tendency, become doubly impressive when we advert to the next prominent characteristic of gesture, as a part of expression,-grace. This trait, it is true, can be more easily dispensed with, than any of the others which have been mentioned. It is one, confessedly, of inferior moment. We may justly require, of every public speaker, a manly force and freedom in his demeanour and action; we may justly require of every speaker, even of limited opportunities, the judgment which enables him to avoid incongruities of voice and gesture. But grace is a feature of eloquence which belongs to comparatively high culture and refinement. Still, even this we have a right to expect of the man of liberal education. To what end, otherwise, were all his classical studies, with their perfect models of expressive art, their atmosphere of elegance, their presiding muses, and attendant graces ? If there is anything which more than another displays the incompetent manner in which classical culture is generally conducted, as to its effect on the mind, it is the case of a man who, as a scholar, appreciates every shade of beauty in a sentence of Cicero or a turn of Horace, who hangs with a species of idolatry over a single epithet in Homer, or a line in Euripides, who throws his whole soul into the force of an interrogation in Demosthenes, but who addresses his fellowmen on the themes of duty and immortality, with a halfstretched angular arm, which, under other circumstances, the eye would recognize as the style of paralysis or deformity, and who shortens even the proverbial step from the sublime to the ridiculous, by uttering the former with his tongue, and, at the same moment, exhibiting the latter with his hand. A graceful style of speaking, so far as regards the visible part of oratory, resolves itself into a compliance with the natural laws of form and motion, which preserve curved and waving lines, with free and flowing movements, as contrasted with straight lines and angles, accompanied by narrow, abrupt, and jerking motions. Every action of the arm, however, depends, for its true effect, on the condition that the body is self-balanced and re posing, not stooping, leaning, wavering, lounging, or reclining. Hence, attention is due, in the first place, to the posture of the body, that it be firm and free, appropriate, and, at least negatively, graceful. The student's first point of attention, in personal training, is, accordingly, THE ATTITUDE OF THE BODY, REQUIRED FOR PUBLIC SPEAKING. This point is, by some speakers, assumed as a thing that requires no special attention, and which may be safely left to nature or to accident. Hence the prevalence of those stoop→ ing, lounging, and leaning postures which are not only ungainly and awkward to the eye of observers, but injurious to the organs of the speaker, in consequence of the false position in which they place the trunk of the body, and necessarily the chest and lungs. A healthful mode of public speaking, demands an erect and open chest, for the free unembarrassed play of the lungs, and the easy action of the air-cells, the bronchial tubes, the larynx, the vocal ligaments, and the glottis. A stooping, or lounging, or bent attitude causes a partial sinking and narrowing of the chest, an unnatural and injurious position of the whole breathing and vocal apparatus, attended by a stifled and imperfect sound of the voice, a sense of exhaustion, and, perhaps, immediate pain; to all which are probably added, in due season,-as a consequence of the violation of the natural laws of vocal sound, connected with respiration, the successive stages of bronchial disease. A faulty attitude of body usually leads, moreover, to awkward motions of the whole frame. The speaker who stands with bent knees, necessarily inclines to a curtseying motion of the limbs, and a swaying motion of the back, which becomes peculiarly noticeable, if, as is usually the case, the curtseys and the half-bows keep time to a rhythmical gesture of the arm. A true, firm, and easy attitude, depends on the weight of the body being supported on one foot and limb firmly planted, while the other foot and limb are at rest, and support their own weight merely the feet at a moderate distance ;* the onet in advance of the other, and the toes pointing moderately outward. This is the natural attitude of firmness and freedom combined. The common faults of attitude are standing with the feet feebly drawn close to each other, or the opposite error of standing astride; the legs both sinking, or both braced, at the knees;—the former causing a feeble, the latter, a stiff and rigid posture; while firmness demands that one knee be braced, and freedom, that the other should be slightly bent. Another error in attitude is that of a rigid, inflexible position of the trunk, which, on the contrary, should yield and incline slightly on the side that does not, for the moment, support the weight of the body. Still another fault is that of bending forward too much; a gentle inclination of the speaker's body toward those whom he is addressing, being all that is requisite. The position of the head is often faultily submissive and drooping, or haughtily erect; propriety lying between these extremes. An awkward effect is often produced on the general attitude of the body, in consequence of placing the feet directly forward, or, perhaps, even with the toes pointing inward. The consequence of this slight error, is, that the speaker's whole attitude resembles that of a fencer in attack, rather than of one man addressing others in the spirit of amity and conciliation. Awkwardness is to be shunned, not merely because it is unseemly, but because whatever is so, is repulsive and offensive, and hinders the speaker's access to the heart. Awkwardness, it is true, is no crime; but its tendency is to provoke mirth in the thoughtless, and pity in the reflective portion of an audience. By no possibility can a speaker who has the misfortune to exhibit such a trait, produce an appropriate effect on the mind, as regards the sub * About the width of the broadest part of the foot. †The right foot, usually. Each foot would thus be placed on a line drawn diagonally from the front of the speaker's body, at an angle of 45°; so that the relative position of the two feet constitutes a right angle. ject of his address. Yet our national negligence as to manner, causes too general a tendency to habits of the description to which we here refer. Five minutes' instruction or direction might, in many instances, have sufficed seasonably to remove such defects from the juvenile elocution of the speaker; but habit has, perhaps, now made them inseparable parts of himself. But it is not only early neglect that is the source of numerous errors of manner in speaking. The inadequate attention given, by teachers themselves, to this department of education, renders their instruction sometimes erroneous. The pupils of some of our academies are actually directed to cultivate the ungainly habit of speaking with the left foot advanced while the right hand is in action,—a misfortune which the Roman orator had to undergo, in consequence, partly, of the necessity of holding up on his left arm the burden of his unweildy toga, while engaged in speaking, and, partly, from the analogy of such a position to the manly attitude of the ancient soldier, with his left foot advanced, in inevitable correspondence to the act of protecting his body by advancing. his left arm, on which the shield was worn. The use of such an attitude, in modern oratory, throws over the speaker's whole mien the air of a blacksmith at the anvil, whose object it is to bring down a blow from the greatest practicable height and distance. The custom of some of our academic institutions prescribes to the student the habit of speaking with both feet flat on the floor, and without the aid to easy and graceful attitude which comes from the slight raising of the heel of the retired foot, when the weight of the body is supported on the advanced one. The consequences of this error, slight as it may seem, are the raising of one shoulder, and the stiffening of the whole attitude of the body,-one of the most prominent and glaring faults with which our New England students are generally chargeable, in the act of declaiming. Another very common error in the attitude of New England speakers, and one which is, in some instances, enjoined by erroneous instruction, is the habit of standing in the square attitude of the Indian, or of the English ploughman, with the feet pointing directly forward from the body. An inevitable consequence of this error, is, that whenever the speaker advances, in the animation of energetic address, his false line of position in the foot, swings round his shoulder to his audience, so that he has then the attitude, precisely, of a fencer in attack. Another bad result of this fault in position and movement, is, that it inclines the speaker to the habit of frequently turning his side to the body of his audience, and addressing now one portion, on the right, then another, on the left, to the exclusion of the majority.* The slight attention necessary to point the toes outward, enables the speaker, by the easy and natural turn of the head, to address his whole audience, and keep them constantly in his eye, and, by the law of natural sympathy, to secure their uninterrupted attention, by directing his eye to theirs,—not at intervals, but continually; not now to one part of the congregation, and then to another; but to all successively: the speaker's attention being due to the whole assembly equally. This indispensable condition of appropriate address, is necessarily dependent on the position of the foot; as on it the whole attitude of the body is founded. The mode of changing the bodily attitude, is another of those points of practical oratory, which needs much attention from the student. The bad effects of neglected habit, are very generally apparent in this particular. One speaker shifts his position with a bold stride; another, with a timid * Austin, in his elaborate and eloquent work, Chironomia, quotes, in this connection, the following apposite description of an awkward speaker, as given from personal observation, by Cresollius, in his treatise on oratory. When he turned himself to the left, he spoke a few words accompanied by a moderate gesture of the hand; then, bending to the right, he acted the same part over again; then, back again to the left, and presently to the right, almost at an equal and measured interval of time, he worked himself up to his usual gesture, and his one kind of movement: you could compare him only to the blindfolded Babylonian ox going forward and returning back by the same path.' |