11. EXTEMPORE OR SIGHT READING.

read a piece the first time with a good, distinct, and deliberate articulation, pronouncing the words with boldness and force, and at the same time with propriety and elegance, distinguishing the more significant words by a natural, forcible, and varied emphasis, and the subordinate words with a proper degree of accent; together with a just variety of pause and cadence, accompanied by the emotions and passions, with their correspondent tones, looks, and gestures, the reader must be in possession of these requisites to do it well.

2. In the former part of this work these requisites are to be found; and if the reader has studied them carefully, with those relating to the inflections and modulations of the voice, ne may then attempt to read at sight the following sections, commencing with the shortest and easiest pieces in each of the selections, and progressing gradually to the most difficult.

3. To read well at sight is a difficult performance; but it can be accomplished by daily practice; the same as a skilful musician or well-trained amateur, after long, laborious practice, performing a piece of music the first time, can throw into it all the spirit, feeling, expression, and pathos imaginable. This fine accomplishment, from its very difficulty of acquirement, is perhaps the highest excellence of a reader; and the time and labor bestowed in its acquirement will richly repay him in the pleasure he will afford those who may hear him read.

4. To render sight-reading perfectly easy, if the reader will cast his eye a little beyond the point at which he is reading, this exercise will enable him to anticipate the sense of what follows, and in time he will be able to take into his mind a whole clause or sentence at a glance of the eye.

PERH

12. THE CAMPAGNA OF ROME

ERHAPS there is no more impressive scene on earth than the solitary extent of the Campagna of Rome under evening light. Let the reader imagine himself for a moment withdrawn from the sounds and motion of the living world, and sent forth alone into this wild and wasted plain. The earth yields and crumbles beneath his feet, tread he ever so lightly, for its substance is white, hollow, and carious, like the dusty wreck of the bones of men. The long-knotted grass waves and tosses feebly in the evening wind, and the shadows of its motion shake feverishly along the banks of rivers that lift themselves to the sunlight. Hillocks of mouldering earth heave around him, as if the dead beneath were struggling in their sleep; scattered blocks of black stones-four-square remnants of mighty edifices, not one left upon another-lie upon them to keep them down.

2. A dull, poisonous haze stretches level along the desert, vailing its spectral wrecks of mossy ruins, on whose rents the red light rests like dying fire on defiled altars. The blue ridge of the Alban Mount lifts itself against a solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. Watch-towers of dark clouds stand steadfastly along the promontories of the Apennines. From the plain to the mountains, the shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the darkness like shadowy and countless troops of funeral mourners passing from a nation's grave.

RUSKIN.

13. MONK FELIX.

[In this poem, Longfellow has given in sweet rhythm one of the touching cld legends of the Middle Ages.]

NE morning all alone,

Otoring

Out of his convent of gray stone,

Into the forest older, darker, grayer,

His lips moving as if in prayer,

His head sunken upon his breast
As in a dream of rest,

Walked the Monk Felix. All about

The broad, sweet sunshine lay without,
Filling the summer air;

And within the woodlands as he trod,

The twilight was like the truce of God
With worldly woe and care.

2. Under him lay the golden moss;

And above him the boughs of the hemlock trees Waved, and made the sign of the cross,

And whispered their Benedicites;

And from the ground

Rose an odor, sweet and fragrant,

Of the wild-flowers and the vagrant
Vines that wandered,

Seeking the sunshine round and round;
These he heeded not, but pondered
On the volume in his hand,

A volume of St. Augustine,
Wherein he read of the unseen
Splendors of God's great town
In the unknown land,

And, with his eyes cast down,
In humility he said:

"I believe, O God,

What herein I have read,

But, alas! I do not understand !"

8. And lo! he heard

The sudden singing of a bird,

A snow-white bird, that from a cloud

Dropped down,

And among the branches brown

Sat singing

So sweet, and clear, and loud,

It seemed a thousand harp-strings ringing.

And the Monk Felix closed his book,

And long, long,

With rapturous look,

He listened to the song,

And hardly breathed or stirred,

Until he saw, as in a vision,

The land of Elysian,

And in the heavenly city heard

Angelic feet

Fall on the golden flagging of the street.

And he would fain have caught the wondrous bird,

But strove in vain;

For it flew away, away,

Far over hill and dell,

And instead of its sweet singing

He heard the convent bell

Suddenly in the silence ringing

For the service of noonday.

And he retraced

His pathway homeward, sadly and in haste.

4. In the convent there was a change!
He looked for each well-known face,
But the faces were new and strange;
New figures sat in the oaken stalls,
New voices chanted in the choir;
Yet the place was the same place,
The same dusty walls

Of cold gray stone;

The same cloisters, and belfry, and spire.

5. A stranger and alone Among that brotherhood The Monk Felix stood.

"Forty years," said a friar, "Have I been prior

Of this convent in the wood;

But for that space,

Never have I beheld thy face !"

6. The heart of the Monk Felix fell;
And he answered with submissive tone,
"This morning after the hour of Prime
I left my cell,

And wandered forth alone,
Listening all the time

To the melodious singing
Of a beautiful white bird,
Until I heard

The bells of the convent ringing
Noon from their noisy towers.
It was as if I dreamed;
For what to me had seemed
Moments only, had been hours !"

7. "Years!" said a voice close by.
It was an aged monk who spoke,
From a bench of oak

Fastened against the wall;

He was the oldest monk of all.

For a whole century

Had he been there,

Serving God in prayer,

The meekest and humblest of his creatures.

He remembered well the features

Of Felix, and he said,

Speaking distinct and slow:

"One hundred years ago,

When I was a novice in this place,

There was here a monk full of God's grace,