from you; yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear your hands are full of blood."-Isaiah, i., 10-15.

Frequent use of the voice in sustained exercise on the louder degrees will give that firmness and body of tone requisite for commanding effects, and which can be acquired in no other way.

Practice upon such passages as the following, with full declamatory effect, will strengthen and improve the voice:

3. Eloquence of John Adams.-Webster.

"The war must go on. We must fight it through. And, if the war must go on, why put off longer the Declaration of Independence? That measure will strengthen us. It will give us character abroad.

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'Why then, sir, do we not, as soon as possible, change this from a civil to a national war? And, since we must fight it through, why not put ourselves in a state to enjoy all the benefits of victory, if we gain the victory?

"Read this declaration at the head of the army; every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered, to maintain it, or to perish on the bed of honor. Publish it from the pulpit; religion will approve it, and the love of religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to stand with it or fall with it. Send it to the public halls; proclaim it there; let them hear it who heard the first roar of the enemy's cannon; let them see it who saw their brothers and their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its support.

"Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I see, I see clearly, through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to the time when this Declaration shall be made good. We may die; die, colonists; die, slaves; die, it may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold. Be it so. Be it so. If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life,

the victim shall be ready, at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But, while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free country.

"Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave off, as I began, that, live or die, survive or perish, I am for the declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment: independence now; and INDEPENDENCE FOREVER.'

Sustained vociferation, taking care at the same time to guard against impurity of sound or over-tasking of the organs, is an invigorating drill for the voice. Atonic elements may be called out with the fullest supply of breath and voice, as in the effort to send the sound to a listener half a mile distant. Especial attention should be paid to the production of the voice in the calling exercise, without exhausting effort. The degree of force should be no louder than the vocal and physical powers of the student would warrant.

CHAPTER VII.

PITCH.

THE ordinary compass of the human voice is about two octaves, and the command of all the intervals between the two extremes of highest and lowest is a great power in public speaking. Under the impulse of excitable feelings, in contrast with those which are deep and profound, we naturally find the full scope of pitch above indicated. If, for instance, we express the profoundest horror, and contrast its utterance with that of a loud cry of terror, we shall

find the greatest extremes of pitch. Even in colloquial intercourse, the gleeful expression of mirth and impulsive laughter would rise through the compass of several notes above the utterance of deep solemnity. And, in emphatic and earnest communication of thought, intense eagerness and vehement indignation would mark very wide transitions. This, we say, is the prompting of nature, when there are no repressing or distracting influences to divert the attention, impede the expression, or render the speaker unnatural. It would seem as if the office of reading even the sacred volume in public, and proclaiming the truth from the pulpit, necessitated something artificial and unmeaning in the delivery of the voice. For we find clergymen, as a class, in the effort of communication under these circumstances, limiting the range of pitch, on most occasions, to a very narrow compass, and ordinarily making use of less than a third of the power which nature has given them. Where we hear one speaker employing the notes of an octave, we shall find nearly twenty who use no more than three notes.

The cultivation of flexibility of the vocal organs, and the ready perception of the ear, thus become a necessary part of the training process of the voice, in order that the notes, as high or low, may be ready at call to respond to the demands of feeling.

Drill exercises will, if persisted in, secure in time the required flexibility and the desired compass. Practice upon the notes in pitch with the words below, which name the various degrees :

Middle pitch, low, lower, lowest. High, higher, highest. Then vary the exercise by passing from lowest to highest, middle to low, etc.

Middle Pitch. The proper key for this pitch is a little below that of animated conversation. It is the voice of unimpassioned thought, and is peculiarly expressive and appropriate when properly applied. There are many speak

ers, who, from the depressing and constraining influences of speaking in public, give, in place of this middle pitch, a dispirited low key, which solemnizes and renders very oppressive the ordinary degree of unimpassioned communication. Others, from undue excitement, form the opposite habit of invariably using the voice on a high key. Both of these faults are equally destructive of the desired effect, for, as there is nothing in unimpassioned thought to depress the voice to a low key, so there is no excitement to lift it to high notes. The proper command of the middle key implies conscious possession of the thought, and conscious purpose to communicate it, as opposed to involuntary impulse in the delivery.

1. Of Studies.-Bacon.

"Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight, is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business; for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them and above them, won by observation."

In the closing address to the sponsors at Baptism, the instructions relating more to binding duties, and in the form of injunction, would naturally throw the voice a little

lower than in the preceding extract, but still within the limits of "middle pitch."

2. "Forasmuch as this Child hath promised by you his sureties to renounce the devil and all his works, to believe in God, and to serve him ; ye must remember, that it is your parts and duties to see that this Infant be taught, so soon as he shall be able to learn, what a solemn vow, promise, and profession, he hath here made by you. And that he may know these things the better, ye shall call upon him to hear Sermons; and chiefly ye shall provide, that he may learn the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, and all other things which a Christian ought to know and believe to his soul's health; and that this Child may be virtuously brought up to lead a godly and a Christian life; remembering always, that Baptism doth represent unto us our profession; which is, to follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made like unto him; that as he died, and rose again for us, so should we, who are baptized, die from sin, and rise again unto righteousness; continually mortifying all our evil and corrupt affections, and daily proceeding in all virtue and godliness of living."

Unimpassioned narrative requires middle pitch. The calm description of the Garden of Eden, therefore, is to be read in that key.

3. "And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth