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dates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and of plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I NEVER would lay down my arms! never! never! never!"

Pro. In order to acquire strength in the middle tones, it is well to practice the voice in passages like the preceding, and some from Cicero's speeches, preserving all the energy of which we are capable in the middle range, but not suffering the voice to rise to a very high pitch. Here is something in a different vein; but, in the delivery, the voice should be in the middle pitch, and have an orotund smoothness and purity of tone:

"I care not, Fortune, what you me deny;

You can not rob me of free Nature's grace;
You can not shut the windows of the sky,

Through which Auro'ra shows her brightening face;

You can not bar my constant feet to trace

The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve.

Let Health my nerves and finer fibers brace,
And I their toys to the great children leave :
Of fancy, reason, virtue, naught can me bereave!"

Byron's Apostrophe to the

Ocean affords a good xercise in orotund delivery. Select, now, a passage

to suit your own taste.

Stu. I will read Job's noble description of the warhorse, taking Noyes's translation:

"Hast thou given the horse strength?

Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?
Hast thou taught him to bound like the locust?
How majestic his snorting! how terrible!

He paweth in the valley; he exulteth in his strength,
And rusheth into the midst of arms.

He laugheth at fear; he trembleth not,
And turneth not back from the sword.
Against him rattleth the quiver,

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The flaming spear, and the lance.

With rage and fury he devoureth the ground;
He standeth not still when the trumpet soundeth.
He saith among the trumpets, Aha! aha!

And snuffeth the battle afar off,

The thunder of the captains, and the war-shout."

Pro. The reply of Grattan to Corry furnishes the following impassioned example:

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"The right honorable gentleman has called me an unimpeached traitor.' I ask, why not 'traitor,' unqualified by any epithet? I will tell him: it was because he dare not! It was the act of a coward, who raises his arm to strike, but has not courage to give the blow! I will not call him villain, because it would be unpar·liamentary, and he is a privy councilor. I will not call him fool, because he happens to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. But I say he is one who has abused the privilege of Parliament, and the freedom of debate, to the uttering language which, if spoken out of this House, I should answer only with a blow! I care not how high his situation, how low his character, how contemptible his speech; whether a privy councilor or a parasite, — my answer would be a blow!"

Portia's celebrated address, from Shakspeare's Merchant of Venice, affords one of the most beautiful exercises in the language for a pure orotund delivery, in middle pitch, unbroken by passion. It can not be too often and carefully practiced:

"The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed :
It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes;
'Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above the sceptered sway,—
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's

SPECIAL EXERCISES IN ELOCUTION.

When mercy seasons justice: therefore, Jew,
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,-
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy."

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But we have now to consider the question of low pitch. "There are few voices," says Walker, "so perfect as to combine the three ranges, or, in other words, a full compass of voice; those which have a good lower range often wanting an upper range, and those which have a good upper range often wanting a lower range. Care should be taken to improve that part of the voice which is most deficient." The following beautiful pas sage, from Coleridge's translation of Schiller's "Wallenstein," presents an example for practice. It begins in quite a low pitch, in the tone - almost a whisperof tearful anguish and despondency; but at the eighteenth line the voice rises; and the twentieth and twenty-first lines should be delivered in the high pitch of abandonment to an overmastering sentiment of enthusiasm and regret:

"He is gone - is dust!

He, the more fortunate! yea, he hath finished!
For him there is no longer any future.

His life is bright-bright without spot it was,
And can not cease to be. No ominous hour
Knocks at his door with tidings of mishap.

Far off is he, above desire and fear;

No more submitted to the change and chance

Of the unsteady planets. O, 't is well

With him! but who knows what the coming hour,

Veiled in thick darkness, brings for us?

This anguish will be wearied down, I know;

What pang is permanent with man? From the highest,

As from the vilest thing of every day,

He learns to wean himself; for the strong hours

Conquer him. Yet I feel what I have lost

In him. The bloom is vanished from my life.

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For, O! he stood beside me, like my youth,-
Transformed for me the real to a dream,
Clothing the palpable and the familiar
With golden exhalations of the dawn!
Whatever fortunes wait my future toils,

The beautiful is vanished-and returns not."

Stu. There is a well-known poem, by James which seems to me to afford an example of low

"The glories of our blood and state

Are shadows, not substantial things;

There is no armor against fate;

Death lays his icy hand on kings!

Scepter, crown,

Must tumble down,

And in the dust be equal made

With the poor crook'ed scythe and spade."

Pro. The closing sentences from the address young and gifted Robert Emmett, who was h 1803, in Dublin, having been convicted of hig son against the British crown, afford another ap ate example of low pitch:

run.

I have but one request t it is the charity of its

"I am going to my cold and silent grave. My lamp nearly extinguished. My race is The grave opens t me, and I sink into its bosom ! my departure, from this world; Let no man write my epitaph; for, as no man who knows tives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other mer justice to my character. When my country takes her place the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my be written! I have done."

Stu. Thomas Moore's lines, on the death of th Robert Emmett, are in a like subdued strain:

"O! breathe not his name; let it sleep in the shade,
Where cold and unhonored his relics are laid:
Sad, silent and dark, be the tears that we shed,

SPECIAL EXERCISES IN ELOCUTION.

But the night-dew that falls, though in silence it weeps
Shall brighten with verdure the grave where he sleeps;
And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls,

Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.”

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Pro. The following passage from Young's Night Thoughts has been often quoted as an appropriate exercise in low pitch:

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth

Her leaden scepter o'er a slumbering world.
Silence how dead! and darkness how profound!
Nor eye nor listening ear can object find.
Creation sleeps. "T is as the general pulse
Of life stood still, and nature made a pause,
An awful pause, prophetic of her end."

Stu. What do you understand by a mon'otone?

Pro. A monotone is intonation without change of pitch; that is, a fullness of tone without ascent or descent on the scale. The following passage, from Milton, exemplifies the tone:

High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus or of Ind,-

Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand,
Showers, on her kings barbaric, pearl, and gold,-
Satan exalted sat."

The tone is often appropriate in solemn and sublime descriptions; and there are many passages in the Book of Job in which it may be employed with suitable effect; as in the following:

"Fear came upon me, and trembling,
Which made all my bones to shake.
Then a spirit passed before my eyes,-

The hair of my flesh stood up;

It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof:

An image was before my eyes;

There was silence, and I heard a voice saying,

Shall mortal man be more just than God?

Shall a man be more pure than his Maker?”