the mere mechanism of habit and routine. The power of adapting manner to matter, is one which, of course, depends on taste and judgment, and on a culture co-extensive with the whole broad field of criticism, as involving the philosophy of expression.

It is much to be regretted that this subject receives so little attention during the progress of education, and that a thoroughly æsthetic discipline is not a part of the course pursued at all our public institutions for mental culture. The best possible school of instruction, in every department of oratory, but particularly that of gesture, would be a liberal and effectual education with reference to the constituent elements of expression, on the common grounds of nature and art, but directed specifically to the forms of speech and writing. The modicum of attention assigned to such subjects, on our present plans of instruction, is utterly inadequate to the purpose of creating a sound and just taste, even in regard to language.

The student of theology needs, more than any other, the aid of such cultivation. But, at present, it must be the fruit of his own nearly unaided application; for our language furnishes but very few works of reference on such topics; and such as we have are merely elementary, and many of them extremely defective. The personal study of nature and of art, with a view to the detection and recognition of the principles of expression, has, frequently in these pages, been suggested as the student's best resort for guidance as to the formation of manner and habit in speaking; and, for the present, it may suffice to reiterate the hint. Appropriateness of manner can be learned only from those analogies which reveal themselves to faithful observation in the great schools of genuine nature and true art.

The results of such study are always legible in manner. Appropriate action carries sentiment home to the heart, with a power not second to that of the fitting word. If the study of action as a part of eloquence, has, in our

day, fallen into discredit, the fact is owing to the general tendency of modern mind. We suffer our modes of mental action to be narrowed down to the standard of a taste which is usurped by the influence of man's external condition and relations. We lose, accordingly, the benefits of that wider action of the mind which should stretch beyond such limitations, and aspire to a nobler aim. Our discipline of man, as a being capable of varied action, is altogether inferior, in extent and living power, to that which was the standard of former times. culture had a truer regard than ours, to designed to exert an influence on man. tion derives no small share of its value from the light which it sheds on this fact, and on the path of the student's duty to himself in personal cultivation.

The Grecian man as a being A liberal educa

All these, and innumerable other considerations of similar tendency, become doubly impressive when we advert to the next prominent characteristic of gesture, as a part of expression,-grace. This trait, it is true, can be more easily dispensed with, than any of the others which have been mentioned. It is one, confessedly, of inferior moment. We may justly require, of every public speaker, a manly force and freedom in his demeanor and action; we may justly require of every speaker, even of limited opportunities, the judgment which enables him to avoid incongruities of voice and gesture. But grace is a feature of eloquence which belongs to comparatively high culture and refinement. Still, even this we have a right to expect of the man of liberal education. To what end, otherwise, were all his classical studies, with their perfect models of expressive art, their atmosphere of elegance, their presiding muses, and attendant graces?

If there is anything which more than another displays the incompetent manner in which classical culture is generally conducted, as to its effect on the mind, it is the case of a man who, as a scholar, appreciates every shade of beauty in a sentence of Cicero or a turn of Horace,

who hangs with a species of idolatry over a single epithet in Homer, or a line in Euripides, who throws his whole soul into the force of an interrogation in Demosthenes, but who addresses his fellow-men on the themes of duty and immortality, with a half-stretched angular arm, which, under other circumstances, the eye would recognize as the style of paralysis or deformity, and who shortens even the proverbial step from the sublime to the ridiculous, by uttering the former with his tongue, and, at the same moment, exhibiting the latter with his hand.

A graceful style of speaking, so far as regards the visible part of oratory, resolves itself into a compliance with the natural laws of form and motion, which preserve curved and waving lines, with free and flowing movements, as contrasted with straight lines and angles, accompanied by narrow, abrupt, and jerking motions.

Every action of the arm, however, depends, for its true effect, on the condition that the body is self-balanced and reposing, not stooping, leaning, wavering, lounging, or reclining. Hence, attention is due, in the first place, to the posture of the body, that it be firm and free, appropriate, and, at least negatively, graceful. The student's first point of attention, in personal training, is, accordingly,

THE ATTITUDE OF THE BODY, REQUIRED FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING.

This point is, by some speakers, assumed as a thing that requires no special attention, and which may be safely left to nature or to accident. Hence the preva lence of those stooping, lounging, and leaning postures which are not only ungainly and awkward to the eye of observers, but injurious to the organs of the speaker, in consequence of the false position in which they place the trunk of the body, and necessarily the chest and lungs. A healthful mode of public speaking, demands an erect and open chest, for the free unembarrassed play of the

lungs, and the easy action of the air-cells, the bronchial tubes, the larynx, the vocal ligaments, and the glottis. A stooping, or lounging, or bent attitude causes a partial sinking and narrowing of the chest, an unnatural and injurious position of the whole breathing and vocal apparatus, attended by a stifled and imperfect sound of the voice, a sense of exhaustion, and, perhaps, immediate pain; to all which are probably added, in due season,· sequence of the violation of the natural laws of vocal sound, connected with respiration, the successive stages of bronchial disease.

as a con

A faulty attitude of body usually leads, moreover, to awkward motions of the whole frame. The speaker who stands with bent knees, necessarily inclines to a courtseying motion of the limbs, and a swaying motion of the back, which becomes peculiarly noticeable, if, as is usu ally the case, the courtseys and the half-bows keep time to a rhythmical gesture of the arm.

A true, firm, and easy attitude, depends on the weight of the body being supported on one foot and limb, firmly planted, while the other foot and limb are at rest, and support their own weight merely the feet at a moderate distance; the onet in advance of the other, and the toes pointing moderately outward. This is the natural attitude of firmness and freedom combined. The common faults of attitude are standing with the feet feebly drawn close to each other, or the opposite error of standing astride; the legs both sinking, or both braced, at the knees; -the former causing a feeble, the latter, a stiff and rigid posture; while firmness demands that one knee be braced, and freedom, that the other should be slightly bent. Another error in attitude is that of a rigid, inflexible posi

* About the width of the broadest part of the foot.

† The right foot, usually.

Each foot would thus be placed on a line drawn diagonally from the front of the speaker's body, at an angle of forty-five degrees; so that the relative position of the two feet constitutes a right angle.

The

tion of the trunk, which, on the contrary, should yield and incline slightly on the side that does not, for the moment, support the weight of the body. Still another fault is that of bending forward too much; a gentle inclination of the speaker's body towards those whom he is addressing, being all that is requisite. The position of the head is often faultily submissive and drooping, or haughtily erect; propriety lying between these extremes. An awkward effect is often produced on the general attitude of the body, in consequence of placing the feet directly forward, or, perhaps, even with the toes pointing inward. consequence of this slight error, is, that the speaker's whole attitude resembles that of a fencer in attack, rather than of one man addressing others in the spirit of amity and conciliation. Awkwardness is to be shunned, not merely because it is unseemly, but because whatever is so, is repulsive and offensive, and hinders the speaker's access to the heart. Awkwardness, it is true, is no crime; but its tendency is to provoke mirth in the thoughtless, and pity in the reflective portion of an audience. By no possibility can a speaker who has the misfortune to exhibit such a trait, produce an appropriate effect on the mind, as regards the subject of his address. Yet our national negligence as to manner, causes too general a tendency to habits of the description to which we here refer. Five minutes' instruction or direction might, in many instances, have sufficed seasonably to remove such defects from the juvenile elocution of the speaker; but habit has, perhaps, now made them inseparable parts of himself.

But it is not only early neglect that is the source of numerous errors of manner in speaking. The inadequate attention given, by teachers themselves, to this department of education, renders their instruction sometimes erroneous. The pupils of some of our academies are actually directed to cultivate the ungainly habit of speaking with the left foot advanced while the right hand is in ac