Nothing, however, in the development of the penetrative action of the mind in Vocal Expression can take the place of the thorough study of the best authors. There must not only be a study of the process of the thought in all forms of literature, but there must be a practical interpretation of this thought in the author's own words through Vocal Expression. The student may also be led by this means to study an author who will be essentially helpful to him. An author can be selected who is strong where the student is weak. By an earnest endeavor to give the thought of such an author, to express the process of his mind, his manner will be more or less unconsciously assimilated, and the weaknesses corrected. Problem LXXXIII. Study the method of different authors, the logical sequence of their ideas, and their selection of the right words to express these ideas, and interpret the spirit of each author truthfully in vocal expression. 302. JOHN HAMPDEN. IN Hampden, and in Hampden alone, were united all the qualities which at such a crisis were necessary to save the state-the valor and energy of Cromwell, the discernment and eloquence of Vane, the humanity and moderation of Manchester, the stern integrity of Hale, the ardent public spirit of Sydney. Others might possess all the qualities which were necessary to save the popular party in the crisis of danger; Hampden alone had both the power and the inclination to restrain its excesses in the hour of triumph. Others could conquer; he alone could reconcile. A heart as bold as his brought up the cuirassiers who turned the tide of battle on Marston Moor. As skilful an eye as his watched the Scotch army descending from the heights over Dunbar. But it was when to the sullen tyranny of Laud and Charles had succeeded the fierce conflict of sects and factions, ambitious of ascendency and burning for revenge, it was when the vices and the ignorance which the old tyranny had generated had threatened the new freedom with destruction, that England missed the sobriety, the selfcommand, the perfect soundness of judgment, the perfect rectitude of intention to which the history of revolutions furnishes no parallel, or furnishes a parallel in Washington alone. Macaulay. 803. EFFECT OF DISTANCE. ARE not all natural things, it may be asked, as lovely near as far away? By no means. Look at the clouds and watch the delicate sculpture of their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnificent rolling. They are meant to be beheld far away: they are shaped for their place high above your head: approach them and they diffuse into vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapor. Look at the crest of the Alp from the far-away plains over which its light is cast, whence human souls have communed with it by myriads. It was built for its place in the far-off sky: approach it, and as the sound of the voice of man dies away about its foundations, and the tide of human life is met at last by the eternal "Here shall thy proud waves be stayed,” the glory of its aspect fades into blanched fearfulness; its purple walls are rent into grisly rocks, its silver fretwork saddened into wasting snow; the stormbrands of ages are on its breast, the ashes of its own ruin lie solemnly on its white raiment. If you desire to perceive the great harmonies of the form of a rocky mountain, you must not ascend upon its sides. All there is disorder and accident, or seems so. Retire from it, and as your eye commands it more and more, you see the ruined mountain world with a wider glance; behold! dim sympathies begin to busy themselves in the disjointed mass: line binds itself into stealthy fellowship with line: group by group the helpless fragments gather themselves into ordered companies: new captains of hosts, and masses of battalions, become visible one by one; and far-away answers of foot to foot and bone to bone, until the powerless is seen risen up with girded loins, and not one piece of all the unregarded heap can now be spared from the mystic whole. Ruskin. 304 HE faced his audience with a tranquil mien, and a beaming aspect that was never dimmed. He spoke, and in the measured cadence of his quiet voice there was intense feeling, but no declamation, no passionate appeal, no superficial and feigned emotion. It was simple colloquy - a gentleman conversing. How was it done? Ah! how did Mozart do it— how Raphael? The secret of the rose's sweetness, of the bird's ecstacy, of the sunset's glory- that is the secret of genius and eloquence. What was heard, what was seen, was the form of noble manhood, the courteous and self-possessed tone, the flow of modulated speech, sparkling with matchless richness of illustration, with apt allusion, and happy anecdote, and historic parallel, with wit and pitiless invective, with melodious pathos, with stinging satire, with crackling epigram, and limpid humor, like the bright ripples that play around the sure and steady prow of the resistless ship. Like an illuminated vase of odors, he glowed with concentrated and perfumed fire. The divine energy of his conviction utterly possessed him, and his "Pure and eloquent blood Spoke in his cheek, and so distinctly wrought, Was it Pericles swaying the Athenian multitude? Was it Apollo breathing the music of the morning from his lips? It was an American patriot, a modern son of liberty, with a soul as firm and as true as was ever consecrated to unselfish duty, pleading with the American conscience for the chained and speechless victims of American inhumanity. "Wendell Phillips." Curtis. XXXIX. CLEARNESS. THE HE cause of language and expression is the desire to communicate with other minds. Hence, the essential requisite of all writing, speaking, or reading is that everything shall be clear. Delivery aims to make people hear, understand, and feel. The clear comprehension of meaning lies at the foundation of all expression. Without this there can be no true feeling or adequate thought. Clearness in Vocal Expression, aside from the mechanical elements of articulation and the right qualities of voice, is dependent chiefly upon the saliency of the central words and the subordination of adjunctive words or phrases. There must be such a variety of inflections and changes of pitch, emphasis, and subordination, that the logical sequence of the thought shall be clearly shown. All ideas must be brought into right relationship with each other. There must be a simple and definite progression from idea to idea. One idea must be introduced at a time, however complex its relations as an object of specific attention. Every antithesis, comparison, or logical sequence of ideas must be made definitely manifest through the voice. All the elements of Vocal Expression, all modulations of the voice, must have direct relationship to the process of thinking. There are many causes of a lack of clearness. Emphasis of too many words, a lack of emphasis, and a lack of subordination are among the most common. In general, clearness in Vocal Expression is dependent upon clearness of thinking and the enlarged and clear accentuation of the processes of thought and its direct domination of the modulations of the voice. An idea may be clear to the speaker; but on account of the failure to think slowly and to modulate his voice according to his thought, he may confuse the minds of his hearers. Problem LXXXIV. Take a passage which is full of depth and subtlety of thought, and by definite thinking and emphasis make it clear to another mind. 305. THE FUNCTION OF ART. OUR human speech is naught, Our human testimony false, our fame And human estimation words and wind. Why take the artistic way to prove so much? Of speaking truth, to mouths like mine, at least. How look a brother in the face and say "Thy right is wrong, eyes hast thou, yet art blind, Thine ears are stuffed and stopped, despite their length, Say this as silvery as tongue can troll— The anger of the man may be endured, The shrug, the disappointed eyes of him Are not so bad to bear- but here's the plague, That all this trouble comes of telling truth, Which truth, by when it reaches him, looks false, Nor recognizable by whom it left; While falsehood would have done the work of truth. But Art, wherein man nowise speaks to men, Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word. 306 JUST in proportion as the writer's aim, consciously or unconsciously, comes to be the transcribing, not of the world, not of mere fact, but of his sense of it, he becomes an artist, his work fine art; and good art in proportion to the truth of his presentment of that sense. Truth! there can be no merit, no craft at all, without that. And further, all beauty is in the long run only fineness of truth, or what we call expression, the finer accommodation of speech to that vision within. 307. NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. Walter Pater. SWEEP away the illusion of Time; glance, if thou have eyes, from the near moving-cause to its far-distant Mover: The stroke that came transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? O, could I transport thee direct from the Beginnings to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder! Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish. Again, could anything be more miraculous than an actual authentic Ghost? The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human Life he so loved; did he never so much as look into Himself? The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and as authentic as heart could wish; wellnigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress the threescore years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that |