communication which it was his office to make, and to which all his energies should have been devoted.

The easy, self-possessed speaker, on the contrary, imparts composure by his very manner. His flowing speech, and unconstrained action, cause his thoughts to glide easily into the mind. His unembarrassed and natural utterance finds its way immediately to the sympathies of his audience: persuasion dwells on the very accents of his voice: he seems to mould the mind at will: he se-, cures the attention by winning both ear and eye: his hearers follow the strain of his remarks without effort: their complacency with the speaker predisposes them to receive the truths which he inculcates.

An easy, unconstrained style, in speaking, is more dependent on culture and practice, than is any other trait of elocution. Attention and diligence, however, are the only conditions on which a speaker can become effectually master of himself, as to outward manner. Early educa tion, if it were what it should be, would mould all cultivated men into habitual ease in expression, from their first attempts at speaking, in boyhood. But our present arrangements at school and college, do not call the individual into practice often enough to allow him to feel at. home in the act. The process of criticising, too, whether it is performed by the teacher, or devolved on the speak er's class-fellows, is customarily limited to the indication of some prominent faults, after the exercise is over. This practice may prune and repress and chill; but it never can inspire and guide and develope and warm and invigorate. Its usual effect is to restrain and embarrass. The student feels, in the exercise of declamation, that he is speaking before critics, for the express purpose of being criticised. He knows he is not uttering his personal feelings to sympathetic listeners; and his reserve of manner betrays the fact of his conscious condition. He studies coolness and correctness, rather than earnestness and warmth. He shuns the natural glow of feeling and ex

pression, and quenches rather than cherishes the spirit of eloquence.*

Early education ought to exhibit and implant principles which would anticipate and preclude the growth of false habits. A preventive regimen should be adopted in this, as in every other branch of culture. The office of instruction is to preöcupy the mind, and infuse truth, rather than to eradicate error,-to form and mould and strengthen the power of expression, rather than to trim excresences, to inspire genuine emotion, and to infuse true grace, rather than to correct the petty errors of judgment, or check the transient excesses of feeling, and castigate the venial errors of immature taste. These offices, it is true,

form a part of the duties of the faithful teacher. But they are the mere "mint, anise, and cummin," compared to "the weightier matters of the law."

The spirit of finical criticism invariably turns away the speaker's attention from his subject to himself. It troubles his mind with an embarrassing self-consciousness, which constrains his manner, and cools his emotion.

The professional speaker has to labor under the disadvantage of a long course of such training. No wonder, therefore, that his style should be unnatural and constrained, as a result of habit and association. Against such evils the student who would form his manner to a free, expressive character, must necessarily watch, and zealously guard himself by constant practice. His chief aids will lie in the attentive study of the freest and most natural of all the forms of expression, those which are presented in the perfect products of art, more particularly those of sculpture and painting. He will be assisted by the daily practice of reading and reciting from the

The easy and fluent manner of students from the South, forms an obvious contrast to the prevalent stiffness and reserve of the local manner at our Eastern colleges. The difference, in this case, is owing, largely, to the unrestrained freedom of style, which results from the modes of Southern education, during the early period of life.

freest and most flowing language of poetry. He will de rive still more benefit from accustoming himself to the vivid recitation of the most natural and expressive passages of the drama. No exercise in elocution is so con

ducive to freedom of manner as this.*

The general effect on the preacher's style of address in the pulpit, as regards due freedom and facility, is, no doubt, dependent on the extent to which he accustoms himself to mingle with society, and contract that familiarity with man which renders the office of communicating with him easy and spontaneous. The secluded student is little prepared for one main office of the ministry,that of free, unembarrassed utterance. Like every other art worth mastering, it requires of every individual, culture and practice, as the only conditions on which he can attain skill and facility.

VARIETY, MONOTONY.

Sentiments which possess force and interest to the mind, though they sometimes run comparatively long in one channel of feeling and expression, do not pursue an undeviating, unvarying course. The natural tendency of impressive thought, is to call up varied emotions and diversified forms of imagination. The appropriate communication of such thought, implies, therefore, a varying tone, aspect, and action. Trite thoughts may justify a monotonous manner of expressing them. But public address, especially from the pulpit, forbids the presentation of thread-bare topics and insignificant ideas. We pardon these in the aimless movement of unpremeditated con

*The ancient practice of acting plays at school and college, and even at professional institutions, was founded on a true impression of the importance of free and natural manner in speaking.

versation, but not on occasions when numbers are assembled to hear important and impressive truths.

The popular complaint, therefore, that preachers are deficient in variety of manner in their speaking, — although sometimes an arbitrary objection, founded on a vague and general impression, regardless of particular circumstances which may happen to forbid variety, — is by no means destitute of foundation. Sermons are too commonly written after the fashion of academic themes on prescribed common-place topics. The mind of the writer pursues, in such cases, an unexciting, mechanical routine of thought; his pen betrays the fact in its trite language; and his tones,,- his very looks and gestures, -repeat the effect to ear and eye, in flat and wearisome monotony.

The defects of early education, which, in other points, are so injurious to manner and so destructive to eloquence, reveal themselves distinctly here. The speaker in the pulpit carries with him the deadening influence of years of false habit and lifeless utterance, contracted from the neglect of his style in youth; from the custom of declaim. ing, in an unmeaning and inexpressive way, passages either unintelligible or uninteresting to him; and. sometimes, from the stiffening effect of the arbitrary directions which he has received in the shape of formal instruction. The lifeless tones of school reading, are still haunting his ear, as an unconscious standard; and he consequently observes the beaten round of a uniform force, a uniform pitch, and a uniform gait of voice, destitute of expression, -the primitive tone of no meaning and no feeling, which he instinctively and very justly applied in childhood, to what he could neither understand nor feel, but a tone which inveterate habit has made natural to his ear. To such modes of voice the preacher not unfrequently adds a lifeless stillness of body, and an insipid sameness of gesture, which produce a similar effect on the eye to that which his utterance exerts on the ear.

The fault of monotony is, if anywhere, unpardonable in the pulpit, where the speaker has the range of the universe, for his subjects, and the topics of spiritual and eternal life for his habitual themes. Why should the elocution of the preacher be almost proverbially monotonous ? Why should it so often furnish just ground for the sleepy hearer to devolve the fault of his condition on the preacher's voice?

The easy remedy for this state of matters, lies in the study of elocution, and the cultivation of expressive tone and action. A knowledge of the principles of audible and visible expression, will enable the student to trace the natural and appropriate difference of tones, and to identify every mode of utterance with its peculiar characteristic emotion. It will be impossible for him, afterwards, to mistake a dead level of voice for expressive variation. The discipline which the study of clocution prescribes, will enable him to acquire that command over his organs by which he may easily execute every transition and change of expression, which appropriate utterance or action requires. He will thus learn to substitute, for his pipe with one note, or his harp with one string, the natural, varied and powerful effect of man's living voice, inspired by varied emotion. He will be enabled to resume something of that vivid effect of bodily attitude and motion, which made him, in childhood, the envied model of the orator, in the freedom, variety, and efficacy of his expressive action. The ever-varying style of Scripture will, thenceforth, no longer be misrepresented by his flat sameness of voice; the inspiring hymn will not have its appropriate effect quenched by the morbid dullness of his heavy style of reading; nor will his discourse any longer operate, by its "sleepy tune," as a soothing soporific.

The diligent cultivation of his manner, will enable the preacher to breathe life and freshness into all its aspects, and infuse a corresponding effect into his ministrations. The subjects which he presents, will naturally assume