"It is difficult to make this subject sufficiently clear by a brief description; and it would be still more difficult, perhaps, to get the generality of readers to study a lengthened explanation; but, with a little thought and a little experiment, what has been said will suffice."*

The practical value of the theory of pharyngeal action, above outlined, cannot be too strongly impressed on professional students. It is, indeed, the key to excellence of articulation, in speech or song.

*A New Elucidation," etc., p. 42.

VII. THE RELATION OF TONES TO LANGUAGE. The Relation of Tones to Language is a subject of great fundamental importance. Clear ideas on this point should have the effect of commending the study of the art of delivery to all whose professional prospects involve the exercise of the voice.

The term Elocution — which originally meant the choice of words-refers solely, in modern use, to the delivery of language; to manner, as distinct from matter. Elocution may be defined as the art of bringing out that which is within; that is to say, in a double sense, within the words, or the thought intended by the writer; and within the speaker, or the feeling awakened by the thought. Elocution is only a part of the art of delivery; for composition and all the departments of rhetoric are subsidiary to the same end; but Elocution is complete in itself, although part of a greater whole. It includes all the audible and visible signs of that spiritual language which words are too gross, too slow, and too imperfect to express. The elements of this language are tones, looks, gestures, pauses, and gradations of time and force; and the instrument of utterance is the whole physical frame.

The true objects of elocutionary study are only two: the mastery of the instrument of expression, and the discernment of the principles of expression. The avenues of utterance must first be made clear; then that which is within the mind will find its own way out, its own way being, besides, in any given case, the best of all ways.

This doctrine is not that which has been commonly taught. The aim has been to create a uniformity of manner among different speakers; to make a class of students, as it were, give forth the measured unisons of barrel-organs. In con

sequence of the mimetic trifling which has thus, unfortunately, become associated with the very name of Elocution, the study of the art has been too generally misprised, and most neglected exactly where it was most needed. For this misfortune a false theory is fundamentally to blame; the theory, namely, that the tones of the voice in speech are governed by the constructive forms of language. A thought may be expressed in various ways, according to the motive, the taste, or the caprice of the writer; but the theory of sentential intonation prescribes a delivery which is not governed by the thought, but by the language only; one or other of a set of tunes. as we may call them being supposed to be appropriate to every given form of construction. These sentential tunes are not all, nor is any one of them always, at variance with nature; but the assumed association between construction and intonation, from which they are derived, has no existence. Any kind of sentence, and any part of a sentence, may be pronounced with any possible variety of tone, and still, in certain circumstances, be natural. Thus we often interrogate with the words of assertion, and assert with the language of interrogation; and by the very same arrangement of words we distinctly convey either an entreaty or a command. Language is constantly modified and interpreted by tonę; so that one of the commonest facts in connection with speech is that verbally we may say one thing, and yet, by delivery, be clearly understood to mean another.

The misleading principle of governing the voice by forms of language has done much to hinder the progress of elocutionary science. It has prevented learners from thinking on the subject, and has rendered pedantic and ridiculous the delivery of many, who, if they had been left to the exercise of their own instincts, might have become good

speakers. With most persons the manner of utterance has become denaturalised by the neglect of vocal principles at school, and the meaningless way in which school-exercises are allowed to be delivered. The ear is thus rendered unappreciative, and the faculty of apprehension is itself impaired.

The only difficulty in the application of tones to language lies in the discrimination of the tones themselves; not in the knowledge of when to apply this or that tone, but in the ability to produce any tone that may be desired, and to recognise any tone that may be produced. The gamut of tones should be familiar to every ear and to every voice, and that not so much as the result of direct instruction, as from mere observation and daily habit in the common school. But, instead of coming to the subject with trained ears, learners, as a rule, are unable to distinguish the radical difference between pitch and inflexion.

In touching the keys of a piano, the differences which we discern are differences of pitch; the notes constituting, as it were, a flight of steps which we may ascend or descend. But each step is level. All musical notes consist of such steps, of greater or less height; and melody consists in leaps, or sometimes in partially gliding transitions, from one level to another. Speaking tones, or inflexions, have the same variety of ascent or descent, but without steps. They slide directly upwards or downwards, or they undulate with a mixture of ascending and descending curves, but they are always in rising or falling progression, and never entirely level. A glide in music is a step with the angle rounded off; a speaking inflexion is a continuous curve; it has no angle at all. Such is the mechanism of individual inflexions; but the principle requires to be carefully noticed: that the voice must not slide from

one inflexion to another. From the point at which one terminates, the voice must leap to the higher or lower point at which the next inflexion commences. Every impulse must be separated in this way, to mark the boundary of its expressiveness. Otherwise, the unbroken swinging of the voice from inflexion to inflexion produces that commonest of all vocal faults called "sing-song."

Another principle of equal importance is: that there must be a unity of inflexion throughout every accentual phrase. The vocal movement begins on the accented syllable, and the same tone, or flexion, must be continued or repeated subordinately upon all the dependent syllables or words that follow the accent Thus:

These are instances of a single vocal turn expanded over a series of words. This principle, essential to the natural delivery of language, applies equally to compound as to simple inflexions. Thus: