"Take time," the simple and epigrammatic elocutionary rule of Mrs Siddons, is worthy of all acceptation. Throw, as it were, each syllable into the ear of the most remote individual of the audience, and give it time to alight before the utterance of its successor. The smallest and least important word in the sentence-in the discourse-if worth uttering at all, is worth uttering audibly. Even in instances of the most absolute animation there is no necessity for throwing words hurriedly together into heaps, mangled and mutilated, wanting limbs and members to such an extent that they are not properly the word-symbols of any language, but ugly specimens of verbal abortion. Besides, an awkward and embarrassing pause must follow such a display-a pause if not to adjust the reciprocity between language and thought, at least to gasp for saliva and breath. It is the vulgar fluster and flurry, not the deep and impressive baritone, the high-sounding trope, or the grandeur of the metaphor, which results in the too frequent stand-still to gulph water and wipe perspiration. And these practices are to some degree defects, inasmuch as in the cessation of delivery the mind of the audience has a tendency to reaction, and even the most intelligent involuntarily give them attention. The audience like only to conceive of the speaker as the champion and evangel of the principles his oratory supports, and it is not to the advantage of either himself or the principles to give a practical demonstration of how much the comfort of the one and the propagation of the other have affinity with such commonplaces as a glass of water and a pocket-handkerchief. Everything should be sedulously avoided which, although it may make the injudicious laugh, cannot fail to make the judicious grieve. That part of the audience must be "levelled up" who judge "as Partridge in Field

ing's novel judged of Garrick's acting. He could not see the merit of a man who merely behaved on the stage as anybody might be expected to behave under similar circumstances in real life. He infinitely preferred the 'robustious periwig-pated fellow,' who flourished his arms like a windmill, and ranted with the voice of three.”

Yet a judicious attention should be paid to the principle of Onomatopoeia, of Imitative Modulation. That is to say, words, the mere sound of which is somewhat expressive of the signification thereof, ought to be pronounced so as to give that affinity between sound and meaning full effect. The origin of this principle is ingeniously accounted for in Blair's "Lectures on Rhetoric." "There must always have been," he says, 66 some motive which led to the assignation of one name, rather than another; and we can conceive no motive which would more generally operate upon men in their first efforts towards language, than a desire to paint by speech the objects which they named, in a manner more or less complete, according as the vocal organs had it in their power to effect this imitation. Whenever objects were to be named in which sound, noise, or motion was concerned, the imitation by words was abundantly obvious. Nothing was more natural than to imitate by the sound of the voice, the quality of the sound or noise which any external object made, and to form its name accordingly. Thus, in all languages, we find a multitude of words that are evidently constructed on this principle. A certain bird is called the cuckoo, from the sound which it emits. When one sort of wind is said to whistle, and another to roar; when a serpent is said to hiss, a fly to buzz, and falling timber to crash; when a stream is said to flow, and hail to rattle, the analogy between the word and the thing signified is plainly discernible."

A good literary style can only be attained by the careful perusal of the best authors. And how far a style has been acquired should be frequently put to the test of ex.periment. The would-be orator should, by way of probation, speak on some subject with which he is conversant, and, his aim being to make a continuous speech, he should carefully mark where the resources of language fail him.

As previously remarked, the ability to write well is not synonymous with the power to speak well. The juvenile member of the village Debating Society may excel in facility of expression the venerable author of half a dozen quarto volumes. This is a fact which seems to be lost sight of in the curriculum of our school education. We have no lack of themes for exercises in composition, but these exercises are all written, they are never oral. How few boys at school are expressly educated for professional authorship, yet they are taught to write; while there are very many who look forward to their life being intimately associated with the senate, the bar, the platform, or the pulpit, and yet there is no direct scholastic provision to teach them to speak. Can it be wondered at, that as they arrive at manhood, they experience, in nine cases out of ten, a humiliating consciousness of oratorical impotence? The wrangler completes his course at the university, and, with his vast resources of intellectual wealth, becomes aware that he can hardly cope with the artizan politician, and the aproned and semi-illiterate agitator of Locks Out and Trades Unions. He has the proud consciousness of being a scholar and a gentleman; but the artizan politician and the man of Trades Unions, with one hundredth part of his learning, are yet of ten times his importance, not only in the opinion of the party whom they harangue and demagogue, not only in their own egotism, but they really leave

ten times more strongly the mark of their individuality on the thought and action of their day and generation. In some respects how little of a practical cast has the education of our times! How futile is the scholar with his locked-up magazines of erudition-how few, comparatively, among the learned can write well, and fewer still can pretend to oratory at all. Yet, applied literature is more powerfully practical, than applied mathematics or applied chemistry. Somebody wrote the ballad Lullibulero, and sung King James VII. out of three kingdoms; and applied literature in the hands of an adept, has made the British empire acknowledge, through her palaces, through the halls of her aristocracy, through the streets of her thousand towns, that one man, a stranger, and of an alien race, has done much to colour the political destiny of her millions— the little delicate hand which penned "Vivian Grey" can allay or excite the tremendous throb of the nation's heart, and, to the uttermost ends of the earth, give direction and tone to the exertion of her iron energies.

One who has spent, perhaps, the best years of his life in studying for a profession, is naturally hard to persuade that, after all, he has yet to begin at the beginning. He cannot begin the study of oratory now, and his self-respect revolts at letting the public witness his incompetency and laugh at his abortive efforts. But he can compose in language, the greatest merit of which may be that it is grammatically correct; and when he is called upon for a speech, he can attempt reading the production; but the attempt is, in the majority of instances, a decided failure. For in our schools there is a tradition as time-honoured as it is pernicious, and which opines that a youth who aspires to the profound learning of being able to conjugate amo and TUTT is elevated above English for ever. The audi

ence may object to the discourse being read; accordingly, on the next occasion, he attempts to commit it to memory. This engenders what has been styled the Pindaric manner of delivery. He pronounces six or eight words with the most hesitating deliberation as painfully, and one by one he extricates them from the repository of his memory; the next six or eight, by a mnemonic principle, flash upon him at once, and he rattles them out, trampling upon each other's prefixes, affixes, and penultimates, lest by giving due deliberation to their utterance he should afford them

a chance to escape his memory. Then the Pindaric style fails, and the orator, anxious to be considered gazing into empty space for inspiration, hazards a furtive look at his manuscript, during which one may be inclined to ask, as Cæsar once asked some bad orthoëpist who read before him, "Do you read or sing? If you sing, you sing very ill."

This is no overdrawn picture; it is the valley of rhetorical humiliation, through which we have seen pass many a one who added to the virtues of a high-souled gentleman the most graceful accomplishments and the ripest scholarship. How a little attention to Elocution and extempore speaking in youth might have obviated this! If the school-boy is asked frequently to express orally the incidents of his holiday, or to give a synopsis from memory of some period of history, or a vidimus of some speech he has read or heard, little difficulty will be experienced in making him an orator when his subsequent professional career requires it. These exercises of course will be very puerile to begin with, and the greatest care must be taken to correct the Elocution and literary style. The sentences should be short and uninvolved, the diction simple, and the tone and manner, for the most part, conversational-more ambitious efforts being reserved for future