The elementary sounds and combinations contained in the preceding tables, should be repeated till they can be enunciated with perfect exactness and well-defined character, in the full style of public speaking.

Distinctness of enunciation will be much promoted by a careful, slow, exact, syllabic and literal analysis of selected words, read with special precision and force, for the purpose of practising a clear, firm, well-marked articulation. This exercise is rendered still more conducive to its intended effect, if lines or sentences are read in inverted order, so as to detach them from their ordinary associations of sound.

A useful exercise for the purpose of securing a critical knowledge of orthoëpy, and a strict accuracy of habit in pronouncing, is to read aloud several columns, daily, from Worcester's edition of Johnson and Walker's dictionaries, as combined by Todd, and by Smart,* while close attention is paid to observe whether the sounds of the voice correspond precisely to the notation of the orthoëpy.

A copious list of words commonly mispronounced, even in the pulpit, formed a part in the original plan of the present work. But the extent of the list rendered it impracticable to introduce it without swelling the size of the volume beyond its limited extent. It may be sufficient, perhaps, to refer here to the tables presented in the Elocutionist, as a specimen of the classes of words which are most liable to mispronunciation, and as an indication of the importance of the exercise suggested in regard to the use of the dictionary.

The pulpit, in our day, and in this country, is so generally regarded as the standard of accuracy in pronunciation, that more than usual attention to this branch of elocution is justly required of ministers. But some young preachers, in particular, are too prone to shrink from their

* Worcester's Universal and Critical Dictionary, published by Wilkins and Carter, Boston.

ments.

proper responsibleness as scholars, and to accommodate their own style to mere popular usage, while others, from a fastidious anxiety about bare exactness, adhere to the letter of the law of nicety, and even transcend its requireHence we hear, in some American pulpits, the pronunciations-airth, maircy, pairfect, from speakers who follow literally Walker's notation of orthoëpy, but do not pay attention to his own qualification of it. The former class of errors, however, that which arises from accommodation to mere negligent common usage, — is the more prevalent, and particularly in New England. Hence the many broad and obsolete and peculiar sounds which characterize the pulpit pronunciation of this region.

It would seem to be an axiom of education, that in an extensive country like the United States, all young per sons should be everywhere trained to do their part in preserving the unity of language and the refinement of custom. A liberal education should enable every young man to fill with propriety the office of public speaker, in any part of his native country. But the fact is quite otherwise. Our young New England clergy usually carry with them their marked local peculiarities of usage in pronouncing, and throw an unnecessary impediment in the way of their own acceptance as speakers elsewhere. A few months or years, it is true, usually suffice to rub off such points. But a seasonable attention would prevent their existence.

The pulpit orators of our Middle and Western States, are very generally chargeable with gross negligence and improprieties in pronunciation, which a little study in early years would have sufficed to correct. The pulpit cannot command the respect of any but the illiterate, while it tolerates a slovenly inaccuracy and low taste, in the use of language, or in the manner of pronouncing the most ordinary forms of expression. The minister, as an educated, or, at least. a reading man, should ever feel that he is looked to as a model in this particular, and that

his influence in this, as in other things, is either upward or downward.

EXERCISES IN QUALITY.

"Pure or Head Tone."*

This quality of voice belongs to moderate, soft, and subdued utterance, as in the expression of pathos, repose, and solemnity, when not accompanied by grandeur or sublimity. The object in view, in the practice of such passages as the following, is, to secure the power of moulding the voice into perfectly clear, pure, and smooth sound, as the true and proper habit of utterance, but particularly important in all passages of tender and softened effect. This mode of voice characterizes the appropiate reading of some of the Psalms, many of the most affecting hymns, and all the subdued appeals of direct address, in discourses from the pulpit. Pure head tone is of as much service to the public reader and speaker as to the singer. It renders the emission of vocal sound at once clear, easy, natural, and agreeable, and enables the performer to exert his organs without fatigue.

The following, and all other exercises, should be repeated till a perfect vocal execution is attained. To secure fully the quality in view, the "tonic" elements should be repeated in the same style. The ear and the voice will thus become perfectly attuned to the effect.

Pathos.

Ode to Peace.-Cowper.

Come, peace of mind, delightful guest!
Return, and make thy downy nest,

Once more, in this sad heart!

* Properly, pure “head tone,”- the "quality," or resonance, which is naturally inseparable from the upper "register," or range of notes uttered by the human voice. This species of quality is the opposite to "pectoral," — the resonance of the chest, in the execution of the deep, bass notes which form the lower "register."

"Where wilt thou dwell, if not with me,
From avarice and ambition free,

And pleasure's fatal wiles?

For whom, alas! dost thou prepare
The sweets that I was wont to share,
The banquet of thy smiles?

"The great, the gay, shall they partake
The heaven that thou alone canst make?
And wilt thou quit the stream

That murmurs through the dewy mead,
The grove and the sequestered shed,
To be a guest with them?

"For thee I panted; thee I prized;
For thee I gladly sacrificed

Whate'er I loved before;

And shall I see thee start away,

And helpless, hopeless, hear thee say

Invocation to Evening.- Cowper.

"Come, Evening, once again, season of peace; Return, sweet Evening, and continue long! Methinks I see thee in the streaky west,

With matron step slow moving, while the night
Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employed
In letting fall the curtain of repose

On bird and beast, the other, charged for man
With sweet oblivion of the cares of day:

Not sumptuously adorned, nor needing aid,

Like homely-featured Night, of clustering gems;

A star or two, just twinkling on thy brow,
Suffices thee; save that the moon is thine
Not less than hers, not worn, indeed, on high,
With ostentatious pageantry, but set

With modest grandeur in thy purple zone,
Resplendent less, but of an ampler round.
Come, then; and thou shalt find thy votary calm,
Or make me so. Composure is thy gift."

"Aristotle tells us, that the world is a copy, or transcript, of those ideas which are in the mind of the First Being, and that those ideas which are in the mind of man, are a transcript of the world. To this we may add, that words are the transcript of those ideas which are in the mind of man, and that writing or printing is the transcript of words. As the Supreme Being has expressed, and, as it were, printed his. ideas in the creation, men express their ideas in books, which, by this great invention of these latter ages, may last as long as the sun and moon, and perish only in the general wreck of nature.

"There is no other method of fixing those thoughts which arise and disappear in the mind of man, and transmitting them to the last periods of time; no other method of giving a permanency to our ideas, and preserving the knowledge of any particular person, when his body is mixed with the common mass of matter, and his soul retired into the world of spirits. Books are the legacies

* Conversational passages, essays, lectures, and discourses, when read in the study or the parlor, the conference or the lecture-room, may, particularly when composed in moderate and unimpassioned style, be properly read in merely pure “head” tone. But the public reading of the same may, from the larger demands of space, and, consequently, the fuller tone of voice, be carried to the extent of moderate" orotund ut. terance. See page 168.