Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun To give it my loving friends to keep! There's nobody on the house-tops now- At the Shambles' Gate-or, better yet, I go in the rain, and, more than needs, Thus I entered, and thus I go! In triumphs, people have dropped down dead. TONE OF SOLEMN CONDEMNATION. (See Tone Drill No. 48.) [The tone of Solemn Condemnation implies that the judgment has weighed and considered before passing sentence.] Impeachment of Warren Hastings. EDMUND BURKE. I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors. I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted, whose property he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate. I impeach him in the name, and by virtue, of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated. I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life. Henry V's Sentence on the Conspirators. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Hear your sentence. You have conspired against our royal person, Wherein you would have sold your king to slaughter, -Henry V, ii., 2. TONE OF MEDITATION. (See Tone Drill No. 135.) The [The tone of Meditation is always linked with some other (usually Argument) and indicates to the listener self-communion. speaker is subjective. He is thinking aloud.] Cato's Soliloquy. JOSEPH ADDISON. It must be so-Plato, thou reasonest well! Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror "Tis Heaven itself that points out a hereafter, Here will I hold. If there's Power above us Through all her works), He must delight in virtue: Through what new scenes and changes must we pass? Hamlet's Soliloquy on Life and Death. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. To be, or not to be: that is the question: And by opposing end them. To die: to sleep; To sleep! perchance to dream! ay, there's the rub; Must give us pause: there's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, -Hamlet iii., 1. TONE OF CONVICTION. (See Tone Drill No. 55.) [The tone of Conviction aims not so much to prove as to proclaim what the speaker feels to be inevitable or absolute. In it, often, is the note of the seer. Assertion asserts aggressively, Conviction asserts calmly.] The Human Race Progresses. GEORGE BANCROFT. The irresistible tendency of the human race is to advancement, for absolute power has never succeeded and can never succeed in suppressing a single truth. An idea once revealed may find its admission into every living breast and live there. Like God, it becomes immortal and omnipresent. The movement of the species is upward, irresistibly upward. The individual is often lost; Providence never disowns the race. No principle once promulgated has ever been forgotten. No "timely tramp" of a despot's foot ever trod out one idea. The world cannot retrograde; the dark ages cannot return. Dynasties perish, states are buried, nations have been victims of error, martyrs for right; humanity has always been on the advance, gaining maturity, universality and power. Yes, Truth is immortal; it cannot be destroyed; it is invincible; it cannot long be resisted. Not every great principle has yet been generated, but when once proclaimed and diffused, it lives without end in the safe custody of the race. States may pass away, every just principle of legislation which has been once established will endure. Philosophy has sometimes forgotten God, a great people never did. The skepticism of the last century could not uproot Christianity because it lived in the hearts of the millions. Do you think that infidelity is spreading? Christianity never lived in the hearts of so many millions as at this moment. The forms under which it is professed may decay, for they, like all that is the work of man's hands, are subject to changes and |