This cause operates on the Bar, the Pulpit, and the Stage; where the demands of the space to be filled exceed the common powers of the voice: but it is most conspicuous in the melody of those whose purposes lead them to address great crowds in the open air.

Secondly. Melody is deformed by a predominance of the phrase of the monotone, together with a full cadence at every pause. This perhaps is only found in the first attempts at reading by children and rustics.

Thirdly. By a mingling of the phrases of melody, but with a formal return of the same successions. In this case, the whole discourse seems subdivided into sections, nearly resembling each other in the order of pitch. The extent of these portions is generally determined by the length of entire sentences, or by the shorter divisions of their members. And I may now make a remark which properly belongs to the subject of rythmus,—that this peculiar habit of the ear in marking the sections of melody, as well as in forming accentual and pausal sections, has a very close connexion with the character of style in a writer. It certainly can not have escaped observation that there is a tendency in some persons to give equality to the length of their sentences: and this is in many instances dependent on their elocution. But the niceties of this subject will receive due consideration, at some future time, when we who speak English shall recover, or rather on this point, first receive common sense enough together with independence, to authorize a denial that the best method for studying our own language, is through the syntax and prosody of the Latin and the Greek.

There is no special form of melody assumed by all speakers; each one falls into a habit of his own: though it is plain, from the very method of construction, that there can not be a great variety. All actors, except those of the first class, and they are not as finished on this point as they may be hereafter, all actors I say, are prone to this bird-like kind of intonation. They have a short run of melody which if not forcibly interrupted by some peculiar expression, is constantly recurring. The return forms a kind of melodial measure: and I now call to mind an Actress, once the vogue, whose intonation was filled with emphasis of thirds, fifths, octaves and waves; and

whose melody could be anticipated, with something like the forerunning of the mind over the rythmus of a common stanza of alternate versification. Those who commit this fault will have no difficulty in recognizing and correcting it, if desirable, when the mirror of analysis is held before them.

The monotonous course of melody constitutes one of the signs by which the gallery, and some of their better dressed peers in the boxes, distinguish the voices of famous actors, and think they represent their real points of excellence, when they mimick only what is strongly offensive and worthless. In the fault to which I allude, the recurring portion of the melody in itself often consists of a properly varied succession of phrases: but by repetition you learn it too well. The whole current in this case reminds one of the festoon, which however beautiful in itself, was in abasement of Greek architectural taste, joined in endless continuation around the frieze; instead of suggesting a resemblance to that successive variety in composition which adorned the metopes of the Parthenon.

Fourthly. I have known more than one speaker with this fault.-Sentences or members of sentences are begun aloud on a high pitch, and ended with a low and almost inaudible voice: and this is continued successively throughout a whole discourse. It would be hard to find out the meaning of this fault, or to discover such a shadow of apology for it, as many worse offences in life can claim for themselves.

One of the persons thus addicted to this monstrous piece of affectation, for no natural or conventional motive could ever have suggested it, was, by the associates of his long since departed day of self-importance, called a fine reader.' Such instances of fame may serve to substantiate an assertion, that there is no art in which self-imposition is more conspicuous than in Elocution. Where there is no acknowledged rule of excellence, every one, whether cultivated or not, makes his own partialities or interests the standard. Having learned somewhere that it is the part of good reading to fulfil the designs of sense and sentiment, and as each one in his attempts, fulfils his own conception of an author, he fairly concludes that he possesses the full power of the art. Hence one reason why we find so much delusion on the subject of this accomplishment, For, reputed good readers' are often not merely

negatively deficient; they are frequently positively bad: and perverse as it may seem in the very teeth of the professed approbation of a majority, I have generally gone to learn the faults of speakers, when called to hear some star of elocution at the bar, in the senate, the pulpit, or the reading club. Loud noises, seem to have always been the delight of savages in their first step towards music; so the exaggerated and consequently striking character of the elements of speech, is always most agreeable to the uninstructed ear.

Fifthly. I illustrated, in the section on melody, the manner in which the transitions of pitch are made from one line, to another above or below it. Some persons find it difficult to shift the radical in this manner. This defect not only takes from the variety of utterance, but prevents a reader from passing from a very high or low pitch, when he has improperly set out in either. Speakers sometimes descend so far that they have not enough compass left, below the line of current melody, to permit an audible execution of the last constituent of the cadence. In this case they feel the feeble and unsatisfactory effect of their intonation, without perceiving the cause of it or being able to apply the remedy. A knowledge of the mode of melodial progression, and of the space through which the cadence descends, will enable the reader to avoid the fault here pointed out.

We noticed formerly the circumstance of a reader, with a good ear, having a sort of precursive perception of the falsette, sufficient to enable him to turn from it, when his melody is moving near the top of his natural voice. The same kind of anticipation of the lowest note, enables such a reader to keep his cadence within the limit of distinct articulation.

Sixthly. The use of the protracted radical and vanish, instead of the equable concrete, is one of the widest deviations from the characteristic of speech. For it has been shown that a proper melody, the diatonic as I have called it, consists of an equable movement through the interval of a second, with an agreeably varied radical-change through the same space: the current being occasionally broken by wider equable transitions, and by different modes of stress, according as the sentiments. may require any of these additions upon individual words.

In as much as this fault is an error of long quantity, it is not

often heard in the hasty pronunciation of common life. I have however met with a slight degree of it in a phlegmatic drawler. Public speakers overwrought by excitement, or straining their throats to be heard, I say,-straining their throats, instead of energizing their voices, are most apt to fall into this error of intonation. Some of the cases of this fault that have fallen under my notice, were connected with a monotonous current melody, and a very defective management of the cadence. I heard it under the form of the protracted radical, along with other heinous offences against good elocution, in one of the public's 'great actors.' It was most conspicuous in his endeavour to give long quantity to immutable syllables; as in the following words of Macbeth.

Canst thou not minister to, a m-ind diseased;
Pl-uck from the memory, &c.

I have here set a dash after the letters on which he continued the protracted radical, until it suddenly vanished in the termination of the syllable. The actor's fault was a lapse from a just instinct. He felt obscurely the need of vocal quantity for the purpose of expression, but being one of those who having some animal spirits, with little intellect, no education, and an inverse proportion of vanity, are always talking about genius, he never once thought of such things, as marring the nature of an immutable syllable, nor of the practicability of leading a subtonic element through the equable concrete: matters that would long ago have been prepared for his instruction, if there had been in the dramatic art more observation and reflection, and less noisy foolishness about the stage doctrine of 'Identity' and of self-sufficient genius.

Seventhly. The fault of melody I am now about to consider, is somewhat related to that last described, in using the protracted notes. But it adds the other modes of intonation which in the second section were ascribed to song: the whole being confused in such a manner with the equable concrete, as to destroy every design of speech, and to exhibit the ultra example of vocal deformity.

In the history of man, there is nothing more indefinite than descriptions of the voice: but there is reason for believing that

this deformed melody is the same with that puritanical whine, which was affected so generally in religious worship, in England, above two hundred years ago. It has been changed into other faults scarcely less censurable, by the pulpit of the present day. The society of Friends alone have retained it as a general practice and it will not be regarded as either idle or invidious, to look into the structure of this most remarkable intonation, by the light of our preceding analysis.

I shall first set down the notation of this melody, and afterwards particularly explain it.

I have under it several places, spoken of the minor third or plaintive interval of one tone and a half. A melody founded on a current of minor thirds, has that excessive or peculiar plaintiveness which forbids a repetition of its effect in speech. Now the above notation, is with a few exceptions a melody of minor thirds; and its unpleasant and monotonous whine is produced by the drift of that interval.

Upon this staff, let the third be minor. Then the first and second syllables are protracted vanishes upon a concrete minor third. 'A' and 'voice' are protracted radicals to a concrete descent of the same interval. 'From' is a protracted radical to the rising interval of a minor third. Heaven' is a minor third of the same elemental form with 'voice'. The two syllables of saying' are equable concretes, respectively, of an upward and downward tone. The rest severally resemble those already described; except 'who,'-which consists