For grief is proud, and makes his owner stout. -SHAKESPEARE. AGONIZED SUPPLICATION. -Aspirated Quality. Weeping Ut terance. Waves. Chromatic Thirds and Fifths. "Too hard to bear! why did they take me thence? WRETCHEDNESS pressed Force. unequal Waves. AND DESPAIR.-Aspirated Quality. Sup- "Is there a way to forget to think? At your age, sir, home, fortune, friends, "You've set me talking, sir; I'm sorry; M. E.-28. It makes me wild to think of the change! What do you care for a beggar's story? 'Twas well she died before-Do you know The ruin and wretchedness here below?" -"The Vagabonds," TROWBRIDGE. The Energized DECLAMATORY FORCE.—Expulsive Orotund. Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is; behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, fallen in the great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every state, from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie forever. “And, sir, where American Liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives, in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it; if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it; if fully and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint, shall succeed in separating it from that Union, by which alone its existence is made sure,-it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain, over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amid the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin." "South Carolina and Massachusetts," WEBSTER. DECLAMATORY FORCE.-Expulsive Orotund. Deliberate Movement. Wider Intervals and Unequal Waves. "Lochiel! Lochiel: beware of the day When the Lowlands shall meet thee in battle array! And the clans of Culloden are scattered in flight. O crested Lochiel! the peerless in might, IMPATIENCE, AND STERN, IMPETUOUS COMMAND.-Aspirated Expulsive Orotund. Falling Fifths and Discrete Rising Thirds. "But William answer'd short: I can not marry Dora; by my life, I will not marry Dora.' Then the old man Was wroth, and doubled up his hands, and said: -" Dora," TENNYSON. CHAPTER XXVII. Median Stress. 219. MEDIAN STRESS has been shown to be an enforcement of the middle of the concrete, giving the effect of a swelling fullness to that part of the syllabic utterance. This stress sets forth intensity of voice with greater dignity and elegance than all the other forms of force. It is used, therefore, as the natural means of enforcing those sentiments and emotions that are combined with, or have their root in, elevated thought and the fervor of the imagination. The swell of the median has a greater or less degree of fullness, extent and enforcement, according as the feelings it expresses have more or less of ardor, depth, and grandeur. It may, then, appear under all modifications of degree, from the gentle swell which marks the tranquil flowing out. of the voice on the long quantities of the language of quiet, pathetic sentiment or solemnity, to the firm and swelling. energy which enforces the emphasis of language indicative of a high degree of power, combined with dignity or elevation of feeling. In its lighter forms, and combined with the lesser waves, median stress may prevail as a drift of dignified expression; but, when its more vivid degrees are blended with the extended intonation of the wider intervals and waves, it should only be used as an occasional emphasis, otherwise it will degenerate into bombastic ex cess. 220. The gentle force of the median swell, sometimes called the temporal pressure, should be placed on every syllable of quantity in the following example, which has already been given to illustrate the use of the wave of the second. Median stress and this wave, given with long quantity, are almost invariably combined, as they unite to express the same emotions of dignity and grandeur: "High on a throne of royal state, which far The wave could be extended to the extent of a third in a fuller expression of elevated admiration. This example furnishes an instance of a drift of the median stress. On the other hand, we have it as a solitary and impressive emphasis in the dignified but strong rebuke contained in the following language: "And Nathan said unto David, thou art the man!" Here the swell may be given on a descending fifth or octave, or on a wave of the third or fifth. The effect of the median stress is much enhanced by the tremor, and where it is thus given with the full volume of the orotund, it expresses the highest effect of sublimity and grandeur of which the human voice is capable. It should be thus applied to the following lines: "Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State! 221. This form of expression is utterly incompatible with haste or violence, just as the forcible forms of the other stresses are incompatible with grace and deliberation. In the case of the latter, the delicate attenuation of the equable concrete gives way to the impelling power of energy or |