a modern achievement in education, and was at first rendered too complex to invite extensive application. On this point Dr. Porter remarks:

"Several years of childhood are particularly devoted to acquire a correct orthography and accentuation; and to promote a knowledge of these and of syntax, rules have been framed with great care. But what valuable directions have our elementary books contained as to the management of the voice in reading an art which lies at the bottom of all good delivery. Here our embryo orators, on their way to the har, the senate, and the pulpit, are turned off with a few meagre rules, and are expected to become accomplished speakers, without having ever learned to read a common passage, in a graceful and impressive manner. Fifty years ago, the general direction given by teachers in reading was, that in every sort of sentence, the voice should be kept up in a rising tone till the regular cadence is formed, at the close. This was exactly adapted to ruin all variety and force, and to produce a set of reading tones completely at variance with those of conversation and speaking. The more particular directions as to voice, formerly given in books for learners, are the three following: that a parenthesis requires a quick and weak pronunciation;-that the voice should rise at the end of an interogative sentence,-and fall at the end of one that is declarative. The first is true without exception;-the second, only in that sort of question which is answered by yes or no; and the third is true with the exception of all cases where emphasis carries the voice to a high note at the close of a sentence. So that, among the endless variety of modification which the voice assumes in speaking, but one was accurately marked before the time of Walker."

The absolute modifications of the voice are reduced by our author to four, namely, monotone, rising inflection, falling inflection, and circumflex inflection. Besides the absolute, there are what are denominated relative modifications of the voice,-as pitch, quantity, rate, and quality, which come under the article on modulation. After some strictures on the classification of inflections, adopted by preceding writers, Dr. P. makes the following observations respecting the one which he has adopted.

"In order to render the new classification which I have given intelligible, I have chosen examples chiefly from colloquial language: because the tones of conversation ought to be the basis of delivery, and because these only are at once recognised by the ear. Being conformed to nature, they are instinctively right; so that scarcely a man in a million uses artificial tones in conversation. And this one fact, I remark in passing, furnishes a standing canon to the learner in elocution. In contending with any bad habit of voice, let him break up the sentence on which the difficulty occurs, and throw it, if possible, into the colloquial form. Let him observe in himself and others, the turns of voice which occur in speaking familiarly and earnestly on common occasions. Good taste will then enable him to transfer to public delivery the same turns of voice, adapting them, as he must of necessity, to the elevation of his subject."

The "standing canon," noticed in the above passage, is worthy of special remark. Governed by this, our author succeeded in reducing this hitherto complicated subject to a form at once so tangible and simple, that those of moderate resolution need not hesitate in attempting to practise it. The rules given are few, brief, and perspicuous; and may be readily comprehended, and easily retained. The examples introduced to illustrate the application of these rules appear to have been selected with care and judgement. As a specimen take the second rule :—

"The direct question, or that which admits the answer of yes or no, has the rising inflection, and the answer has the falling :"

EXAMPLE. "Are they Hebrews? So am I-Are they Israelites? So am IAre they ministers of Christ? I am more."

Were this passage read so as to give the rising inflection to the several answers, it would destroy that gravity and authority, with which it would doubtless have been uttered by the apostle.

In a subsequent rule, the following position is assumed;

"The indirect question, or that which is not answered by yes or no, has the falling inflection; and its answer has the same :

'Who say the people that I am? They answering, said, John the Baptist; but some say Elias; and others say, that one of the old prophets is risen.""

The characteristic difference between the rising and falling inflection, so far as emotion is concerned, is, that the former is expressive of the tender, and pathetic; as grief, lamentation, compassion, affection, and devotional reverence. The Lamentations of Jeremiah, and various other portions of the Scriptures, abound in passages, which require that plaintive utterance, in which the rising inflection may be distinctly perceived. The falling inflection more generally is expressive of decision, force, authority, denunciation, bold and strong passion.

EXAMPLES. "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. His lord answered and said unto him, thou wicked and slothful servant,-thou knowest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I have not strewed. Let that day be darkness; let not God regard it from above, neither let the light shine upon it; let darkness and the shadow of death stain it; let a cloud dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it."

Though the analysis of vocal inflections is a recent thing, yet it has been understood from the days of Pericles, that the voice was susceptible of various and significant inflections, and that good delivery required them to be skilfully managed. The correct ear could determine, when delivery was good; but the rationale was a mystery, which none could explain. Quinctilian, in his directions on the subject of delivery, did not overlook the fact, that there were vocal inflections, though he did not analyse them. Dicamus ut in iisdem partibus, iisdemque affectibus, sint quædam non ita magnæ vocis declinationes prout aut verborum dignitas, aut sententiarum natura, aut dispositio, aut exceptio, aut transitus postulat. Quinct. Lib. xi. c. 3. When the voice is judiciously managed, delivery, to use the language of Fenelon, "is a kind of music, whose beauty consists in the variety of proper tones and inflections, which ought to rise or fall with a just and easy cadence, according to the nature of the things we express. It gives a light, as well as a grace, to language; and is the very life and spirit of discourse."

The chapter on tones and inflections, as a whole, is well executed. The results are those of actual experiment and observation and not of hypothesis. The philosophy of inflections lies at the foundation of correct elocution, and every public speaker would derive important advantage from a thorough knowledge of the

subject. Nor is this the dry and arduous task which many may have supposed, especially as it is presented by Dr. Porter. What Walker has spread over one hundred and fifty pages, he has brought into less than twenty, and yet has retained most that is valuable in the work of his predecessor, with the addition of some original matter. Though he was not the first to apprehend and bind that varying Proteus of the speaking voice,' to him belongs the credit of narrowing its limits, so that it is no longer difficult to approach and master it. And after chasing this flitting truant for years to little purpose, we feel greatly obliged to the man, who has thus given us the means of apprehending it and retaining it in our service.

Another elementary article, belonging to the subject of rhetorical delivery, is the correct adjustment of emphatic stress. In animated conversation this stress is correctly laid, even by a little child, and it is so laid, because feeling is awakened-there is emotion. On this subject we recur with pleasure to the pertinent observations of our author.

"Emphasis is governed by the laws of sentiment, being inseparably connected with thought and emotion. It is the most important principle, by which elocution is related to the operation of mind. Hence when it stands opposed to the claims of custom or of harmony, these always give way to its supremacy. The accent which custom attaches to a word, emphasis may supersede. Custom requires a cadence at the final pause; but emphasis often turns the voice upward at the end of a sentence; as,

You were paid to fight against Alexander, not to rail at him. Harmony requires the voice to rise at the pause before the cadence; whereas emphasis sometimes prescribes the falling slide at this pause, to enforce the sense; as,

Better to reign in hell, than serve in heaven.

"Now I presume that every one, who is at all accustomed to accurate observation on this subject, must be sensible how very little this grand principle is regarded in forming our earliest habits of elocution; and therefore how hopeless are all efforts to correct what is wrong in these habits, without a just knowledge of emphasis.

"What then is emphasis? Without staying to assign reasons why I am dis satisfied with definitions heretofore given, by respectable writers, the following is offered as more complete in my opinion, than others which I have seen. Emphasis is a distinctive utterance of words, which are especially significant, with such a degree and kind of stress, as conveys their meaning in the best

manner."

This subject of emphasis is disposed of under two simple divsions, namely, emphatic stress and emphatic inflection.

More particularity in enumerating the faults that obtain in laying emphasis, would to some have been an acceptable service. We have noticed a variety of such faults, some of which render delivery harsh and unnatural, almost past endurance. The abrupt, jerking emphasis' is common. We have heard the periodic stress, laid at regular intervals, as if designed to prevent monotony. Not unfrequently the speaker lets it fall on a little word, which has no claims to prominency, and in monosyllables his thunders roll.'

There is occasionally heard the drawling, trilling, twanging, emphasis, which serves rather to tear a passion to tatters,' than give force and effect to delivery. Not unfrequently are the rights of emphasis sacrificed to metrical accent, as in couplets like the following:

Show pity, Lord; O Lord, forgive;
Let a repenting rebel live.

There are passages, however, in which small words, even particles, require the force of emphasis. Examples are introduced and illustrated by our author.

"In the narrative of Paul's voyage from Troas to Jerusalem, it is said, 'Paul had determined to sail by Ephesus.' This sentence, with a moderate stress on Ephesus, implies that the Apostle meant to stop there; just as a common phrase, The ship is going to Holland by Liverpool,'—implies that she will touch at the latter place.

Now what was the fact in the case of Paul? The historian says, ' He hasted to be at Jerusalem, on the day of Pentecost.' Therefore he could not afford the time it would require to visit his dear friends, the Ephesian church, and be chose to pursue his voyage without seeing them. But can the words be made to express this sense? Perfectly; and that with only an increase of stress on one particle. Paul had determined to sail by Ephesus.'

"Another example shows us a succession of small words raised to importance by becoming peculiarly significant. In Shakspeare's Merchant of Venice, Bassanio had received a ring from his wife, with the strongest protestations that it should never part from his finger; but, in a moment of generous gratitude for the preservation of his friend's life, he forgot this promise, and gave the ring to the officer to whose kind interposition he ascribed that deliverance. With great mortification at the act, he afterwards made the following apology to his wife, an unemphatic pronunciation of which leaves it scarcely intelligible; while distinct emphasis on a few small words gives it precision and vivacity, thus:

If you did know To whom I gave the ring,
If you did know FOR whom I gave the ring,
And would conceive for WHAT I gave the ring,
And how UNWILLINGLY I left the ring,

When nought would be accepted BUT the ring,
You would abate the strength of your displeasure.

"In the case that follows, too, we see how the meaning of a sentence often depends on the manner in which we utter one short word: One of the servants of the high priest, (being his kinsman whose ear Peter cut off,) saith, did not I see thee in the garden with him? Now if we utter this, as most readers do, with a stress on kinsman, and a short pause after it, we make the sentence affirm that the man whose ear Peter cut off was kinsman to the high priest, which was not the fact. But a stress upon his, makes this servant kinsman to another man, who received the wound."

A fundamental position of Walker is, that emphasis always implies antithesis; and that emphatic stress is never to be given to a word, unless it stands opposed to something in sense, that is either expressed or implied. Others have acquiesced in this decision. Dr. P. has contested it, exposed the fallacy of the reasons urged in its support, and shown, as we think, that there is absolute emphasis.

"The principle assumed," he says, " cannot be admitted; for to say that there is no absolute emphasis, is to say that a thought is never important, considered of itself; or that the figure of contrast is the only way in which a thought can be

expressed with force. The theory which supposes this, is too narrow to correspond with the philosophy of elocution There are other sources, besides antithetic relation, from which the mind receives strong and vivid impressions, which it is the office of vocal language to express."

ing

Examples of absolute emphasis abound, such as the follow

:

Up! comrades,-up

Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on !-
Wo unto you, Pharisees!—

Angels and ministers of grace,-defend us.

That antithesis constitutes the more frequent occasion for emphatic stress is doubtless the fact. This appears in such passages as the following:

The manner of speaking is as important as the matter.
Study not so much to show knowledge, as to acquire it.

It is not so difficult to talk well, as to live well.

Our author has treated the subject of emphatic inflection with his usual acuteness and discrimination. Strong emphasis,' he observes, ' demands in all cases an appropriate inflection; and to change this inflection perverts the sense.' The question which here meets us is, how may it be ascertained which inflection an emphatic word requires? In illustrating this point, Dr. P. has again departed from Walker, who has devoted twenty pages to explain what he calls the grand distinction,' and leaves it still involved in obscurity. Having stated his reasons for dissenting from his predecessor, he gives us his own views.

"The plain distinction between the rising and the falling emphasis, when antithetic relation is expressed or suggested, is, the falling denotes positive af firmation or enunciation of a thought with energy; the rising either expresses negation, or qualified and conditional affirmation." In the latter case, the antithetic object, if there is one, may be suggested ironically, or hypothetically, or comparatively."

This position is amply illustrated by apposite examples and explanations, and concluded as follows:

"The amount is, that generally the weaker emphasis, where there is tender, or conditional, or partial enunciation of thought, requires the voice to rise: while the strong emphasis, where the thought is bold, and the language positive, adopts the falling slide, except where some counteracting principle occurs, as in the interrogative indection just mentioned. Emphatic inflection varies according to those general laws of the voice which I have endeavored to describe at some length. For these varieties we may assign good reasons, in some cases; while in others we must stop with the fact, that such are the settled usages of elocution; and in others still, we can only say, such are the instinctive principles of vocal intonation. In all such cases, explanation becomes obscurity, if carried out of its proper limits. Beyond these, I can no more tell why sorrow or supplication incline the voice to the rising slide, while indignation or command incline it to the falling, than I can tell why one emotion flashes in the eye, and another vents itself in tears.'

In concluding our remarks on emphasis, we intended to have said something on what Dr. Rush calls guttural emphasis, which is not noticed in the work before us. But the cases are so rare