be referred to any deficiency in the general provisions of nature. The practice recommended in our future pages will show that, without violating any law of the voice, an endless variety is presented in the expedients which nature has furnished to give power and efficiency to expression.The further purpose however to be secured by this practice is that healthful discipline of the vocal organs, which it is believed will make them almost proof against the diseases by which so many speakers are now laid aside from their labors in the very prime of their lives and of their usefulness. The young man who enters the ministry in particular, without having his vocal organs inured to the labor involved in speaking, is always in danger of laying the foundation, even in his early efforts, of his future decline, and of his premature death. How many such cases can the reader call to mind! In our definition of Elocution, we have made it relate to all the graces of delivery, whether in reading, in recitation, or in spontaneous utterance. This suggests what we deem an important view in connection with this subject, to wit, that the principles of reading and speaking are the same. He who knows how to read well can speak well, so far at least as concerns the management of the voice; and he who can speak well is left without excuse, if he does not read with correctness and rhetorical effect. The only dif ference between reading and speaking, as regards the principles of this branch of elocution, is, that the latter presupposes more emotion, and consequently admits a more forcible application of its principles. But Elocution, in the comprehensive signification we have given to it, relates to gesture as well as to the voice. Both the voice and the action of the body have a strong sympathy with the emotions; in so much, that the state of the mind can be confidently inferred from the muscular movements of the individual, as also from the peculiarities of his voice-its loudness or softness, together with its tones and inflections-though his words may not be heard. This suggests a strong correspondence between the voice and the action in delivery; and yet they are so distinct, that it is presumed the learner will study them most successfully, if treated separately. Thus our treatise is divided into two PARTS, to each of which is appropriated one entire subject. Something will be gained, if thus early the learner can be impressed with the full belief, that the principles of this work, both as regards the voice and gesture, are drawn from nature, and are thus no work of invention. This is the origin given of the principles of the orator's art by Quintilian, who says, "As in physic, men, by seeing that some things promote health and others destroy it, formed the art upon those observations; in like manner by perceiving that some things in discourse are said to advantage, and others not, they accordingly marked those things, in order to imitate the one and avoid the other;" and such emphatically is believed to be the origin of all the principles embraced in the successive chapters of this Manual. These principles, to be fully appropriated by the learner, must, so far as they shall be new to him, be dwelt upon till they become perfectly familiar-as familiar as the rules: of English syntax to the English scholar, or the principles of logic to the reasoner. Where habits either of voice or of gesture are to be overcome, other habits must be substituted. Nothing short of habits of correct speaking and of correct action can meet all the demands of the speaker, as he stands up to deliver his sentiments before multitudes of assembled men. He has no time then to make the intonations of his voice or the movements of his body a study. To secure the formation of these habits, it is indispensable that the principles hereafter presented should be contemplated as strictly practical, and be carried from the exercises of the book into the daily practice of reading and speaking. The success of the ancient orators, as also of Pitt, of Sheridan, and many of the distinguished actors of modern times-proves, as we have seen, the practicability of thus learning the art of speaking.* *In this introduction, I have made some use of a paper furnished by me for the Methodist Quarterly of July, 1841,-a review of "The Philosophy of the Human Voice," by James Rush, M. D. |