and that habits of self control and collectedness of mind in speaking, shall have become thoroughly established.

As there is a tone of preparation for subsequent force and power, which characterizes an appropriate mode of beginning, so there is a marked modification of manner which warns the hearers that the speaker is drawing to a close.

The mental act from which it results, is that of looking forwards, and accurately calculating one's approximation to the actual close, while at the same time there is a sense of the propriety of giving a corresponding warning to the hearers.

It is not advisable to enter into a complete and scientific analysis of all the modifications of the voice which result. The most important to be known are the following.

The rate of utterance is more slow. The syllables are more prolonged. The voice descends by successive stages from phrase to phrase. The phrases also become shorter, and are separated by longer pauses.

Though just before the end, there generally occurs a phrase on which the voice must suddenly rise again, yet the rise will not be so high as it would be if a new paragraph were to be introduced. After such a rise, the final sentence or phrase is very low-lower than that which immediately preceded the higher phrase.

The delivery is generally less pointed and explanatory, and inclines more to the meditative mood. As the voice descends lower and lower in pitch, its tone must be made firm and strong, or the delivery will become faint and inefficient.

The worst fault that can be exhibited in concluding an address, is that of suffering the voice, after the tone of winding

off has been entered upon, to rise too high in pitch, and at the same time proceed in that more lively and familiar manner, which causes the hearers to suppose that the speaker is not in fact near the close, but is proceeding to add still further remarks. This disappointment is extremely disagreeable, and if, as is sometimes done, the fault is repeated two or three times, the hearers may lose patience, and cease to give further attention. In very many instances, when a discourse is complained of for being too long, the complaint originates, not in the actual length, but in this repeated expectation of a close, and subsequent disappointment.

THE DIATONIC MELODY OF SPEECH.

This was first described by Dr. Rush, to whose work, or to the briefer treatise of Prof. Day, we must refer for a full and scientific account of it. With respect however, to the examples given in the latter work, in illustration of different varieties of melody, those who consult it must bear in mind, that its author has intentionally avoided deciding positively, as to the strict appropriateness of one melody rather than another, for various passages in respect to which there may exist differences of taste.

A general description of the diatonic melody may be given as follows. Take any one phrase, clause or sentence, in which there occurs no sudden change of the course of thought or expression, and the voice either continues on the same line of pitch, or rises and falls gradually and by very small distances between successive syllables.

A sudden and wide transition of pitch is made only when it is necessary to give a marked and distinctive emphasis, or a sudden change of expression.

If a course of thought flows evenly along, with fullness of language, and in a style destitute of striking and pointedly emphatic words, an agreeable delivery will run in the diatonic melody. In such a case, to make wide changes of pitch on words which require no emphatic inflexion, will have the effect of introducing an emphasis or a change of expression where none is wanted.

Hence no direction is required for enabling a reader or speaker to exhibit this natural quality of speech, farther than never to make a sudden change of pitch on a word, unless for some definite reason in reference to emphasis or expression on that particular word. As this melody is one of the natural habits of the voice, it ought to be exhibited independently of study and practice particularly directed to its acquisition.

Yet its description has justly been considered one of the most valuable of the contributions made by Dr. Rush to elocution. Before the publication of his work, it was very common to observe that those who took especial pains to read with an agreeable animation, were in the habit of arbitrarily skipping up and down in pitch, without reference to appropriate emphasis, and thus not only injuring materially the grace and dignity of their reading, but obscuring the sense and natural expression of the language.

Some writers seem to suppose that this plain melody is not heard in lively and familiar conversation. We think their opinion unfounded. The error results from not distinguishing the unemphatic from the emphatic portions of sentences uttered in such conversation. The more frequent and striking the emphatic changes of pitch, the more indeed is the plain diatonic. melody broken in upon, yet still all but a few of the syllables proceed as above described. There is indeed, a certain vulgar liveliness of manner sometimes heard in conversation, which constitutes a true exception to the general fact which we assert, This is not however exhibited by those who converse in an agreeable style.

An instance occasionally, though rarely occurs, in which it is the natural tendency of a person's voice to proceed in a melody of wider intervals, and thus have a tone of banter or mockery, even on the most serious occasions. A speaker who is so unfortunate as to have a voice of this sort, is liable to appear strangely undignified and incapable of serious earnestness. The tone of the Irish peasantry, which seems to us in this country so unnatural, and to have an expression of so much confusedness of feeling, is owing to the fact that it runs in a melody of thirds instead of seconds, and exhibits the vanishing instead of the radical stress. We have no provincial tones in the United States as strongly marked as those of Great Britain and Ireland, in which countries they are often characterized by oddity of melody.

Those who wish to study the voice in a strictly scientific manner, must acquire a knowledge of music sufficient to enable them to investigate the diatonic melody in its theory and accurate analysis. For the purposes of the present treatise, it will be most useful, simply to mention that a liability to violate its principles in practical reading and speaking, will certainly be prevented by the course of lessons which we have prescribed.

When the speaker has been sufficiently accustomed to hearty and sincere efforts in the open air, and in large rooms, his voice habitually proceeds in this melody, in precisely the same degree as it becomes capable of expulsive energy, slowness, prolongation, a grave, full tone, and a bold and commanding emphasis and expression.

By the same practice also, the odd voices which we have just described, lose their unfortunate peculiarity, and become dignified and graceful.

Before dismissing this subject, it should be stated that there are two important exceptions to the universality of the diatonic melody in natural speech. First, interrogative and conditional

sentences, as will be explained in part second of this treatise, run in a melody of thirds or fifths. Secondly, the tones of irony, sarcasm, sneering, mockery, and other such expressions, are always in a melody strongly marked by wide intervals. In this we see the explanation of the peculiar impression made by the above mentioned odd voices. Let the student try the uttering of sentences with either of these expressions, and he will be able to distinguish that his voice skips by wide intervals up and down in pitch, and proceeds, as it were in waving, curling and twisting tones. The general run indeed, (to use technical language,) is in waves of thirds and fifths.