The superficial impression that the habit of reading and speaking, as an affair of practice, tends to make a speaker mechanical in his style, arises from a false conception of the nature of the exercise. The practice which the elocutionist suggests is not a soulless repetition of sounds: he insists upon it that no practice is of any avail that does not carry the heart with it, or that does not bring forth sincere and earnest feeling, in tone and manner. His desire is to aid the speaker in evoking and expressing his inmost soul, as the only condition of the power to elicit the genuine sympathy of others. The elocutionist who understands his subject, can never be satisfied with a heartless, artificial style: his knowledge of his subject must prevent him from mistaking or prescribing the false for the true. His very office is to break up routine, formality, and every other trait of factitious habit.

The erroneous notion that practice and culture tend to cherish an artificial manner of expression, is owing, like many other mistakes on this subject, to our defective modes of education. The child, at school, is permitted to read sentences as merely so many words: the meaning and the spirit of a passage are not invariably associated, as they should be, with the language. The boy, the youth, and the man, accordingly, through the successive stages of education, regard reading as an arbitrary and mechanical process; and the petty instruction usually given about pausing and emphasis and the inflections of the voice, has only served to verify and confirm the impression. An education true to sentiment, to language, and to man, would render it unnatural to the ear and the voice to put asunder what God has joined, - the feeling in the heart, and its utterance in appropriate tone. Ear and voice, if trained in harmony, would always come to one result; and the practice of reading and of speaking, would confirm, not interfere with, the tendency of nature. The student, therefore, should see that the whole matter rests with himself. His endeavor ought to be to re

form and renovate his habits of expression, so thoroughly that his utterance shall always be true and earnest, and that he shall be incapable of executing a tone or a gesture which is not the natural and genuine result of feeling. His daily practice should have this end uniformly in view. The effects resulting from deficiencies and errors in formal education, will thus be obviated; and every exercise which he performs will be an additional security that his manner shall not be mechanical, but on the contrary, living and earnest.

One of the most valuable, in fact, of all accomplishments resulting from diligent self-culture in elocution, is the power which it imparts of entering, at once, with entire and perfect sympathy, into the mood of any sentiment which is to be read or spoken. The homely adage, that practice makes perfect, is in nothing more true than in this particular case. Nor can there be a greater mistake than that which most persons fall into, as regards the function of the elocutionist. The accomplished reader is thought to possess a certain talent of assimilation, by which he assumes or puts on the utterance of a sentiment, as if it were real. The true elocutionist, like any other sincere and earnest man, "knows not seems;" he either possesses by nature, or has acquired by diligence, a facility of giving up his whole being, -feeling and imagination, as well as understanding,- to the sentiment which he expresses. To him all is intense reality. In the act of reading impressively a strain of poetry, he is but exerting that receptive and expressive power which makes all things real and fresh to himself, and consequently to others, a power which dwells in the soul and on the tongue of every child, a power which the good reader has not lost or has only recovered. He is but performing simply and earnestly one of the truest functions of his being.

The indispensable faculty of imparting reality to thought and feeling, is, in the clocutionist, as in all other men, that,

rather, of perceiving and feeling the reality of thought. He is thus enabled to impart that reality to the minds of others. But, without this condition, there can be no true use of the voice. Earnestness and eloquence, impressiveness and power, in speaking, are merely the visible and audible effects of the inspiration which emanates from this source.

The preacher, if he is more dependent than other speakers, on such influence as this, is also more largely furnished with its aid: his themes are the most inspiring and the most impressive on which the human mind can dwell. To be eloquent, he has but to be earnest. Earnestness of heart, however, does not necessarily imply earnestness of manner. The very depth and vividness of feeling, are sometimes the actual causes of silence. The preacher has to learn, like other speakers, to control and modify his emotions so that they may become capable of expression. He must learn to recognize the natural signs of earnest emotion in tone and action, and to identify these with his whole manner. He must learn to lay aside the passive habits into which he may have fallen in the silence and seclusion of his study, and enter upon the active efforts of living expression and effective communication with society. He must, if he would attain success, labor to acquire the power of imparting to others the reality which his thoughts possess to his own mind. The earnestness of his manner in speaking, is the natural gauge of this reality. The preacher, therefore, who feels the importance of this point, will not think it unworthy of his office to study and observe every effective means of imparting earnestness to his voice or his action. How often is the hearer left aware how much more the preacher might effect, were his tone more expressive, his emphasis stronger, his manner more energetic; were he but earnest enough to secure interest in his thoughts, and sympathy with his feelings!

The quiet and placid tenor of a pastor's life, while it

favors his attainments in the contemplation of abstract and reflective truth, is not so conducive to the acquisition of the power of earnest and impressive utterance. He, as a speaker, needs, more than others, the aid of express study and practice in that art which tends to impart "action and utterance, and the power of speech to stir men's blood," for great purposes. The player who is faithful to the duties of his vocation, gives the daily study of successive years, to the preparation for performing a great part, so as to give effective utterance to great sentiments and glowing language. He whose express business it has been to render himself expert in giving to thought and emotion their appropriate tone, look, attitude, and action, with all the earnestness of life, feels that this very process is one in which careful study and laborious practice are perpetually required to ensure success. The daily arduous study practised by such men as Kemble and Macready, might well put to the blush many a phlegmatic speaker in the pulpit, who seldom passes a thought on the only natural means of rendering his ministrations interesting or impressive.

No juster remark was ever made than that contained in the answer of the player to the preacher. We utter fiction as if it were truth; you utter truth as if it were fiction." Nor will this observation cease to be applicable to the style of the pulpit, while a formal and ceremonious, instead of a living and earnest manner, continues to be associated with it, as a matter of habit, in preachers and hearers. No error is more general, and none is more fatal in its consequences, than that into which young preachers are so apt to fall, — that the elocution of the pulpit is a permanent fixture on which the personal habit of an individual is to make no encroachment, and that, once in the pulpit, a speaker is necessarily tied down to a certain decorous average of manner, never too earnest to disturb the repose of established routine.

FORCE, FEEBLENESS.

Force, as a trait of manner in speaking, is inseparable from earnestness. It is a natural attendant on animation. It is the invariable characteristic of the speaker who is himself awake to his subject, and whose feelings are interested in what he utters. We hear it in the vigor of his voice, in the weight of his emphasis, in the strength and fullness and impressive power of his tones of emotion; we see it in the manly energy of his action.

The property of force is not, it is true, an invariable characteristic of eloquence. There are subjects and occasions which quell and subdue force, and which forbid mere loudness of voice, or energy of action. But the public speaker who does not, on appropriate occasions, rise to impressive force of manner, falls short, not merely of eloquent effect, but of true and manly expression. Freedom, appropriateness, grace, are all inferior to this master quality. An energetic speaker will force his way to the heart, in spite of awkward and ungainly habits. Genuine force is, to sympathy, what necessity is to motive; it sweeps all before it.*

Force is the prime attribute of man; it cannot be dispensed with, in the habits of the speaker. No degree of fluency, or of mere grace, can be accepted in its stead. The feeble, florid rhetorican never affects his audience beyond the surface of fancy. The preacher whose manner is weak, never penetrates the heart, or impresses the mind. The prime characteristic of style in man address

*The eloquence of the Scottish preacher Chalmers, forms a striking example in point. The uncouthness of his broad dialectic accent, and his preternatural vehemence of voice and action, were lost in the fervid force of that native enthusiasm with which he threw soul and body into his subject and his manner. His whole being was concentrated on his theme; and he held his audience, of whatever class, with the grasp of a giant.