1 had a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
Did wander, darkling, in the eternal space,

Rayless and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;

Morn came, and went, and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions, in the dread

Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light.

And they did live by watch-fires; and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings, the huts,

The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burned for beacons: cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes,
To look once more into each other's face:
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes and their mountain torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contained:
Forests were set on fire; but, hour by hour,
They fell and faded; and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash and all was black.
The brows of men, by the despairing light,
Wore an unearthly aspect, as, by fits,

The flashes fell upon them. Some lay down
And hid their eyes, and wept; and some did rest

Their chins upon their clinched hands, and smiled;

And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up,

With mad disquietude, on the dull sky,

The pall of a past world; and then again

With curses, cast them down upon the dust,

And gnash'd their teeth, and howl'd. The wild birds shriek d
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings: the wildest brutes
Came tame, and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twined themselves among the multitude,

Hissing, but stingless - they were slain for food :
And War, which for a moment was no more,

Did glut himself again:
With blood, and each sat sullenly apart,

:- a meal was bought

Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;

All earth was but one thought- and that was death, Immediate and inglorious; and the pang

Of famine fed upon all entrails. Men

Died;

and their bones were tombless as their flesh:
The meagre by the meagre were devoured.
Even dogs assail'd their masters,— all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept

The birds, and beasts, and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lured their lank jaws: himself sought out no food,
But, with a piteous, and perpetual moan,

And a quick, desolate cry, licking the hand
That answered not with a caress- - he died.

The crowd was famished by degrees. But two

Of an enormous city did survive,

And they were enemies. They met beside

The dying embers of an altar-place,

Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things

For an unholy usage. They raked up,

And shivering, scraped, with their cold, skeleton hands, The feeble ashes; and their feeble breath

Blew for a little life, and made a flame

Which was a mockery. Then they lifted up

Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects saw, and shriek'd, and died;

Even of their mutual hideousness they died,

Unknowing who he was upon whose brow

Famine had written Fiend. The world was void:

The populous and the powerful was a lump,

Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless;

A lump of death,

a chaos of hard clay.

The rivers, lakes, and ocean, all stood still,

And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths.

Ships, sailorless, lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd,

They slept on the abyss, without a surge,

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave;

The moon, their mistress, had expired before;

The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,

And the clouds perish'd; darkness had no need

Of aid from them. she was the universe.

PITCH, Continued.

The various degrees of pitch may be thus represented:

Very high

High

Middle

Low

Very low

-

á - à - delightful, joyous, glorious.
á—à — bright, pleasant, cheerful.
á-à-faith, peace, temperance, charity.
á-à-melancholy, suffering, sadness.
á-à-awe, desolation, woe, horror.

"That, in the formation of language, men have been much influenced by a regard to the nature of things and actions meant to be represented, is a fact of which every known speech gives proof. In our own language, for instance. who does not perceive in the sound of the words thunder, boundless, terrible, a something appropriate to the sublime ideas intended to be conveyed? In the word crash we hear the very action implied. Imp, elf,— how descriptive of the miniature beings to which we apply them! Fairy,how light and tripping, just like the fairy herself!-the word, no more than the thing, seems fit to bend the grass-blade, or shake the tear from the blue-eyed flower."- Robert Chalmers.

Examples.

Very High Pitch.

"There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower,

There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree,

There's a smile on the fruit and a smile on the flower,
And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea!" - Bryant.

"Ring joyous chords! -ring out again!

A swifter still and a wilder strain!

And bring fresh wreaths! - we will banish all

Save the free in heart from our festive hall.

On through the maze of the fleet dance, on!"— Mrs. Hemans,

"On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;

No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet

To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet.” — Byron.

High Pitch.

"A thousand hearts beat happily; and when

Music arose with its voluptuous swell,

Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell.”—Byron.

F

"I come! I come! ye have called me long,
I come o'er the mountains with light and song!
Ye may trace my step o'er the wakening earth,
By the winds which tell of the violet's birth,
By the primrose stars in the shadowy grass,
By the green leaves opening as I pass.

"From the streams and founts I have loosed the chain,
They are sweeping on to the silvery main,

They are flashing down from the mountain brows,
They are flinging spray o'er the forest boughs,
They are bursting fresh from their sparry caves;
And the earth resounds with the joy of waves."

Middle Pitch.

Thought is deeper than all speech;

Feeling deeper than all thought;

Souls to souls can never teach

Mrs. Hemans.

What unto themselves is taught."-C. P. Cranch.

"Be wise; not easily forgiven

Are those, who, setting wide the doors that bar

The secret bridal chambers of the heart,

Let in the day."— Tennyson.

"All the past of Time reveals

A bridal-dawn of thunder-peals,

Whenever Thought hath wedded Fact."— Ibid.

Low Pitch,

"Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,

And the winter winds are wearily sighing:

Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow,

And tread softly and speak low,

For the old year lies a-dying." — Tennyson.

"Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropt down,

'T was sad as sad could be;

And we did speak only to break

The silence of the sea ??

- Coleridge.

"His heavy-shotted hammock shroud

Drops in his vast and wandering grave." Tennyson.

"Slowly and sadly we laid him down,

From the field of his fame fresh and gory:
We carved not a line, we raised not a stone--
But we left him alone with his glory."-- Wolfe.

"Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher, Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire." Tennyson.

Very Low Pitch.

"News fitting to the night,

Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible."

"Tumultuous horror brooded o'er her van,
Presaging wrath to Poland - and to man!"

- Shakespeare.

"He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan-
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown." — Byron

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed on the face of the foe as he passed;
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill,
And their hearts but once heaved, and forever grew still!"

Byron.

"And there lay the rider, distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners, alone,
The lances, unlifted, the trumpet, unblown.” — Ibid.

"The majority of persons in this country pitch their voices too high, not only when they read and speak in public, but also in their colloquial intercourse. We not unfrequently meet with those who always speak in the highest key of the natural voice, and we occasionally meet with some who even speak in the falsetto. A high pitch in speech is unpleasant to the cultivated ear; it is totally inadequate to the correct expression of sentiments of respect, veneration, dignity, or sublimity."-Comstock.

"Few faults in speaking, however, have a worse effect than the grave and hollow note of the voice, into which the studious and sedentary are peculiarly apt to fall in public address. A deep and sepulchral solemnity is thus imparted to all subjects, and to all occasions, alike. The free and natural use of the voice is lost; and formality and dullness become inseparably associated with public address on serious subjects; or the tones of bombast and affectation take the place of those which should flow from earnestness and elevation of mind."-- Russell.

The various kinds and degrees of emotion require different notes of the voice for their appropriate expression. Deep feeling produces low tones; joyful and elevated feeling inclines to a high strain: and pity, though widely differing in force, is also expressed by the higher notes of the scale. Moderate emotion inclines to a middle