FORCE, FEEBLENESS.

Force, as a trait of manner in speaking, is inseparable from earnestness. It is a natural attendant on animation. It is the invariable characteristic of the speaker who is himself awake to his subject, and whose feelings are interested in what he utters. We hear it in the vigor of his voice, in the weight of his emphasis, in the strength and fullness and impressive power of his tones of emotion; we see it in the manly energy of his action.

The property of force is not, it is true, an invariable characteristic of eloquence. There are subjects and occasions which quell and subdue force, and which forbid mere loudness of voice, or energy of action. But the public speaker who does not, on appropriate occasions, rise to impressive force of manner, falls short, not merely of eloquent effect, but of true and manly expression. Freedom, appropriateness, grace, are all inferior to this master quality. An energetic speaker will force his way to the heart, in spite of awkward and ungainly habits. Genuine force is, to sympathy, what necessity is to motive; it sweeps all before it.*

Force is the prime attribute of man; it cannot be dispensed with, in the habits of the speaker. No degree of fluency, or of mere grace, can be accepted in its stead. The feeble, florid rhetorican never affects his audience beyond the surface of fancy. The preacher whose manner is weak, never penetrates the heart, or impresses the mind. The prime characteristic of style in man address

The eloquence of the Scottish preacher Chalmers, forms a striking example in point. The uncouthness of his broad dialectic accent, and his preternatural vehemence of voice and action, were lost in the fervid force of that native enthusiasm with which he threw soul and body into his subject and his manner. His whole being was concentrated on his theme; and he held his audience, of whatever class, with the grasp of a giant.

ing man, on topics of vast concern, must be force. Culture may come in, to modulate that force into fitting and graceful forms. But where life and soul are, there must be force. Eloquence persuades; but it also impels and urges, with irresistible power.

VEHEMENCE, VIOLENCE.

Genuine force of manner in speaking, rises, indeed, on some occasions to vehemence itself. The inspiration of a strong emotion does not stop to weigh manner in “the hair-balance of propriety;" it will not wait for nice and scrupulous adaptation. The speaker who is never moved beyond a certain decorous reserve, will never move his audience to sympathy. Force will not be hedged in by arbitrary prescriptions.

It is not less true, however, that vehemence, being the offspring of enthusiasm, is, like its parent, exceedingly prone to the evils of excess. There is a bad as well as a good enthusiasm, and, consequently, a bad as well as a good vehemence. The genuine inspiration, the true vehemence, is, even in its strongest expression, like the eloquence which the great orator has so characteristically described as resembling "the outbreaking of the fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fire;" it has the force, but, still, the beauty or the grandeur, of

nature.

The vehemence of indignation is, sometimes, one of the strongest incitements of eloquence. We trace this fact, in many instances, in the language of the sacred volume, not less distinctly than in that of Demosthenes, or Cicero, or Chatham. But true vehemence never degenerates into violence and vociferation. It is the force of inspiration,-not of frenzy. It is not manifested in

. the screaming and foaming, the stamping and the contortions, of vulgar excess. It is ever manly and noble, in its intensest excitement: it elevates, it does not degrade. It never descends to the bawling voice, the guttural coarseness, the shrieking emphasis, the hysteric ecstasy of tone, the bullying attitude, and the clinched fist of extravagant passion.

GENTLENESS, SPIRIT, TAMENESS.

The excesses of improper vehemence in delivery, however, while they are utterly revolting to humanity and' taste, are no excuse for the habitual weakness of manner, which is betrayed by speakers of the opposite character. Gentleness, it is true, is one of the most efficacious of all the means of persuasion; and it is nowhere more successful or more becoming, than in the pulpit. But, as force is not violence, so neither is gentleness tameness. "He is gentle, and not fearful," is one of the truest of those just and beautiful discriminations which are the charm of the great dramatist, in his exquisite delineations of the various shades of human character.

The act of expression, whether it is performed by the voice, the eye, or the hand, or by the natural union of them all, demands a living force. It may be moderate; but it must be spirited. It requires that easy and skilful, perhaps gentle, exercise of force, which characterizes the decisive touches of the artist, and which gives prominence and life to the figures of his canvass. It is the farthest thing possible from tameness and feebleness. Power of expressive utterance, is the positive electricity of the soul; it implies a percussive force of will on the organic frame; its natural language is energy of voice and gesture.

The tame speaker wearies his audience, and sends

them away indifferent to any effect; their minds a mere blank. The feeble speaker excites the pity of his hearers; they sympathize with the organic weakness under which he seems to labor, and leave the place of assembly, utterly unimpressed with any feeling but of compassion for the preacher personally. Had he but exerted his organs sufficiently to fill with his voice the building in which he spoke; had he but given a hearty emphasis to his utterance, or a manly energy to his tones; had he not allowed himself to "mutter like the wizard behind the wall;" had he permitted himself the just force and decision of a messenger empowered to deliver an authoritative message; - how different might have been the result! His subject might then have penetrated every mind, and impressed every heart: his audience might have departed lamenting, if anything, their own lack of spiritual life, not the feeble style of the preacher.

BOLDNESS, TIMIDITY.

A reckless boldness of manner, is repulsive in any speaker, and, most of all, in him who addresses his fellow-men on sacred themes. It is utterly at variance with the spirit of gentleness and tenderness which was manifested by the preacher's great Exemplar. Yet, owing to the absence of the moulding influence of true culture, how often is an audience harangued from the pulpit in a style of address which implies no respect for the speaker's fellow-beings.

This style is usually characterized by an ungoverned loudness of voice, a violent emphasis, an unmitigated vehemence of tone, a perpetual sweeping and jerking of the arm, and a frequent clinching of the fist. It is true that such a style is often the unconscious result of the

speaker's force of conviction and fullness of feeling, in regard to his subject rather than the persons whom he is addressing; and that the idea of a bullying effect in his style, never, probably, occurred to him. But one seasonable suggestion from his teacher at school, would have sufficed to guard him against this obstacle to his usefulness, by leading him to recognize the difference between a manner which merely expresses the excitement of the speaker himself, and that which moulds this very excitement into an eloquent effect on others.

The timid or the diffident speaker, on the contrary, who has not, apparently, the courage, or the self-possession to lift up his voice in an audible sound, and whose hand seems glued to his side, and his whole body paralyzed, so that he appears a statue-like personification of constraint, — unavoidably imparts to the feelings of those whom he addresses a degree of the irksomeness and misery under which he himself is laboring. Whatever he would attempt to say, becomes, as it were, frozen in the act of issuing from the mouth. His arm, if it ever rises to an action, makes but an approach to gesture, and only leaves the eye more sensitive to the want of it.

The embarrassed speaker, with his suppressed and imperfect utterance, and cowed, hesitating action, does not even fulfil the organic conditions of address; he falls equally short of reaching ear, eye, and heart. His matter may be rich and strong,―his composition eloquent; but all is lost for want of that courage which a little training and practice might easily impart, and which would inspire the due boldness that becomes a man addressing his fellow-beings.

There is, undoubtedly, a good as well as a faulty boldness. The preacher, if true to his subject and his hearers, will often have occasion to exert the former. It then becomes an element of appropriate manner and just effect It is, in such circumstances, indispensable to sincere feeling and true eloquence, not less than to good elocution.