II. VOCAL TRAINING.-FORCE OF VOICE.

Force relates to loudness of voice or intensity of expression. The general rule of force is to read loud enough to fill the room so that every one can hear distinctly what is read. Of course, the loudness must vary according to the size of the room or the number of hearers. The expression of different feelings, however, requires different degrees of force. Some pieces require gentle or soft force; some, moderate force; and others, loud force. The same piece, also, may require, at times, each of these degrees, in order to express the feeling appropriately.

Soft, or gentle force is appropriate to the expression of peace, tenderness, or sadness.

Moderate, or natural force is the characteristic force of unimpassioned, narrative, descriptive, and didactic composition.

Loud force is characteristic of courage, boldness, defiance; and of what is grand, noble, and sublime.

CONCERT FORCE DRILL.

Repeat three times, the vocals: ā, ē, ī, ō, ū. 1. With soft, or gentle force.

2. With moderate force.

3. With loud, or declamatory force.

I. GENTLE, OR SOFT FORCE.

I. FROM THE STORY OF SCHOOL."

1. The mingled hum of the busy town.
Rose faint from the lower plain,
And we saw the steeple over the trees,
With its motionless, golden vane,

And heard the cattle's musical low,
And the rustle of standing grain.

2. We waited in reverent silence long,
And silence the master kept,

Though still the accustomed saintly smile
Over his features crept;

And we thought, worn out with the lengthened toil
Of the summer's day, he slept.

3. So we quietly rose and left our seats,
And outward into the sun,

From the gathering shade of the dusty room,

Stole silently one by one

For we knew, by the distant striking clock,

It was time the school was done.

4. And left the master sleeping alone,
Alone in his high-backed chair,

With his eyelids and his withered palms
Folded as if in prayer,

And the mingled light and smile on his face,
And we knew not Death was there.

II. MODERATE FORCE.

I. READING AS AN ACCOMPLISHMENT.

1. We had rather have a child return to us from school a first-rate reader, than a first-rate performer on the piano-forte. We should feel that we had a far better pledge for the intelligence and talent of our child. The accomplishment, in its perfection, would give more pleasure. The voice of song is not sweeter than the voice of eloquence. And there may be eloquent readers, as well as eloquent speakers.

2. Let the same pains be devoted to reading, as are required to form an accomplished performer on an

instrument. It is, indeed, a.most intellectual accomplishment. So is music, too, in its perfection. We do by no means undervalue this noble and most delightful art, to which Socrates applied himself, even in his old age. But one recommendation of the art of reading is that it requires a constant exercise of mind. It demands continual and close reflection and thought, and the finest discrimination of thought. It involves, in its perfection, the whole art of criticism on language.

III. LOUD FORCE.

I. THE BELLS.

Hear the loud alarum bells-
Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,

They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,

In the clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire.
Leaping higher, higher, HIGHER,
With a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavor,

Now now to sit or never,

By the side of the pale-faced moon.
O the bells, bells, bells!

What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!

How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour

On the bosom of the palpitating air!

Yet the ear, it fully knows,

By the twanging
And the clanging,

By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells-
Of the bells—

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells
Bells, bells, bells-

In the clamor and the clangor of the bells:

POE.

II. SPARTACUS TO THE GLADIATORS.

If ye are beasts, then stand here like fat oxen, waiting for the butcher's knife! If ye are men-follow me! Strike down yon guard, gain the mountain passes, and there do bloody work, as did your sires at old Thermopyla! Is Sparta dead? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that you do crouch and cower like a belabored hound beneath his master's lash? O comrades! warriors! Thracians! if we must fight, let us fight for ourselves! If we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors! If we must die, let it be under the clear sky, by the bright waters, in noble, honorable battle!

KELLOGG.

III.

TELL'S ADDRESS TO THE MOUNTAINS.

Ye crags and peaks, I'm with you once again!
I hold to you the hands you first beheld,
To show they still are frèe. Methinks I hear
A spirit in your echoes answer me,
And bid your tenant welcome to his hòme
Again! O, sacred fórms, how proud you look!
How high you lift your heads into the sky!
How huge you are! how mighty and how frèe!

KNOWLES.

6. THE BEE PASTURES OF CALIFORNIA.

PART I.

1. When California was wild, it was one sweet beegarden throughout its entire length, north and south, and all the way across from the snowy Sierra to the Ocean. Wherever a bee might fly within the bounds of this virgin wilderness-through the redwood forests, along the banks of the rivers, along the bluffs and headlands fronting the sea, over valley and plain, park and grove, and deep leafy glen, or far up the piney slopes of the mountains-throughout every belt and section of climate, bee flowers bloomed in lavish abundance.

2. Here they grew more or less apart, in special sheets and patches of no great size, there in broad, flowing folds, hundreds of miles in length, zones of polleny forests, zones of flowery chaparral, stream-tangles of rubus and wild rose, sheets of golden compositæ, beds of violets, beds of mint, beds of bryanthus and clover, and so on,-certain species blooming somewhere all the year round.

3. Only a few years ago, the Great Central Plain of California, during the months of March, April, and May, was one smooth, continuous bed of honey-bloom, so marvelously rich that, in walking from one end of it to the other, a distance of more than four hundred miles, your feet would press more than a hundred flowers at every step. Mints, nemophilas, castilleias, gilias, and innumerable compositæ, were so crowded together that, had ninety-nine in every hundred been taken away, the plain would still have seemed extravagantly flowery to any but Californians.

4. The radiant, honeyful corollas, touching and overlapping, and rising above one another, glowed in the living light like a sunset sky-one glorious blaze of purple and gold. Down through the midst flowed many