toral quality." Joy and grief, too, become "aspirated" when highly characterized. Ardor and intense earnestness of emotion, are always "aspirated." The fervent expression of love, and even of devotion, admits, accordingly, of 'aspirated" utterance. "Aspiration," like "tremor," thus becomes a natural sign of extremes in feeling; and these two properties united, form the acmé or highest point of "expression."

The "aspirated quality," in the "guttural" form, belongs, in various degrees, to all malignant emotions. In its stronger expression, it gives a harsh, animal, and, sometimes, even fiend-like character to human utterance, as in the malice and revenge of Shylock. In a reduced, though still highly impassioned degree, it gives its peculiar choking effect to the utterance of anger.

In the yell of rage and fury, "aspiration" is displaced by perfectly pure tone" of the loudest sound, by a law of man's organization, which it is unnecessary here to analyze, but which seems to make all the extremes, or utmost reaches of human feeling, musical in their effect. Joy, and the extremes of both grief and anger, may be mentioned as illustrations.

Aversion, disgust, displeasure, impatience, dissatisfaction, and discontent, all, in various degrees, combine "aspirated" utterance and "guttural quality."

The due "aspiration" of the voice, in all the emotions which have been enumerated as requiring that property, is a point indispensable to the natural and appropriate "expression" of emotion, and consequently an important accomplishment of good elocution, whether in reading or speaking.

To learners who have practised the exercises in whispering, which is the extreme of " aspiration," this quality will not prove difficult of acquisition. It will be of great service, however, to power of "expression," to render the command of "aspiration" easy by frequent repetition on elements, syllables, and words, selected for the purpose, and on the following examples.

EXERCISES IN "ASPIRATED" QUALITY.

I. EFFUSIVE UTTERANCE.

1. Awe, [in its gentle form, with moderate" aspiration."] ("Pectoral Quality.")

Note. The effect intended here is but the slightest approach to a whisper, a barely perceptible breathing sound accompanying the utterance, not unlike, in its effect, to a slight hoarseness.

"How awful is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and the gate of Heaven!"

2. The same emotion deepened.

"Of old hast Thou laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure; yea all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed: but Thou art the same; and Thy years shall have no end.

"Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God.

"Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, 'Return, ye children of men.' For a thousand years, in Thy sight, are but as yesterday, when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

"Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep in the morning, they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning, it flourisheth and groweth up in the evening, it is cut down, and withereth."

3. Awe, [deepened by poetic expression.]

"Behold the world

Rests; and her tired inhabitants have paused
From trouble and turmoil.

Silence and deep repose

Reign o'er the nations; and the warning voice
Of nature utters, audibly within,

The general moral; - tells us that repose,
Deathlike as this, but of far longer pain,

Is coming on us, that the weary crowds,
Who now enjoy a temporary calm,

Shall soon taste lasting quiet; wrapped around
With grave-clothes, and their aching restless heads
Mouldering in holes and corners unobserved,
Till the last trump shall break their sullen sleep."

4. Awe, [still deeper in "expression," and stronger in "aspiration."]

"Yet half I hear the parting spirit sigh,
'It is a dread and awful thing to die!'
Mysterious worlds, untravelled by the sun,
Where 'Time's far-wandering tide has never run, -
From your unfathomed shades, and viewless spheres,
A warning comes, unheard by other ears.
'Tis Heaven's commanding trumpet, long and loud,
Like Sinai's thunder pealing from the cloud!
While Nature hears, with terror-mingled trust,
The shock that hurls her fabric to the dust;
And, like the trembling Hebrew, when he trod
The roaring waves, and called upon his God,
With mortal terrors clouds immortal bliss,
And shrieks, and hovers o'er the dark abyss!"

5. Awe, [extending to Fear, with still stronger "aspiration."]

"It thunders! Sons of dust, in reverence bow!
Ancient of days! Thou speakest from above:
Thy right hand wields the bolt of terror now;
That hand which scatters peace and joy and love.

Almighty! trembling like a timid child,

I hear Thy awful voice, alarmed, afraid,

I see the flashes of Thy lightning wild,

And in the very grave would hide my head!"

6. Awe, [bordering on Horror; -the effect still deepening.]

;·

“'T is night, dead night; and weary nature lies

So fast as if she never were to rise:

No breath of wind now whispers through the trees;
No noise on land, nor murmur in the seas;
Lean wolves forget to howl at night's pale noon,
No wakeful dogs bark at the silent moon,
Nor bay the ghosts that glide with horror by,
To view the caverns where their bodies lie:
The ravens peck, and no presages give,
Nor to the windows of the dying cleave:
The owls forget to scream; no midnight sound
Calls drowsy echo from the hollow ground:
In vaults, the waking fires extinguished lie,
The stars, heaven's sentry, wink, and seem to die."

7. Horror, and Fear, [the effect transcending that of Awe; the "aspiration" nearly a whisper.]

Macbeth, [meditating the murder of Duncan.]
"Now o'er the one half world

Nature seems dead; and wicked dreams abuse
The curtained sleep; now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate's offerings; and withered murder,
Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
Towards his design

Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth!

Hear not my steps, which way they walk; for fear
The very stones prate of my whereabout,

And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it."

Horror and Amazement; ["aspiration" increased by

"expulsion."]

("Pectoral Quality.")

Hamlet, [to the ghost of his father.]
"What may this mean,

That thou, dead corse, again, in complete steel,
Revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon,
Making night hideous; and we fools of nature,
So horridly to shake our disposition

With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls?"

2. Horror and Terror; [effect still farther increased.] Clarence, [relating his dream.]

"Oh! I have passed a miserable night,

So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights,
That, as I am a Christian faithful man,
I would not spend another such a night,
Though 't were to buy a world of happy days;
So full of dismal terror was the time!

My dream was lengthened after life:
Oh! then began the tempest to my soul!
With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends
Environed me, and howled in mine ears
Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise,
I trembling waked, and, for a season after,
Could not believe but that I was in hell;
Such terrible impression made my dream.”

3. Fear.

(Whispering Voice: "Guttural Quality.”)

Caliban, [conducting Stephano and Trinculo to the cell

Hear a foot fall: we are now near his cell.