Parker's Second Reader / National Series of Selections for Reading, Designed For The Younger Classes In Schools, Academies, &C.

by Richard Green Parker

Examples.

Hast thou not set at defiance my authority; violated the public peace, and passed thy life in injuring the persons and properties of thy fellow-subjects?

O, it was impious; it was unmanly; it was poor and pitiful!

Have not you too gone about the earth like an evil genius; blasting the fair fruits of peace and industry; plundering, ravaging, killing, without law, without justice, merely to gratify an insatiable lust for dominion?

What a glorious monument of human invention, that has thus triumphed over wind and wave; has brought the ends of the earth in communion; has established an interchange of blessings, pouring into the sterile regions of the north all the luxuries of the south; diffused the light of knowledge and the charities of cultivated life; and has thus bound together those scattered portions of the human race, between which Nature seemed to have thrown an insurmountable barrier!