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feel the effects of this apparent partiality of the minister, and has looked in vain for his turn to come; but the eye adhering to the favored spots, has left him with the consciousness of having been overlooked. At the bar, we should deem it bad policy to pass by any one of the twelve jurors empanneled in the cause; and it would seem to be equally essential that each person in the congregation, so far as practicable, should receive a due share of attention.

6. There is a diversity of opinions respecting the rate at which words should be uttered. The most illiterate of community, and especially the very young, regard extreme rapidity as the quintessence of perfection. An investigation of the subject will satisfy us that there are many eloquent men who speak with wondrous rapidity; others, equally eloquent, who articulate with deliberation. The most effective orator whom we have known at the bar was the very slowest we ever heard anywhere. The probability is, there is no reliable standard on the subject. Probably our efforts should be exercised in attempting to avoid either extreme.

We may consider under this head, as we pass, what is understood to be expressed by the word monotony. Every person knows what it is, as almost everybody has suffered from it. He is truly a fortunate man whose manner embraces variety. In everything we seem to favor change. The levelest of roads begets after a time an earnest longing for a few ups and downs. Continuous harmony in rhyme is finally relieved by a jar in its concord; essentially relieved by change of meter, equally so by descent to plain prose. And the same principle pertains to the style of delivering a discourse. It matters not how excellent it is, how sound in sentiment or beautiful in diction, if it comes forth all in the same tone, same rate of rapidity, same pitch of voice, though each be commendable in itself, the hearer grows weary; it is monot

onous.

7. A matter of signal importance with the public speaker is that of gesture. We remember, when at school, that certain defined positions of the head, the body, the hands and feet were prescribed for our observance. Some of the books that supplied prescriptions and hints for the fabrication of orators were embellished with plates representing the human figure in all

the phases of the art. But like the writing copy-book, we may doubt if these models of the school were much followed in practical life. We are disposed to think not, since every man has a system of gestures as peculiar to himself as the hand he writes, and both more or less vary with each succeeding year of his life. As to any rule or standard on the subject, it would seem impossible to announce one. It may be added however, regarding such as read sermons, that the hands had better be kept at rest while the eye is on the paper. Reading is reading. The hands are helps to declamation only. It may be said, generally, that whatever form of gesticulation a speaker may adopt, it should be as far as possible comely and graceful. And again, gesture should not be pressed into service, nor used, as it were, on purpose. That kind is ever preferable which we use unconsciously. In fear, in anger, in joy, in persuasion; in every sway of emotion, indeed, nature dictates the physical deportment, as well as the fitting words. If we guard against genuflections of an extravagant or outré kind, the dictate of the moment may serve us sufficiently well.

8. What power and what grace has the Dispenser of every good and perfect gift bestowed on the human voice! How susceptible is it of improvement, and what matchless modulations of cadence lie within its compass! No instrument of man's formation can reach the climax of its harmonious powers. It is wonderful to contemplate the height of excellence to which patient cultivation will carry the voice naturally defective either in tone or power. This is said to have been fully proved in the case of the renowned Athenian. It has since been verified in the instances of some of our most illustrious public singers. They seem to have the ordinary voice for conversation, but another, one wrought out by long and labored practice, and of surpassing genius, for song. Then if it be true the natural endowments of voice may be improved by cultivation, it is incumbent on the public man to see that he does it. He will be greatly the gainer in his field of labor whose mission" it is to mould the sentiments, fix the opinions, and lead the hearts of his people on from grace to grace. We read some years ago, and with great interest, that inimitable biography of Edmund Kean the English tragedian, from the pen of Barry Cornwall. So great was the result of most assiduous practice,

that this man of diminutive stature, and with voice by nature husky and unmusical, could whelm his audience in tears by the mere rendering of those three words in the tragedy of Hamlet, "Alas, poor Yorick!" It may seem strange that so much could be made on so small a capital as this. But Kean, it is known, with all the essence of paternal love, stood over the cradle of his infant boy, and by a thousand repetitions of the words, got the key-note of their delivery. This he carried with him to the stage, and hard was the heart that did not yield to the magic of the pathetic apostrophe.

And to the like acme of perfection, by long trial and persistent practice, did Rachel, that Jewish child of celebrity, bring her natural endowments. It is possible to find analogies of the working of this principle in every pursuit of human ambition in the musician, singer, sculptor; painter, penman, lapidary, engraver; in sooth, in every branch. They go on from awkward beginnings, laboring, practicing, training, until the art of the master's touch is perceptible in all they attempt.

9. Let me refer to another matter, which is not without claim to our attentive regard. A line in the English Reader, long time fixed in memory, is ever performing the office of an invaluable admonition. Thus it read: "It is always an indication of good sense to be diffident of it." We may presume that Duncan, "who bore his faculties so meek," was possessed of this good sense. And so is every man who permits his merit to make itself apparent. How painful to the beholder is swagger in any form; in gait, word, bearing, manner! We cannot but delight in seeing the arrogant fall; we shed tears of anguish at beholding the unpretending fail. Truly, it is better to be invited higher up, than to be hurled from the upper seat to which vain presumption has led us.

This insidious foe to that demeanor gracious in the public eye is apparent in a multitude of forms. The child detects it at a glance, and has given it the characteristic phrase of being "stuck up." Who does not remember the alliterative couplet so aptly applied to the proud cardinal of England:

"Begot by butchers, but by bishops bred,

How high his honor holds his haughty head!"

10. Then there is the matter of reading. Hymns must be read, and so also the word of God. And of all those who undertake this duty, how few of them really read well! Can it be denied that reading is mainly an art, and can be improved to almost any degree? These teachers of elocution, commonly regarded as cumberers of the ground, are not without purpose after all. The schoolmaster cannot be dispensed with, and yet is he not a lower order of the same family? The Church of England has not been indifferent to the import of this qual ification, and it is to be hoped our own will profit by their example.

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11. But while these different subjects relating to the public duties of the ministry are being considered, it may not be inopportune to notice the strangely misconstructed, crampedup pens and boxes, in which, too often, they (the clergy) are shut up to perform. Unless the matter of constructing pulpits be left wholly to the whim of the carpenter, (who generally knows little of what is essential,) it is difficult to account for the wretched taste that prevails, and especially in the country. It would seem that the sacred desk, erected solely for speaking purposes, is denied all the accustomed appliances of the art elsewhere prevailing. The legislator, lecturer, lawyer, actor, 'stump-speaker," has each an open sea for action, and may swing his arm without upsetting a lamp or breaking his knuckles on a board. So it has been, with the exception of the minister, from the days of the Roman Forum down. We were never more impressed with the signal beauty of a public appearance than when, some years ago, we saw the celebrated Dr. Lardner, of Edinburgh, stand forth, disencumbered of chairs, stands, or tables, on the wide stage of the Chestnut-Street Theater, to deliver a lecture on astronomy. A man of good personal appearance; easy and dignified in air; evincing no constraint and manifesting nothing of arrogant pretension, it was the most pleasing and imposing exhibition of the perfection of manner we had ever beheld. It is difficult to say what he would have been capable of doing, shut in behind the barricade of some of our pulpit structures. A lawyer accustomed to stand out on the open floor of the bar, is inclined to deplore the custom of the Church, which dooms her public servants to confined restraint behind an elevated breastwork, often so high as

to require the aid of a moveable little trap. to stand upon, and hampered and trammeled with a variety of stools, cushions, chairs, lamps, gas-pipes, etc. We approve the enterprise of Henry Ward Beecher, who has cast aside all this cumbrous machinery, and substituted simply a small stand.*

We will close with an extract from a lecture on "Style," which the present writer had the honor to prepare and deliver in 1857:

Being from home on a Sabbath, some years ago, I found my way into a strange church in the city. Looking down from the gallery at the crowds passing up the aisles, a man with a quiet, noiseless step, and unpretending mien, caught my eye. His hair was justly and carefully arranged, and his clothing, exceedingly neat and well fitting, exhibited no particle of dust or down from top to toe. I watched him as he passed with the throng, but instead of turning into a pew he ascended the pulpit. He ascended the steps as a gentleman should; he didn't jump up, nor blunder up, nor fall up; he simply ascended. Putting his hat quietly down, he drew off his overcoat, folded it, and placed it at the end of the sofa. He then sat down. These, it must be admitted, are very ordinary occurrences, affording, it may be apprehended, little scope for effect. But the fact was, they were accomplished with a degree of quiet ease and absolute grace of manner that arrested my attention, and at once prepossessed me in the stranger's favor. Though he had not as yet uttered a syllable, he had already

*That pulpits are often so constructed as to impede abundant action in the speaker is very true; but that fact does not, we think, (and may, perhaps say without widely disagreeing with our respected contributor,) justify the present fashionable demand for the abolition of the pulpit, or its substitution by a mere stand. We do not see what is gained by the removal of all screening of the speaker's person, or the exposure of legs and boots to the view of an audience. A good pulpit proper reveals all that is necessary for the chaste action of a true orator in contrast with a theatrical declaimer, at the same time that it allows some degree of reserve and retirement, of which we think every minister feels the occasional need. Daniel Webster is reported, truly or falsely, as saying that a lawyer could do nothing boxed up in an ordinary pulpit; but Chalmers, Summerfield, and Fisk contrived to do something even in that time-honored inclosure. We have no admiration for the semi-theatrical stage, surmounted by something like a merchant's counter, and backed by a parlor sofa, across which our modern performer races, in all "the frenzy of the Sybil without the inspiration."-ED.

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