By a judicious placing of the important and minor pauses within the line, the artistic reader does justice to thought and feeling, and at the same time replaces the jingling mechanics of meter with a noble and varied rhythm that fascinates the ear and wins the heart and the judgment.

A Simple Example.-As a simple illustration of the above statements, let us study these lines, from Tennyson's 'The Lady of Shalott.'

Willows whiten, aspens quiver,

Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs forever
By the island in the river

Flowing down to Camelot.

The average reader gets little but jingle out of these lines. No need here of a single emphatic inflection, and therefore none should be made; the melody ought to flow as smoothly as does the thought, as does the river; for which reason, the rising inflection, the simple slide and the wave of the second, should prevail throughout, until the last word is reached. 'Camelot,' the cadencial word, has all its inflections falling, because its first syllable bears the accent; but the word need not be emphasized inflectively-indeed, should not be, as it would mar the repose of the poet's picture, and convert the lines into a piece of hydrological information, of which we are already possessed, in reading the preceding

stanza.

The first line consists of two clauses, forming two groups, each requiring a pause after it, of course, the second the longer; the second clause distinctly, but not greatly, lower in pitch than the first.

The second line begins a statement that runs throughout the remainder of the stanza, the poet adding circumstance to circumstance-piecing out the thought, until it is finished.

The emphatic words are to be indicated by stress, volume, and quantity, not ‘overdone, or come tardy off.' After each grouping pause, the melody should recommence at the preceding terminal pitch, that the groups may be aggregated into a single thought unit. Let the grouping be as follows:

Little breezes dusk and shiver' through the wavell that runs forever by the island in the river flowing down to Camelot.

The sign, attached to 'forever' and 'river', is intended to indicate the grouping by quantity, or hold, instead of the pause of silence.

A More Difficult Example. The following, from Drake's 'The American Flag', will tax the skill of the skillfulest. The first and last lines present no especial difficulty, but the second and third require both judgment and dexterity.

Then shall thy meteor glances glow,

And cowering foes shall sink beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below

That lovely messenger of death!

Of course, it is the fault of the poet, that each of the lines in question ends with a preposition, and that, at the same time, he has chosen a form of verse that asks for full quantity and stress on the final accent of the line; so that, in these instances, the lowly dandelion is ordered to leave the ranks and to assume the swelling port of the drum-major, the stalwart and gaudy sunflower. Moreover, each of these prepositions groups syntactically with the following line.

To give a reading at all satisfactory, the reader must arbitrate and reconcile as best he may the conflicting claims of sound and sense.

The best solution of the problem I am able to suggest, is this:

Let the first line be read with vivid rising melody and crescendo volume, culminating, on 'glow', with a strong, swelling, falling (direct) wave. Begin the next line at the terminal pitch of 'glow', and rise again, to culminate in an abrupt falling slide of fourth or fifth on 'shrink', which is to be followed by a long grouping and emphatic pause. Pronounce 'beneath' as a monotone phrase, deriving its pitch from the vanish of 'shrink', with moderate prolongation of its last syllable, and followed by a pause of the very briefest. Mass 'each gallant arm that strikes', carefully avoiding a pause after 'arm'; give 'strikes' a rising inflection (of a second), and follow it with a marked grouping pause. 'Below,' monotone, taking pitch from 'strikes',-with quantity on the last syllable, and with no pause, or the slightest, between it and the next word, 'that.' A pause of emphasis after 'lovely.'

FORCE:

THE EQUABLE CONCRETE; STRESS; GENERAL FORCE.

FORCE.

Force, or energy, of voice, is the audible sign, in kind and degree, of the causative mental or emotional energy,-the Will.

Force is heard as distributed over a group, a sentence, a stanza, a paragraph, a section, a whole discourse; in which case it is called General Force.

It is also used to throw into emphatic prominence a syllable or a word, here and there, giving rise to the distinction of Special Force.

Special Force, under the name of Stress, is heard on all the accented syllables of emphatic words.

Preliminary to the study of Stress, it is important to understand clearly the form and function of the Equable Concrete.

THE EQUABLE CONCRETE.

This, the normal form of syllabic utterance in unimpassioned speech, and of the unaccented and unemphatic syllables of all speech, is visibly typified by a slender, wedgeshaped character,

།

The inflection is a straight rising or falling slide of the second; the radical (vowel opening) has a light but distinct

fullness and explosive abruptness, and from that opening the syllable tapers instantly and equably to silence.

Doctor Rush called the opening of the tonic the Radical, because from it, as from a root (radix), springs all syllabic utterance, and consequently all speech. The diminishing latter part of the impulse he called the Vanish, in analogy to the fading from sight of a receding object.

Expressing it differently, consecutive utterance is a process of alternate seizure and release: The radical is the seizure, or attack, and the vanish is the audible release, or letting-go of the syllable, preparatory to the seizure of the next.

Since the radical and the vanish are necessarily involved in each other are inseparable,-Doctor Rush called this unobtrusive, delicate, but beautiful and pervasive form of the syllabic impulse the Equable Concrete:-Concrete, because radical and vanish are organic-grow together (con-cresco); and Equable, because the syllable diminishes in force and volume symmetrically, constantly, and smoothly, from its clear, crystalline opening to the end, where it dies in silence.

THE GOLDEN KEY TO BEAUTIFUL UTTERANCE.

Mr. Murdoch says (Analytic Elocution):—

The concrete function is the foundation upon which is built the measurement of all the sounds of speech, and is the principle which underlies the life and power of every utterance of the speaking voice, from the most delicate audible whisper to the accumulated forces of the loudest and most prolonged shout within the capabilities of the vocal mechanism. It is the key which unlocks the whole philosophy of the speaking voice. A theoretical and practical understanding of this great fundamental principle of spoken language not only develops the full powers of the voice, but gives control of it for effective and natural utterance.