III. Slow.

1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

O ye loud waves! and O ye forests high!

And O ye clouds that far above me soared!
Thou rising sun! thou blue rejoicing sky!

Yea, everything that is and will be free!

Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be,

With what deep worship I have still adored

The spirit of divinest liberty!

3. I would invoke those who fill the seats of justice, and all who minister at her altar, that they execute the wholesome and necessary severity of the law. I invoke the ministers of our religion, that they proclaim its denunciation of these crimes, and add its solemn sanctions to the authority of human laws. If the pulpit be silent, whenever or wherever there may be a sinner, bloody with this guilt, within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit is false to its trust.

4. Slow, slow! toll it low,

As the sea-waves break and flow;

With the same dull, slumberous motion

As his ancient mother Ocean

Rocked him on through storm and calm,

From the iceberg to the palm:

So his drowsy ears may deem

That the sound which breaks his dream

Is the ever-moaning tide

Washing on his vessel's side.

IV. Very Slow.

1. O thou Eternal One! whose presence bright
All space doth 6ccupy, all motion guide;
Unchanged through time's all-devastating flight;
Thou dnly God! There is no God beside.

2. Wide as the world is His command,
Vast as eternity His love;
Firm as a rock His truth shall stand,
When rolling years shall cease to mdve.

3. Here, then, is a support which will never fail; here is a foundation which can never he moved,—the everlasting Creator of countless worlds, "the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity." What a sublime conception! He inhabits eternity, occupies this inconceivable duration, pervades and fills throughout this boundless dwelling.

VI.

FORCE.

THE degree of force or loudness required in reading depends upon the space to be filled by the reader's voice or the distance it must reach; upon the number of persons presumed to be addressed, and upon the emotion expressed.

What is wanted in every-day use of the voice, in the schoolroom or elsewhere, is a clear tone and easy, natural utterance. The practice of loud and sustained tones is an excellent means of improving the voice, but is to be the exception, not the rule, in ordinary reading. Yet the softest tone must be elastic and full of life. To be natural it is not necessary to be dull.

I. Gentle.

1. The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

"How sweetly," said the trembling maid,
Of her own gentle voice afraid—
So long had they in silence stood
Looking upon that moonlit flood—

"How sweetly does the moonbeam smiie
To-night upon yon leafy isle!"

3. I delighted to loll over the quarter-railing, or climb to the main-top, of a calm day, and muse for hours together on the tranquil bosom of a summer's sea; or to gaze upon the piles of golden clouds just peering above the horizon, fancy them some fairy realms, and people them with a creation of my own; or to watch the gentle undulating billows rolling their silver volumes, as if to die away on those happy shores.

4. How still the morning of the hallowed day!
Mute is the voice of rural labor, hushed
The ploughboy's whistle, and the milkmaid's song.
The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath
Of tedded grass, mingled with faded flowers,
That yestermorn bloomed waving in the breeze.
Sounds the most faint attract the ear,—the hum
Of early bee, the trickling of the dew,
The distant bleating midway up the hill.
Calmness sits throned on yon unmoving cloud.

See how beneath the moonbeam's smile
Yon little billow heaves its breast,

And foams and sparkles for a while,
And murmuring then subsides to rest.

Thus man, the sport of bliss and care,
Rises on time's eventful sea,

And having swelled a moment there,
Thus melts into eternity.

II. Moderate Force.

1. If we look to what the waters produce, shoals of the fry of fish frequent the margins of rivers, of lakes, and of the sea itself. These are so happy that they know not what to do with themselves. Their attitudes, their vivacity, their leaps out of the water, their frolics in it, all conduce to show their excess of spirits, and are simply the effects of that excess.

2. People talk of liberty as if it meant the liberty of doing what a man llkts. The only liberty that a man worthy the name of a man ought to ask for, is to have all restrictions, inward and outward, removed, to prevent his doing what he dught.

3. Once more: speak clearly, if you speak at all;
Carve every word before you let it tall;
Don't, like a lecturer or dramatic star,
Try over hard to roll the British 11;
Do put your accents in the proper spot;
Don't—let me beg you—don't say "How?" for "What?"
And when you sticft on conversation's burs,
Don't strew the pathway with those dreadful urs.

4. Exert your talents and distinguish yourself, and don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness, drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.

5. Do not look for wrong and evil—
You will find them if you do;
As you measure for your neighbor
He will measure hack to you.

Look for goodness, look for gladness,
You will meet them all the while;

If you bring a smiling visage
To the glass, you meet a smile.

III. Loud.

It is done!
Clang of bell and roar of gun!
Send the tidings up and down.

How the belfries rock and reel!

How the great guns, peal on peal,
Fling the joy from town to town!

The storm is out; the land is roused;
Where is the coward who sits well h6used?
Fie on thee, boy, disguised in curls,
Behind the stove, 'mong gluttons and girls.

Forth in the van,

Man by man!
Swing the battle-sword who can!

3. Ho, trumpets, sound a war-note!
Ho, lictors, clear the way!
The knights will ride, in all their pride,

Along the streets to-day.

IV. Very Loud.

1. Up drawbridge, groom! What, warder, ho!
Let the portcullis fall!

2. Call the watch! call the watch!
"Ho! the starboard watch ahdy!"

3. Forward, the light brigade!
Charge for the guns!

4. They strike! hurrah! the fort has surrendered!
Shout! shout! my warrior boy,
And wave your cap, and clap your hands for jdy.
Cheer answer cheer, and bear the cheer about.
Hurrah! hurrah! for the fiery fort is ours.
"Victory! victory! victory!"
Is the shout.
Shout! for the fiery fort is dure, and the field
And the day are ours!

VII.

PITCH, OB MODULATION.

THE proper modulation of the voice is one of the most important elements of expression. In nothing is a reader's good taste more manifest than in his adaptation of pitch and quality of tone to every different shade of thought and emotion. There can be no expressive reading without such variation. The most musical voice becomes monotonous when continued in one unvarying pitch.

Nothing but an appreciation of the sentiment can be a correct guide to the application of these tones. But the broader distinctions may be indicated as follows:

A high pitch is used in the expression of light and joyous