In the case of a question, such as:

Is that your firm opinion?

your answer being :

It is [my-firm-opinion],

the pronominal phrase would be subdued and di-tonic in cadence; but if you wished to impress the hearer with the force of your settled opinion, you would emphasise the adjective thus :

It is my firm [opinion].

Now I would have you fully understand and appreciate this emphasis precedent and this subdued cadence of the minor or pronominal phrase. Practise with that view the following

Exercise.

What course shall we adopt? and what likelihood is there that our constituents will approve that course?

Macbeth. If we should fail?

Lady Macbeth. But screw your courage to the sticking point,

And we'll not fail.

We do pray for mercy :

SHAKSPEARE, Act i.

And that same prayer doth teach us all

To render the deeds of mercy.

SHAKSPEARE.

If your weakness is such that you cannot resist temptation, you must take care not to expose your weakness to temptation.

He that loves the sword shall perish by the sword.

As no man liveth-to-himself, so no man sinneth-to-himself; and every vagrant habit uprooted from the young and ignorant-every principle of duty strengthened— every known argument to reform offered and rightly persevered in—is casting a shield of safety over the property, life, peace, and every true interest of the community; so that it may be said of this most emphatically, as of every duty of man, 'knowing these things, happy are ye, if ye do them.'

MARC ANTONY'S APOSTROPHE TO CÆSAR'S BODY.

This apostrophe is a fine practice in oratorical and powerful and impassioned declamation. The speaker should commence in the deep, solemn tone of grief; making a burst of passion as he prophesies the curse that is to follow; and increase in energy till he reach the climax at the close, which has an expression of rage mingled with horror in it. But beware of any approach to over-loudness or ranting. f means strong; ff very strong; <increase in vehemence of voice: means diminish somewhat.

O. pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,

That I am meek and gentle with these

butchers!

Thou art the ruins of the noblest man

That ever lived in the tide of times!

f Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!

Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,

To beg the voice and utterance of my

tongue,

Very strong ff A curse shall light upon the line of men !

and deep.

From this line the power of

voice goes on increasing, and the emphatic

current is strong.

Radical

stress is

marked here, the voice concentrated and strong. Havoc is a strong exclamation.

Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,

That mothers shall but smile, when they
behold

ƒ Their infants quarter'd with the hands of

war;

All pity chok'd with custo of fell
deeds ;-

And Cæsar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Até by his side, come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines, with a monarch's
voice,

ff Cry Havoc, and let slip the dogs of war ;—
That this foul deed shall smell above the
earth

(climax) With carrion men groaning for burial. SHAKSPEARE.

LESSON V.

THE EMPHATIC CURRENT, OR FLIGHT OF THE VOICE.

I ALLUDED in the third lesson to a current of emphasis running through several phrases at once, holding them together, giving them a greater weight than the rest of the sentence, and uttering them in one flight or sweep of the voice, without rest or break.

Let us call this flight of the voice the emphatic current, running through a whole extended member of a sentence, in contradistinction to that individualised stress that marks some single word. The latter is stronger in distinctive force, the former more effective in expansive expression. In this emphatic flight of the voice the effect produced is as if the feeling of the speaker overbore the ordinary bounds, and carried him by its own force, regardless of pause, or rest, or rule, to the goal before him. It has the power, too, of carrying the hearer with him; hurrying the audience sometimes along breathless, and extorting from them involuntary bursts of applause at the close.

Take the two following examples of eloquence, pregnant with fire and feeling, and read them aloud with all the sympathetic utterance you can give them, and remark the individual emphasis indicated on particular words (inflected) and the current of emphasis indicated on whole passages in italics, through which the voice is to swoop, as it were, on eagle-wing.

These two noble passages are in every respect a fine practice for the student.

FINE PASSAGES.

A PASSAGE FROM CURRAN'S SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN.

I speak in the spirit of British-law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from Britishsoil; which proclaims, even to the stranger and sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced, no matter what complexion an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him, no matter in what disastrous battles his liberties may have been cloven down, nor with what solemnities he may have been devoted on the altars of slavery,* the very first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink for ever in the dust, his soul walks abroad in her own majesty, his body swells beyond the measure of the chains which burst from around

M