him, peculiarly, to fatigue and injury, immediately consequent on the act of speaking. To speak extemporaneously, or from premeditation, will, it is true, exempt the preacher from many of the peculiarly injurious effects of his mode of professional life. But the prevalent demand of society, for the union of two incompatible effects in pulpit speaking,—that of a carefully elaborated written discourse, and that,—at the same time,-of a wellspoken address, devolves on him a double share both of intellectual and of corporeal exertion. To give his sermon the free and natural effect of speaking, he must either lose something of the strict rhetorical character of his style of composition, in consequence of withdrawing his eye so frequently from his manuscript as to lose the details of his written expression; or he must come into the pulpit, prepared by so repeated previous reading of his discourse, that it is virtually impressed on his memory. The practice of systematic elocution, is, in reference to such circumstances, an important aid to facility and impressive manner in reading, and lightens effectually the burden of the task to be performed. Nor is such labour light. Few persons who have not made the experiment, can be aware of the force of impression on the mind, or of the degree of action in brain and nerve, which is necessary to produce impressive reading aloud, in the space usually filled by the voice of the preacher, as contrasted with that which is experienced in merely receiving the ideas of an author, by the silent reading of the page of a book. All that is necessary, in the latter case, is merely that the thought be passively received or felt,-up to the extent of the reader's receptive capacity; in the former, the measure of thought and emotion must not only be full but overflowing; so that the surplus, as it were, of feeling, may be sufficient to carry along, in its tide, the sympathies of a whole audience. The public reader not only receives but imparts, and, as it were, stamps an impression. This active state of sympathy is what alone can convey a sentiment from the heart of the reader to those of his hearers. The practice of elocution secures the power of producing such effects easily and without fatigue. It serves, also, to render, by this means, the function of public speaking a salutary instead of an exhausting process. It invigorates the organs, and secures them against injury. It lightens professional labour; it tends to prolong life and protect health, while it secures an entire control over the voice, and makes it a ready and obedient instrument of the will. The study of elocution enables the speaker to give life and effect to every sentiment which he utters, and to send it home to the heart. It gives him a comparatively unlimited control over the attention and sympathies of those whom he addresses, and secures to what he utters a deep and permanent impression on the mind; nor is it a slight consideration that it enables him to impart to all his utterance the attractions of propriety and grace. It insures, in a word, the whole benefit resulting from eloquence in manner. All that the elocutionist, as such, pleads for, is, that the student after fifteen years, perhaps, of misdirected practice in reading, would give but the vigorous and faithful exertions of one, to the reformation of habit, or, at least, to the attempt at reformation. Half an hour, diligently employed, twice a day, for a year, on the rudiments of the art, would usually suffice for the removal of prominent faults, and for the acquisition of the most important traits of a good elocution. The student of theology, who has yet the susceptibility of youthful life upon him, and the leisure to cultivate his powers, and form his manner, and who, whether from self-sufficiency, or ignorance, or indolence, or diffidence, deliberately prefers to neglect the consecration of his active nature, in its highest capabilities of excellence, to the function which he means to assume, the elocutionist may well despair of moving by any argument which he can offer. The passive and lethargic pastor, who has given himself to his people, 'for better, for worse,' and to whom the calling, visiting, and mis cellaneous jobbing of his vocation, are sufficient excuses for neglecting its nobler offices,-is still farther removed from any influence of persuasion. But to both the teacher of elocution may be allowed to say, 'Look on this picture and on this,'-the uncultivated and the cultivated speaker in the pulpit. The former may, by no very improbable combination of chances, happen to exemplify all the following faults. He may have a bad voice. The screech of his excited tones may absolutely harrow the ear; he may have the gruff voice of the skipper of a smuggling lugger, or a hard guttural utterance, with tones which are little short of a continuous assault and battery on the ear; he may have the soft guttural tone of a voice choked in the throat, as if every sound came from the gullet; he may have a uniform nasal twang, so strong as to provoke laughter; or he may have a thin, weak voice, with a high piping note, which, when applied to the solemn language of deep feeling, creates a ludicrous incongruity. But how is he to become aware of such faults? Habit has made the sound of his voice natural and true to his Culture alone can correct such faults.* ear. The preacher, who neglects the cultivation of his voice, suffers, sometimes, to a peculiar extent, the penalties of violated laws of organization. His vocal organs are the instruments of his professional action and usefulness; yet he not only omits the use of the only means of invigorating them, but employs them, perhaps, at the greatest disadvantage, from want of knowledge and skill in regard to the appropriate mode of exerting them, so as to avoid fatigue and exhaustion, and consequent loss of health. Individuals in this predicament * It is much to be regretted that, in many parts of the United States, humanizing culture takes so little effect on outward manner, and that, in New England, particularly, a round, smooth, agreeable voice, is not invariably the characteristic of mental culture and polish. The absence of natural and acquired refinement, is unequivocally indicated in the hideous tones of voice which are not unfrequently heard from the pulpit. sink, perhaps, even in early life, under the effects of their destructive habits in the use of the vocal organs. The uncultivated speaker sometimes renders himself disagreeable by his habitual violations of propriety and taste, his obvious slovenliness of style, or want of appropriate education, as regards the humble and merely rudimental attainment of correct pronunciation.* He may even fail in respect of a distinct articulation of syllables and sounds, so far as to obscure the sense of whatever he utters, or even to render him unintelligible. But of these evils he is unaware; he has not been accustomed to watch his own habits; he is, in this particular, the helpless victim of circumstances, which have moulded him, unconsciously to himself, into the grossest errors. An hour's practice with an elocutionist, would put it in his power to correct these faults in a few weeks, and to substitute for his errors a chaste and correct manner of pronouncing, and for his hurried, confused utterance an accurate, clear, distinct enunciation. The undisciplined speaker frequently exhibits a displeasing loudness or violence of voice, or, on the other hand, a faint and feeble utterance, which does not allow him to be heard. He may have a uniform bawling or calling force, which indicates no variation of feeling, no softening touch of subdued emotion; or he may have nothing of that force which imparts manly energy to expression, and gives impulse to the heart. He may have, perhaps, that uniform medium of voice, which never swells or subsides with feeling, and which renders his * It is matter of regret, that this subject is so much neglected in early education, and that professional men, generally, do so little justice to themselves and their language, by the numerous improprieties which they habitually exemplify in speech. New England, more particularly, is marked by the extensive prevalence of local faults, in this respect; and most of these are owing to the sanction unfortunately given by Dr. Webster to such peculiarities. An obsolete and awkward style of pronunciation, has thus gained currency, even in places of learning. But many of Dr. Webster's modes are, at least, eighty years out of date, for the present day; and not a few are absolute Scotticisms, and errors of dialect, peculiar to Yorkshire or to New England. style utterly inexpressive and uninteresting. He has never studied the working of nature in vocal habit, or watched the ebb and flow of utterance, as the tide of emotion gushes forth, or subsides, in the voice. The rising and the lulling of the wind, seem to have taught his ear no lesson. But to all such effects cultivation would have opened his ear and his heart, and imparted their power to his utterance. The skilful emphasis of a good reader, which gives to the main points of his expression a sculptured prominence, and striking force of effect, the unpractised speaker has never observed. He gives little or no emphasis, at all; or, on the other hand, he multiplies and crowds his emphatic words, till his indiscriminate and perpetually recurring force, defeats its object, and destroys itself. He is thus compelled to give a double and exaggerated effect to all his actual emphasis, which makes him seem to be addressing an audience whose faculties were too obtuse, otherwise, to apprehend his meaning. He may even go so far with this habit of exaggeration as to make all his distinctions become epigrams in sound, and his significant expressions each one a pun, by its overcharged tone and tortuous circumflex.* But his ear has never been opened to the discriminations of kind and degree, in emphasis: he has never brought his organs under the influence of discipline, on such points: his attention, in fact, has never been turned to them. No wonder, then, that his emphasis should be so often exaggerated and disproportioned; or that his emphatic words should sometimes be thrown out with a jerk that would seem to intimate a sudden flash of impatience or ill temper, rather than a decisive act of judgment. Culture, however, would teach such a speaker to chasten his force by due regard to moderation and dignity of manner, and to directness and simplicity of expression. The uncultivated speaker seems, usually, either to have * The intellectual and argumentative tendencies of the Scotch and of New Englanders, impart this schoolmaster's tone to their current modes of colloquial emphasis, and, frequently, to their characteristic style of reading and of public address. |