and compound sounds which our twenty-six letters represent. It is to the ear what a fair handwriting is to the eye, and relates, of course, to the sounds, not to the names, of both vowels and consonants. It depends on the exact positions and correct operations of the vocal powers, and on the ability to vary them with rapidity, precision, and effect. Thus articulation is purely an intellectual act, and belongs not to any of the brute creation.

Be very particular in pronouncing the jaw or voice-breakers, and cease not till you can give every sound fully, correctly, and distinctly. If your vocal powers are well exercised by faithful practice on the more difficult combinations, they will acquire a facility of movement, a precision of action, a flexibility, grace, and force truly surprising.

The awful cruelties, barbarisms, horrors, crimes, massacres, and conflagrations of civil wars, regardless of rights or wrongs, wreak rough, wrathful revenge on your shrill-shrieking daughters. The forest's shades and the fortresses' foreheads faced the forecastle's forked form; thatched the theft and thaw'd the thick thimble, thwack athwart the thyroid.

Self-possession, under all circumstances, is a most desirable attainment. Running the gauntlet will test it. We have all heard of the practice that prevails among some tribes of Indians called “running the gauntlet." A company is arranged in two rows, a few yards apart, and a prisoner is obliged to run between the ranks. Each throws his hatchet at him as he passes, and if he escapes this ordeal without being killed he is permitted to live without further hazard. In the important exercise here recommended, each member of the class, after making some proficiency, memorizes and recites a strong and powerful sentence, and the others try to put out or break down the one that is speaking, by all sorts of remarks, sounds, looks, and actions, though without touching him; and the gauntlet-speaker girds up the loins of his mind and endeavors to keep the fountain of feeling higher than the streams, and so long as he does so he is safe; but alas for him that shrinks into himself and yields to his opponents.

Any one who can recite the following with expression, under the noise, confusion, and jests of the class, will have achieved a great

success:

"Hast thou, in feverish and unquiet sleep,—
Dreamt-th't some merciless DEMON of the air
Rais'd thee aloft,-and held thee by the hair
Over the brow-of a down-looking steep,

Gaping, below, into a CHASM-so deep
Th't, by the utmost straining of thine eye,
Thou canst no resting-place descry;

Not e'en a bush-to save thee, shouldst thou sweep
Adown the black descent; that then the hand
Suddenly parted thee, and left thee there,
Holding-but by finger-tips the bare

And jagged ridge above, that seems as sand
To crumble 'neath thy touch ?—If so, I deem
Th't thou hast had rather an ugly dream."

The following will be easier:

"Echoed from earth a hollow roar

Like ocean on the midnight shore;
A sheet of lightning o'er them wheeled,
The solid ground beneath them reel'd;
In dust sank roof and battlement,
Like webs the giant walls were rent;
Red, broad, before his startled gaze,

The monarch saw his Egypt blaze.

Still swelled the plague-the flame grew pale;
Burst from the clouds the charge of hail;

With arrowy keenness, iron weight,

Down poured the ministers of fate;

Till man and cattle, crushed, congealed,
Covered with death the boundless field.”

"Roll proudly on! brave blood is with thee sweeping,
Poured out by sons of thine,

When sword and spirit forth in joy were leaping
Like thee, victorious Rhine!

Go, tell the seas that chain shall bind thee never;
Sound on, by hearth and shrine;

Sing through the hills that thou art free forever;
Lift up thy voice, O Rhine!"

Vir. How! is it something can't be told

At once? Speak out, boy! Ha! your looks are loaded
With matter. Is 't so heavy that your tongue

Can not unburden them? Your brother left

The camp on duty yesterday—hath aught
Happened to him? Did he arrive in safety?
Is he safe? Is he well?

In the leader exercises one reads until he or she makes a mistake in articulation, the entire class being critics for the occasion. The moment the leader makes a mistake the next one takes up the word, repronounces it, and proceeds until he is dethroned by an error, and so on around the class. This is an exciting exercise, and requires all to have their eyes and ears open and their tongues supple. All must be careful to mind the "stops."

EXERCISE 1. Cicero and DemOSTHENES.-An orator, addressing himself more to the passions, naturally has much passionate ardor; whilst another, possessing an elevation of style and majestic gravity, is never cold, though he has not the same vehemence. In this respect do these great orators differ. Demosthenes-abounds in concise sublimity; Cicero,-in diffuseness: the former, on account of his destroying and consuming everything by his violence, rapidity, strength, and vehemence, may be compared to a hurricane or thunderbolt; the latter, to a wide extended conflagration, spreading in every direction with a great, constant, and irresistible flame.

EXERCISE 2. THE POWER OF IMAGINATION.

The lunatic, the lover, and the poet

Are of IMAGINATION-all compact:

One-sees more devils-than vast hell can hold;

That-is the MADMAN. The LOVER, all as frantic,

Sees Helen's beauty-in a brow of Egypt.

The POET's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from HEAVEN-to earth, from earth—to HEAVEN;
And, as IMAGINATION-bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Forms them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name."

EXERCISE 3. THE HUMAN VOICE.-Among all the wonderful varieties of artificial instruments which discourse excellent music, where shall we find one that can be compared to the human voice? And where can we find an instrument comparable to the human mind, upon whose stops the real musician, the poet, and the orator sometimes lays his hands, and avails himself of the entire compass of its magnificent capacities? Oh! the length, the breadth, the height, and the depth of music and eloquence!

EXERCISE 4. SELF-SACRIFICING AMBITION.-We need a loftier ideal to nerve us for heroic lives. To know and feel our nothingness without regretting it; to deem fame, riches, personal happiness, but shadows of which human good is the substance; to welcome pain, privation, ignominy, so that the sphere of human knowledge, the empire of virtue, be thereby extended: such is the soul's temper in which the heroes of the coming age shall be cast. When the stately monuments of mightiest conquerors shall have become shapeless and forgotten ruins, the humble graves of earth's Howards and Frys shall still be freshened by the tears of fondly admiring millions, and the proudest epitaph shall be the simple entreaty,

"Write me as one who loved his fellow-men."

CHAPTER XII.

ACCENT-INFLECTION-EMPHASIS-CADENCE.

Accent takes its place in the orthoëpy of words. Inflection gives true expression to words. Emphasis defines their value in a sentence. By accent we divide the sounds in a word into syllables (so called), and by giving more stress to one particular combination than to the others we enunciate the word properly.

The rudimental principles of accent and emphasis, and the manner of producing them, were given in the exercises for the vowel-sounds. We have been very particular in directing attention to the distinctive characteristics of the vowel, subvowel, and aspirate-sounds, and to their distinctive utterance in all words wherein they are sounded.

Words are made up of one or more syllables; but if we pronounce all the syllables with equal stress of voice, the result, so far as sound is concerned, will be that no word has been articulated. Therefore accent is the discreting element of words, and plays the important part of directing their pronunciation, and giving beauty and individuality to their proportions.

Some words, meaning very different things, are spelled alike, and distinguished by their accentuation alone; that is, the stress is placed on one syllable in the one and on another syllable in the other; as, Au-gust, the name of a month, and au-gust, an adjective expressing something grand or majestic. So also many other words differ in meaning when used to represent different parts of speech.

The pronunciation of the English language, like most others, is arbitrary, and, like other things, is exposed to the caprices of fashion and taste, and not unfrequently to vulgarism; but its most deadly foe is affectation. Provincialisms break in upon uniform rules; and all combined leave but a very uncertain clew to direct us in the use of accent. Orthoëpists disagree, and it is not the province of this work to decide. What is required by us is that on whatever syllable the accent is placed it shall be clearly, distinctly, and musically rendered. Accent embraces three functions-Stress, Time, and Pitch-which we will illustrate as follows:

Accent denotes pitch, or the stepping down or up from a note or half-note, as the case may be.

Pitch and time may both be represented in the word ac-cent so as to correspond to one note and a half-note in music, the accented syllable taking the whole note. The following will make it plain :

The forcible prolongation of pitch on a particular syllable is called accent. Any one who is well acquainted with the musical scale, though never having practiced with reference to speech, may readily ascertain this upward and downward intonation of the tones and semitones by catching the note of the vowel-sound, and striking its corresponding tone or key on some instrument. The aspirates have nothing to do with the music of the voice.

RULE. The accented syllable should be made more forcible in utterance and of greater prolongation than other syllables in the word, and on either a higher or lower pitch of voice.

It will be well to recall what has been before frequently said about the functions of the vowels as the conveying element of the word. The following arrangement of syllables will indicate the ranges of voice when properly accentuating a word:

Any combination of sounds that represent distinct ideas, though they be monosyllables, may be said to have accent. But accent is more clearly discernible in words of two or more syllables; for it is the thread with which we unite letters and syllables into words.

There have been some critical discussions on the subject of the change of pitch which accent requires. Sheridan, in an elaborate treatise on accent, declares it to be simple force on a syllable, and likens it to "the hard and soft taps on a drum-head," which are exactly on the same pitch, the more forcible tap producing the louder sound. Accent can be produced exactly in this way, and in our rudimentary practice of accent on the vowel-sounds we have so given it. But to say that the accented and unaccented syllables in words are always on the same pitch is to make a statement that can not be true, and which must have arisen from an uncultivated ear.

So little attention has been given to the cultivation and detection of the delicate shades of voice-sound that the ear is rarely able to