to others of such a language, deserves to be cultivated with all the care and attention we can bestow.

However, there is yet another ground I may take in reference to this subject. Has it ever struck you as a general rule, that the higher the station of life, the greater the refinement and the more finished the taste of the individual, so much the more pure and polished will you find the tone of the voice and corresponding clearness of articulation. I remember in one of the earlier works of that admirable writer, the Rev. Charles Kingsley,* he describes the hero of his tale as being present at a village revel, and endeavouring, but vainly, to make out the meaning of what he heard around him. The passage is as follows:-"Sadder and sadder, Lancelot tried to listen to the conversation of the men around him. To his astonishment he hardly understood a word of it. It was half-articulate, nasal, guttural, made up almost entirely of vowels, like the speech of savages. He had never been struck before with the significant contrast between the sharp, clearly defined articulation, the vivid and varied tones of the gentleman, when compared with the coarse half-formed growls, as of a company of seals, which he heard round him. That single fact struck him perhaps more deeply than any; it connected itself with many of his physiological fancies; it was the parent of many thoughts and plans of his after life."

I have alluded before to the objections that are sometimes urged against elocution as an art to be studied and practised in general, but especially by those who are in any way likely to take part in public life. If we search into the sources of these objections, I think we should find them chiefly to consist of two classes, viz., those persons who think that a certain impulse, or what they call a natural gift, is enough to ensure success in public speaking, and those who contend that so long as the matter of the discourse is sound and good, the manner and delivery are of very little, if any, importance. Now, to the one class of objections I answer, granting that public speaking is more or less a "natural gift," it is no more so than any other special aptitude for art which God has given us, such as the genius for music, painting or sculpture, and like them all, requires acquaintance with principles as well as study and practice to reach a high standard of excellence; and to the other class of objectors I say, without any hesitation, that with audiences in general the sterling quality, sound sense, and excellent matter of a speech or sermon are but little felt or properly appreciated unless accompanied by, at all events, an apparently earnest manner and effective delivery. Do not let me be misunderstood. I am not so much speaking here of discourses or sermons which may perhaps be intended chiefly for publication hereafter, and may trust to their effect being chiefly produced on the thinker and student, as they quietly read and ponder over such compositions in their studies; but I am speaking here of discourses, the effects of which are intended to be felt, and the aims of the speaker attained at the time of delivery; and I am not speaking of what may be the impressions produced on a select few, but of what is felt by the great majority in audiences and congregations.

It is not always our good fortune to address refined and cultivated assemblies, who are willing to overlook a dull, prosy, wearisome delivery, and awkward or defective manner, for the sake of the excellence of the matter. A preacher has not always a learned university for his congregation, and a barrister is not always arguing abstruse and intricate points of law before the Courts of Chancery, a Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, or judges sitting in banco. The minister of religion has to endeavour to rouse the torpid mind, the apathetic disposition or stolid ignorance of millions of village labourers and "city Arabs city Arabs" throughout the land; and the barrister has to address juries drawn from many varied sources in London and on circuit, as well as learned, courteous, and patient judges. And so, too, if a man is looking to the Senate as the object of his ambition, let him remember that election meetings and dinner assemblies of constituents have to be addressed, as well as a critical and fastidious House of Parliament.

I do not hesitate, then, to say that public speaking, public reading, or, in one comprehensive word, elocution, should be studied by every man who is intended for professional life, or likely at any time to be called upon to address popular assemblies. I believe this to be true as regards all professional or public life, but I think it bears with peculiar force upon those who are designed for the ministry of the Gospel. And for this reason-when we speak in public, we warm with the feelings of the moment, we are carried away often by the rush of our emotions and the flow of our ideas, and even the man who in ordinary circumstances is of a lethargic or unexcitable temperament often, under the influence of powerful passions, rouses up and seems to become almost a different being. This, too, will hold equally good with regard to extempore preaching, but it is often the reverse in the case of the clergyman who has written his sermon, and afterwards reads it aloud to his congregation. In reading, especially if the subject is one very familiar to us, such as the form of morning and evening prayer in our Church Service, repeated by the minister every Sunday, and often every day, there is a tendency, I fear, even if the voice be audible and the articulation distinct, to pronounce the vowels tamely and monotonously, and to make the reading seem, at least in extreme cases, as if it were a mechanical task that must be got through in a given space of time. Now we want something more, whether it be the reading of the Sacred Book, our holy and beautiful Church Liturgy, or the delivery of a discourse from the pulpit, than mere audibility of tone and distinctness of utterance. We want that full pure voice, with its proper inflection, modulation, and poise, which will make the reading thoroughly significant, and bring out all the meaning contained in each sentence of the discourse with the utmost power and expression consistent with personal ease and the dictates of good taste. When this is done there seems indeed to be a soul, a life (if I may use such a metaphor) pervading the sentences so read, and we perceive at once a power and beauty which before we scarcely seemed to feel or recognize.

Now with regard to public reading, I cannot but think (as I do of most things in life), if it be worth doing at all, it is worth doing well. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might:" and I say,

whatsoever words we have to utter, let us speak them, so as to bring them home to our hearers' minds and hearts, with all the truth and of which they are capable.

power

I cannot think it is a matter of indifference, whether a man opens the sacred volume, and reads to his congregation a chapter in the hurried and unmeaning "gabble," (to use a plain but most expressive AngloSaxon word,) or drawls through it in the weary, listless, monotonous tone and manner with which some of us, I am sure, must ere now in our wanderings have heard the word of God-I was about to say-profaned; or whether in voice and accents full and clear, solemn in tone and emphatic in meaning, he makes every word of the inspired page fall not merely on the ear, but on the heart, there abiding, there awakening, there comforting.

Surely if there be such an art, such a power, that art is worth studying, that power is worth acquiring.

I was much struck with the truth of a passage I met with, while perusing a very well-known work by the Rev. James Pycroft-I mean "Twenty Years in the Church.' In the chapter to which I allude Mr. Pycroft says, "To read in a church is no easy matter. You are required to use your voice in a manner wholly new to you. You have to pitch your voice in a certain key, to dwell upon your vowels, and to read much louder than you ever read before. If really natural, you seem artificial, and you must become in a degree artificial to seem natural. Like an actor, you really must, till habit forms a second nature, appear to yourself to exaggerate, that you may not sound flat and feeble to your audience.

"The adventures of any poor curate in quest of a proper tone of voice would often be amusing indeed. At one time I was told I was too low; next Sunday this made me thin and wiry. Then I read in a monotone, to avoid which I became uneven, as if trying every note of the gamut by turns. When at last I was settling down into some regular habit, our doctor, who had been reading some paper on elocution, asked me if I happened to have a pretty good stomach, for he could tell me that I tasked that department not only with my Sunday dinners, but also with my Sunday duty: for, in short, I read from my stomach. Then in altering this, I was alarmed at being told that I read from my throat, and what with bending my chin, and with a stiff cravat, the dreaded 'clerical sore throat' must come in no time. Add to this, I was informed anatomically that the roof of the mouth was nature's sounding-board, and that the nostrils were intended to act like the holes of a flute, and that what was called 'reading through the nose' was a misnomer; for I really ought to read through my nose, and that I had only to hold my nose while I read to acquire at once the true conventicle twang.

"I am only relating a simple fact when I say that every error in the use of my poor lungs, stomach, throat, palate, tongue, teeth, and nasal organ, had their day with me; and rarely do I hear a clergyman read, but I recognise one or more of the same blunders.

"A common fault in reading is the monotone; and when, as I sometimes hear, there is this drowsiness of tone, added to a 'drift,' or see-saw

of measured cadences at the same time, why then even the old nursery tune of 'lullaby baby' itself cannot be compared to such soothing sounds for rocking the cradle of the hearer's brains.

"Now, reading in church requires so much breath, you cannot afford to waste any. The labour is so great to vocal organs (especially, I may add, when not accustomed to the work) that you cannot afford to tire them needlessly. The voice required is so loud, you cannot afford to lose any of the aids of intonation, articulation, or reverberation. In one word, your lungs, throat, and mouth, form one most complicated machine. In reading in church these organs are applied to a new purpose, almost as different as singing is from talking, and the very wisest thing a young curate can do, is to take a course of lessons from a good elocutio master. Nor could any benevolent Churchman spend his money better than by maintaining a clerical reading master for the benefit of the diocese.

Many a clergyman, for want of knowing the benefit he could derive from a course of reading lessons, inflicts a cruel drawl upon his congregation, and most unnecessary labour upon himself. As to the 'clerical sore throat,' the barrister and the speaker are alike free from it. The dissenting preacher is also free from it. It is for the most part a truly orthodox complaint. It arises not from talking, but from reading, and no doubt from reading badly. Though I would impress that any man may sustain injury if he reads when he has a sore throat. To shew what may be attained by taking a course of reading lessons, I will add an anecdote relating to one of the most able and experienced elocutionists of the day. A certain eminent actor being rather indisposed, resolved one night, not actually to absent himself, but to deliver his part without exertion. Much to his surprise, he was told he never spoke so distinctly or could be heard so well before. From that observation he discovered the grand secret of reading audibly without effort, or comparative fatigue, and Mr. formed his system of in

struction accordingly."

Now there is very great truth contained in the passages I have just read to you, and the experience of the poor curate, who is the hero in "Twenty Years in the Church," must, I am convinced from my own observations, be the experience of thousands.

But there are many other ways in which men, whether clerical or lay, may find it of inestimable value to be able to speak at the right time the right word in the right way, and possessing this power, may find results flowing from it scarcely calculable by human wisdom.

Thank God, the comparative apathy and indifference to surrounding vice and wretchedness which characterised a preceding generation is fast passing away from us, and we have but to look around and see the noble institutions, the philanthropic societies, which are springing up throughout the length and breadth of the land, to be convinced how much more alive men are to their responsibilities and duties than they were fifty years ago. Now a man, whether it be his lot to live in a pleasant country village amid a simple agricultural population, or in crowded cities and among those peculiar forms of vice which infest all great towns, will find plenty of opportunities for doing good if he will watch for them. You will, indeed, be ever on the look-out for the right season in which to

speak the right word. You will (and though I am addressing men preparing for various professions, I speak here particularly to those who are about to enter the sacred ministry of the Church) make yourselves acquainted with all the classes that surround you, but more especially with the poor, the afflicted, and the ignorant; you will learn their wants; you will sympathise with their many struggles, privations, and distresses, and will strive, as far as in your power lies, to minister to their temporal as well as spiritual necessities. Suppose you are called, as doubtless you will be often, very often, to the bedside of some poor wretched man or woman, stricken with disease, borne down in mind and body by the remembrances of many deeds that could be wished, too late, undone, and seeking, vainly seeking, for rest and comfort. In fulfilment of the sacred trust especially confided to you, you endeavour to lead that anxious mind, that sorrow-stricken heart, to that Divine Source where alone true repose and consolation are to be found: you kneel by that bedside and

pray for that poor sufferer: or you open the Book of books, and read to him such passages as you think most appropriate to his particular circumstances and condition. Do you deem it indifferent with what tone of voice and manner you pray for him or read to him? Do you think he will be equally affected, whether your whole heart seems in the work, or whether you read or pray in a voice and manner that, at all events, seem cold and formal, or hurried and careless, and void of all expression and meaning? I say emphatically, No! God works commonly by human instruments, and it is the bounden duty of those who are more especially chosen to be His instruments in the conveyance of His divine message, that they should cultivate their powers to the very utmost, to render them efficient in the all-important duties confided to them.

Though it is in the Senate, in the Church, and at the Bar that the advantages of being skilled in the art of elocution will be most manifest, yet there is scarcely any calling now pursued by men of liberal education, in which a knowledge of its principles and moderate efficiency in its practice will not be found at times most useful. The medical man has to lecture to his pupils in the anatomical theatre; the officer in the army or navy to give commands and issue orders, and sometimes, moreover, make addresses to the men who are under his authority; the engineer to explain intricate calculations and elaborate plans before committees and other persons; and all these, and I might mention other vocations, cannot (it must be admitted, I think) but derive great benefit from acquiring an art which enables them to speak clearly and intelligibly to their hearers, and with ease, comfort, and freedom to themselves.

But I will view the subject now in another light, and on a much lower ground—I mean simply as an intellectual recreation. And let me ask, save music and song, what social pleasure is there greater than that of reading aloud, as they should be read, the great masters of English prose and poetry? The public readings which are now being carried on during the winter months for the amusement and relaxation of toiling thousands in so many parts of England, as well as in the metropolis, sufficiently prove this. To any person who has been present at these social gatherings, and witnessed the delight of an audience when a skilful reader has