confidence that he has something valuable to impart. Such confidence is essential to delivery with power. An orator who comes before his audience with the conviction that he is delivering something of little importance will have a feeble kind of elocution and fail of persuasion. With critical minds it is difficult to maintain this confidence, such minds are prone to regard their own productions as feeble, they are dissatisfied with all they do and so go before an audience trembling and fearful of the result. This critical taste must be satisfied by good material, well expressed or restrained within natural bounds. The orator's language and manner of speaking should be that of direct address. It should resemble dialogue not monologue. He should choose the most powerful thoughts and feelings in order to awaken the feelings of his audience. If the speaker has become fully awakened to the importance of following the states above enumerated he will have a delivery clothed with power. These constitute the sole operations which ought to appear to the minds of the audience. There are certain states of mind produced by the peculiar situation of the orator when addressing an audience which ought not to be visible in delivery. These are, timidity or stage fright, dread of failure, anxiety to make an impression, love of applause, egotism, which displays itself in moments of success or in the utterance of what the speaker regards as the most important and original thoughts of his discourse. All these operations ought to be carried on as sub-processes and not permitted to interfere with or color the leading states of mind. Bad delivery is more often caused by the predominance of these subprocesses than wrong methods of elocutionary train ing. The students who neglect vocal training and the study of oratory generally develop a delivery full of all the vices which these sub-processes produce. Correct and vigorous expression depends much upon the capability of feeling at the moment of speaking the thing desired to be conveyed to the audience. THE EXPRESSION OF THE MENTAL STATES IN READING, MEMORITER AND EXTEMPORE DELIVERY, AND SUB PROCESSES INCIDENTAL TO EACH METHOD. There are three methods of presenting the material of a discourse. Write it out beforehand and read it from manuscript. Deliver it from memory. Extemporize. Each method has found able advocates. Extempore Speaking has the greatest weight of authority among writers on oratory, although the greatest orators of ancient and modern times have not belonged to the extempore class. We will not enter into discussion respecting the merits and disadvantages of each, but examine them from our peculiar standpoint with the view of giving special directions for each which may be of utility. In all speaking, from the memory or from manuscript or extempore, the object is to convey faithfully the mental state which agitates the mind, and according to our definition, when that is done correctly and persuasively there is eloquence. Some have maintained that a sermon or discourse read from a manuscript is not eloquent, but according to our definition, it is if it produces the desired effect upon the mind of the listener. Reading from Manuscript if rightly performed is a department of oratory. The objections urged against reading from manuscript have not always been put with reason. Because some have not the skill, gift or natural genius to read from manuscript so as to awaken EMANUEL SWEDENBORG, a "seer" and the founder of the New Jerusalem Church, was born at Stockholm, Jan. 29th, 1688, and died in London, March 29th, 1772. PHILIP MELANCTHON, was born at Bretheim, February 16th, 1497, and died at Wittemberg, Germany, April 19th, 1508. He was a man of great classical erudition and associated with Martin Luther. JOHN WESLEY, the founder of the Methodist Episcopal denomination, was born at Epworth, England, on the 17th of June, 1703; died at the age of 83, March 2d, 1791. JONAT IAN EDWARDS, D.D., L.L.D., born 5th of October, 1703, at Windsor, Connecticut, celebrated as a metaphysician and speculative philosophe" of the Calvinistic school; died at Princeton, New Jersey, March 22d, 1758, aged 54. THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D., an eloquent Scottish pulpit orator and the first instituted moderator of the "Free Church of Scotland ;" born at Anstruther, March 17th, 1780, and died at Morningside, May 31st, 1847. STEPHEN H. TYNG, D.D., an eminent American Episcopalian minister, born at Newburyport, Mass., March 1st, 1800. Died at Tarrytown, N. Y., September 3d, 1885. JOHN HUGHES, D.D., an American Roman Catholic prelate, born in the north of Ireland, 1798. died January 3d, 1864. RICHARD S. STORRS, JR.. D.D., author and editor, a prominent divine of the American Congregational Church, born at Braintree, Massachusetts, August 21st, 1821. LYMAN BEECHER, D.D.,, an American Presbyterian clergyman, born at New Haven, Conn., October 12, 1775; died in Rrooklyn, January 10, 1833, aged 87 years. WILLIAM E. CHANNING, D.D., a distinguished preacher of the Unitarian persuasion, born at Newport, R. I., April 7, 1780, died at Bennington, Vt., Oct. 2d, 1842. From NEW PHYSIOGNOMY, or Signs of Character, as manifested through Temperament and External Forms, and especially in the "IIuman Face Divine." By Samuel R. Wells, the emotions and passions of the listener, does not prove that that method of presentation is not eloquent. There have been orators who have produced even greater effects by the delivery of written discourse than those who spoke extempore. Dr. Chalmers always wrote his sermons. Demosthenes and Cicero wrote out their speeches and spoke them from memory. We cannot deny the effect of their delivery, for Demosthenes stood unrivalled for eloquence. If speech delivered from memory and manuscript is to be denied the title of eloquence, then the greatest orators of ancient and modern times are necessarily cut off from the title of orators. This cannot be. The advocates of extempore speaking have in their zeal greatly exaggerated the extempore method. A more just estimation of each method can be obtained by a consideration of the basis of all eloquent, speaking which is the expression of the mental states. We must therefore consider how far each method is capable of expressing these mental states correctly and impressively. The mental state may not be sufficiently active to make itself felt in expression or the vocal language, for want of flexibility, may not respond. That is, the mental state, idea, emotion or passion as the case may be, must be vividly present to the mind before it can express itself. The vocal sounds must also be ready to express the mental state when it arises. When these functions are not performed the delivery is imperfect and fails to be impressive. Extempore speaking and speaking from manuscript when judged by this criterion have a relative rather than a natural superiority, and it will be found that some orators can speak more effectively by one process than by the other. That reading and speaking from manuscript fail to produce |