I. Punctuate:
- In 1788 the King's advisers warned him that the nation was
facing bankruptcy therefore he summoned a body called the States-General
believing that it would authorize him to levy new taxes.
The people of France however were suffering from burdensome taxation
oppressive social injustice and acute scarcity of food and their
representatives refused to consider projects of taxation until social
and economic reforms should be granted. The King who did not
realize the gravity of the situation tried to overawe them collecting
soldiers in and about Versailles where the sessions were being held.
The people of Paris seeing the danger organized militia companies to
defend their representatives. In order to supply themselves with
arms they attacked the Invalides and the Bastille which contained
the principal supplies of arms and munitions in Paris.
- On his first continental tour begun in 1809 Byron visited Portugal
Spain Albania Greece and Turkey. Of this tour he composed a
poetical journal Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in which he ascribed
his experiences and reflections not to himself but to a fictitious character
Childe Harold described as a melancholy young nobleman
prematurely familiar with evil sated with pleasures and embittered
against humanity. The substantial merits of the work however lay
not in this shadowy and somewhat theatrical figure but in Byron's
spirited descriptions of wild or picturesque scenes and in his eloquent
championing of Spain and Greece against their oppressors. On his
return to England in 1811 he was persuaded rather against his own
judgment into allowing the work to be published. Its success was
almost unprecedented in his own words he awoke and found himself
famous.
II. Explain the difference in meaning:
III. Explain and correct the errors in punctuation:
- This course is intended for Freshmen, who in the opinion of the
Department are not qualified for military drill.
- A restaurant, not a cafeteria where good meals are served at
popular prices.—Advt.
- The poets of The Nation, for all their intensity of patriotic
feeling, followed the English rather than the Celtic tradition, their
work has a political rather than a literary value and bears little upon
the development of modern Irish verse.
- We were in one of the strangest places imaginable. A long and
narrow passage overhung on either side by a stupendous barrier of
black and threatening rocks.
- Only a few years ago after a snow storm in the passes not far
north of Jerusalem no less than twenty-six Russian pilgrims perished
amidst the snow. One cannot help thinking largely because they made
little attempt to save themselves.