the trees are still,

And twinkle in the smoky light

The waters of the rill,

The south wind searches for the flowers

Whose fragrance late he bore,

And sighs to find them in the wood

And by the stream no more.

And then I think of one who in
Her youthful beauty died,

The fair, meek blossom that grew up
And faded by my side;

In the cold, moist earth we laid her,
When the forest cast the leaf,
And we wept that one so lovely
Should have a life so brief:
Yet not unmeet it was that one,
Like that young friend of ours,
So gentle and so beautiful,
Should perish with the flowers.

EXERCISE LX.

MADAME DE STAËL.* Anon.

[This extract, as a combination of the narrative and didactic styles, needs attention, in reading, to the appropriate change of voice demanded by the transition from the one to the other. The least attentive listener is aware that, in conversation, the voice of the speaker becomes much more firm, regular, and measured, in style, when he passes from anecdote to sentiment. A similar change takes place in reading, as mentioned above. To make such changes effectively but easily, is, at once, indispensable to natural effect, and graceful, as an accomplishment of voice. A style equally removed from lifelessness and display, is the object of true culture, in this department of elocution. The narrative should, in the present instance, be entirely free from formality, and the sentiment from parade; while the former is not left deficient in dignity, nor the atter in impressiveness.]

ANNE LOUISE GERMAINE NECKER, the celebrated daughter of a celebrated father, was born at Paris, April 22, 1766. In her earliest years, she manifested uncommon vivacity of perception and depth of feeling; and, at the age of eleven, her sprightliness, her self-possession, and the eager and intelligent interest which she took in all subjects of conversation, rendered her the pet and the wonder of the brilliant circle which frequented her father's house.

* Pronounced, Sta'el.

* Mademoiselle Necker paid the usual price of mental precocity, in its debilitating effects upon her bodily constitution. At the age of fourteen, serious apprehensions were entertained for her life; and she was sent to St. Ouen, in the neighbourhood of Paris, for the benefit of country air, with orders to abstain from every species of severe study. Thither her father repaired, at every interval of leisure; and, being withdrawn from the strict line of behaviour prescribed by her mother, who, having done much herself by dint of study, thought that no accomplishments or graces could be worth possessing which were not the fruit of study, she passed her time in the unrestrained enjoyment of †M. Necker's society, in the indulgence of her brilliant imagination, and the spontaneous cultivation of her powerful mind.

Her

This course of life was more favourable to the development of that poetical, ardent, and enthusiastic temper, which was the source of so much enjoyment, and so much distinction, than to the habits of self-control, without which, such a temper is almost too dangerous to be called a blessing. character at this period of life is thus described by her relation and biographer, Madame Necker de Saussure: "We may figure to ourselves Madame de Staël, in her early youth, entering with confidence upon a life which, to her, promised nothing but happiness. Too benevolent to expect hatred from others, too fond of talent in others, to anticipate the envy of her own, she loved to exalt genius, enthusiasm, and inspiration, and was herself an example of their power. The love of glory, and of liberty, the inherent beauty of virtue, the pleasures of affection, -each, in turn, afforded subjects for her eloquence. Not that she was always in the clouds: she never lost presence of mind, nor was she run away with by enthusiasm." In later life, her good taste led her to abstain from this lofty vein of conversation, especially when the attempt was made to force it upon her. "I tramp in the mire with wooden shoes, whenever they would force me to live always in the clouds."

* The pronunciation of this, as of many other French words, must be acquired of a competent French teacher.

The French word, Monsieur, which this initial letter represents, cannot be intelligibly represented by any English combination of letters. It is a word more commonly and confessedly mispronounced, even in France itself, than almost any other of the French language. Its true pronunciation ought always, if possible, to be obtained from a well-educated native of France.