ing, condensed into one energetic sound; while the unskilful voice, with its vague loudness and aimless noise, fights "as one that beateth the air."

The study of elocution not only prescribes this due discipline of the voice for positive force of emphasis, but for that not less valuable means of impressive effect, the power and the habit of withholding force, in anticipation of emphasis or subsequently to its occurrence, so as to give it the due relief arising from the comparative reduc tion of preceding and following words. In this mode of managing the voice lies the main effect of expressive and distinctive force. The unpractised reader is prone to follow the negligent habit of conversational utterance, which throws out a more frequent but a feebler emphasis than impressive public reading demands. He is addicted, perhaps, to those habits of false emphasis which lead him to give unnecessary prominence to insignificant and inexpressive words, and, consequently, to mar the whole effect of what emphasis he chiefly intends. He forces into emphatic style the auxiliaries and particles of a sentence, to the utter subversion of meaning and emotion.* The clocutionary training of the voice in emphasis, leads to the observance of a principle directly contrary to such practice, and accustoms the reader, by the use of a few obvious rules, to reserve his force for the prominent points of meaning, and always to husband his emphasis so as to make it tell.

Another very important effect of the due discipline of the voice, as to emphasis, is the security which it gives that the student shall avoid those sharp and jagged turns of voice which indicate a species of nervous fastidiousness about emphasis. This fault was described, in a preceding part of the present work, as an error of inflec

*The ecstatic joy of the father, at the return of the prodigal son, is, in this style, converted from a burst of grateful and glad feeling, into the recitation of a lesson in etymology; thus, "For this my son was lost, and is found!"

tion, as well as emphasis, and as subverting all simplicity, directness, and dignity of utterance. It can be effectually cured in no way but by the faithful and rigorous analysis of intonation and expression, which systematic elocution prescribes. The gradations of inflection, in the slides and waves of the voice, are all distinctly classified and illustrated in the successive steps of elocutionary training in this department; and to the practice of these, as laid down in the manuals before mentioned, the student who is desirous of attaining a correct and genuine emphasis, is, for the present, referred.

"Expression."

The discipline of the voice, in the expression of feeling and emotion, is a part of elocution which, to the preacher, is of vast moment. The imperfect utterance which characterizes the ordinary style of reading formed at school, - the period when habit is generally fixed, - predisposes even the clergyman, in the pulpit, to an inexpressive. mode of voice, which belies rather than manifests whatever emotion may exist in his soul. The voice of most persons in adult life needs a thorough renovation of habit, to enable it to utter truly the vivid language of the Scriptures, of sacred poetry, or even of expressive prose. The unfriendly influences of neglect and perversion of vocal habit, in early years, and the equally unfavorable effect of a conventional coldness of utterance, current in society, have been frequently, in our preceding remarks, referred to, as the sources of prevalent defects in reading and speaking. Elocution, as a remedial art, offers to the student the means and the methods of self-reformation in expression. It prescribes an extensive and varied course of practice on the most vivid passages of the most effective writers, with a view to awaken emotion and keep it alive, in the exercise of reading. The materials for practice it draws largely from poetry, as the natural language

of feeling, and as the most inspiring source of empassioned utterance. To the theological student, in particular, it suggests the earnest reading of the Scriptures, - the most vivid and the most poetic of all books, -as one of the most influential in imparting expressive character to the habits of the voice. The reading of sacred poetry, especially in the lyric form, as the most inspiring of all, it prescribes as another means of forming vocal habit to a true and living style. It suggests, also, the frequent practice of reading essays, lectures, and discourses in the form of sermons, with a view to rendering the last of these modes of exercise an easy and natural and habitual exertion, instead of leaving it to prove an unattempted, unfamiliar, and unnatural performance, inducing mechanical and artificial manner, and conscious awkwardness and embarrassment.

The preparatory discipline of elocution, by the familiarity which it produces with the genuine style of true reading, brings this exercise to an identity with speaking, in its manner and effect, and imparts to the varying tones of emotion a distinctness and a force of character, which make them pass with power from the heart

the reader

to that of the hearer. It thus takes off the coldness and formality of the conventional style of sermonizing, and substitutes for it that of actual personal communication between man and man. It enjoins, accordingly, such a frequency of repetition in the preparatory reading of a discourse, as shall stamp the substance of it on the mind, and enable the preacher to deliver it as virtually a spoken address, rather than the school-boy reading of a prescribed task. This frequency of repetition, in previous reading, it requires, farther, to such an extent as shall leave the preacher free to direct his eye, principally, to his audience rather than his paper; as the language of the eye is nature's primary effect in expression, whether as the means of securing the attention and sympathy of those to whom a discourse is addressed, or as the most efficacious mode

of securing, by reäctive effect on the reader himself, the tones of genuine personal feeling in his voice.*

The study of elocution leads to a thorough-going analysis of all the component elements of expressive effect of voice, and to an intimate knowledge of their character. It provides an extensive course of practice on each singly, and, also, in their combinations, till all can be executed with unerring precision, fullness, and effect. The bad results of cold and inexpressive manner, have been already described in this volume. On these, therefore, it is unnecessary at present, to dwell. The opposite style, of false, excessive warmth, and of studied, artificial variety of intonation, has also been described. The analysis which practical elocution presents of all the constituents of vocal expression, makes familiar to the student the exact character and value of each; so that he is secured against the tendency, otherwise, to slight or exaggerate any. He becomes accustomed, accordingly, to observe closely the proper effect of every point by which the expression of emotion is naturally heightened or reduced: he acquires an intuitive readiness and exactness of judgment, and a critical refinement of taste, which guide him instinctively to the vivid, full, and true utterance of every characteristic tone of feeling. He preserves thus, the quiet, chaste, unimpassioned, didactic style of exposition and discussion, in the essay, the lecture, and the doctrinal discourse; while, in the treatment of subjects that naturally call forth intensity of feeling, his utterance adapts itself, with no less propriety and certainty of effect, to the language of

* Preachers, if they would observe how easy it is for an audience to hold at arm's length the man who merely reads at them, (with his head down, and his eye on his manuscript,) compared to the man who speaks to them, (with the natural eloquence of his eye directed to theirs,) would understand better how easy it is to listen with indifference to the one, and how difficult to escape from the influence of the other. Prudence might, in such cases, be excused for whispering the half-worldly suggestion, how easy it may be, in given circumstances, to "dismiss" the one and how difficult to part with the other.

vivid emotion. His voice takes, in a word, the hue of every subject over which it passes, and tinges his whole utterance with the coloring of the heart. He knows how to restrain expression, and how to give it free scope, how to call home the energy of the voice, and how to throw it out. His extensive and varied discipline on expressive tone, renders it easy for him to pass from the level and tranquil moods of utterance to those which are imbued with passion. His tones, therefore, spring directly from feeling, and are as free from any arbitrary trait as they are from morbid chill and reserve.

The diligent student of elocution recovers, in short, that power of instantaneous sympathy and of vivid expression, which characterized him at that early stage of life, when the freshness and fullness of his tones indicated a heart unmodified by conventional and arbitrary influence. The power which he has thus recovered, his mature mind and reflective judgment enable him to apply to those deeper and richer sources of thought, which his intellectual culture has opened up to him. The still higher sphere of thought and feeling to which the preacher's vocation. transfers him, he enters with a preparatory training, which, if it does nothing else, frees him, at least, from the embarrassing consciousness that he has not acquitted himself fully and honorably, as far as human abilities may go, to a part of the peculiar dutics which are to be devolved upon him, by his professional relation.