faithful teacher. But they are the mere mint, anise, and cummin,' compared to 'the mightier matters of the law.'

The spirit of finical criticism invariably turns away the speaker's attention from his subject to himself. It troubles his mind with an embarrassing self-consciousness, which constrains his manner, and cools his emotion.

The professional speaker has to labour under the disadvantage of a long course of such training. No wonder, therefore, that his style should be unnatural and constrained, as a result of habit and association. Against such evils the student who would form his manner to a free, expressive character, must necessarily watch, and zealously guard himself by constant practice. His chief aids will lie in the attentive study of the freest and most natural of all the forms of expression, those which are presented in the perfect products of art,—more particularly those of sculpture and painting. He will be assisted by the daily practice of reading and reciting from the freest and most flowing language of poetry. He will derive still more benefit from accustoming himself to the vivid recitation of the most natural and expressive passages of the drama. No exercise in elocution is so conducive to freedom of manner as this.*

The general effect on the preacher's style of address in the pulpit, as regards due freedom and facility, is, no doubt, dependent on the extent to which he accustoms himself to mingle with society, and contract that familiarity with man which renders the office of communicating with him easy and sponThe secluded student is little prepared for one main office of the ministry,-that of free, unembarrassed utterance. Like every other art worth mastering, it requires of every individual, culture and practice, as the only conditions on which he can attain skill and facility.

taneous.

*The ancient practice of acting plays at school and college, and even . at professional institutions, was founded on a true impression of the importance of free and natural manner in speaking.

VARIETY, MONOTONY.

Sentiments which possess force and interest to the mind, though they sometimes run comparatively long in one channel of feeling and expression, do not pursue an undeviating, unvarying course. The natural tendency of impressive thought, is to call up varied emotions and diversified forms of imagination. The appropriate communication of such thought, implies, therefore, a varying tone, aspect, and action. Trite thoughts may justify a monotonous manner of expressing them. But public address, especially from the pulpit, forbids the presentation of thread-bare topics and insignificant ideas. We pardon these in the aimless movement of unpremeditated conversation, but not on occasions when numbers are assembled to hear important and impressive truths.

The popular complaint, therefore, that preachers are deficient in variety of manner in their speaking,—although sometimes an arbitrary objection, founded on a vague and general impression, regardless of particular circumstances which may happen to forbid variety,—is by no means destitute of foundation. Sermons are too commonly written after the fashion of academic themes on prescribed common-place topics. The mind of the writer pursues, in such cases, an unexciting, mechanical routine of thought; his pen betrays the fact in its trite language; and his tones,-his very looks and gestures, -repeat the effect to ear and eye, in flat and wearisome monotony.

The defects of early education, which, in other points, are so injurious to manner and so destructive to eloquence, reveal themselves distinctly here. The speaker in the pulpit carries with him the deadening influence of years of false habit and lifeless utterance, contracted from the neglect of his style in youth; from the custom of declaiming, in an unmeaning and inexpressive way, passages either unintelligible or uninteresting to him; and, sometimes, from the stiffening effect of the arbitrary directions which he has received in the shape of formal instruction. The lifeless tones of school reading, are

still haunting his ear as an unconscious standard; and he consequently observes the beaten round of a uniform force, a uniform pitch, and a uniform gait of voice, destitute of expression, the primitive tone of no meaning and no feeling, which he instinctively and very justly applied in childhood, to what he could neither understand nor feel,—but a tone which inveterate habit has made natural to his ear. To such modes of voice the preacher not unfrequently adds a lifeless stillness of body, and an insipid sameness of gesture, which produce a similar effect on the eye to that which his utterance exerts on the ear.

The fault of monotony is, if anywhere, unpardonable in the pulpit, where the speaker has the range of the universe, for his subjects, and the topics of spiritual and eternal life for his habitual themes. Why should the elocution of the preacher be almost proverbially monotonous? Why should it so often furnish just ground for the sleepy hearer to devolve the fault of his condition on the preacher's voice?

The easy remedy for this state of matters, lies in the study of elocution, and the cultivation of expressive tone and action. A knowledge of the principles of audible and visible expression, will enable the student to trace the natural and appropriate difference of tones, and to identify every mode of utterance with its peculiar characteristic emotion. It will be impossible for him, afterwards, to mistake a dead level of voice for expressive variation. The discipline which the study of elocution prescribes, will enable him to acquire that command over his organs by which he may easily execute every transition and change of expression, which appropriate utterance or action requires. He will thus learn to substitute, for his pipe with one note, or his harp with one string, the natural, varied and powerful effect of man's living voice, inspired by varied emotion. He will be enabled to resume something of that vivid effect of bodily attitude and motion, which made him, in childhood, the envied model of the orator, in the freedom, variety, and efficacy of his expressive action. The ever-varying style of Scripture will, thenceforth,

no longer be misrepresented by his flat sameness of voice; the inspiring hymn will not have its appropriate effect quenched by the morbid dullness of his heavy style of reading; nor will his discourse any longer operate, by its 'sleepy tune,' as a soothing soporific.

The diligent cultivation of his manner, will enable the preacher to breathe life and freshness into all its aspects, and infuse a corresponding effect into his ministrations. The subjects which he presents, will naturally assume their appropriate and most striking lights, and fall upon the mind with their full force of effect. His hearers instead of reïterating the old complaint regarding the Sabbath, 'What a weariness it is!' will leave the sanctuary with hearts refreshed and reïnvigorated, and minds 'stirred up' anew to every good work and every noble purpose.

MANNERISM, ADAPTATION, APPROPRIATENESS.

One of the common results of inadequate or misdirected early culture, in regard to elocution, is, that the style of young speakers, is so soon permitted to settle into fixed mannerism. An observer who has opportunity of tracing the successive stages of development in individuals who are subjected to the customary routine of education, will perceive that the preacher in the pulpit bears, upon his style of delivery, the stamp of the same characteristics by which he was distinguished as a youth at college, and as a boy at school. This fact, were it the natural consequence of the growth and evolution of individual character and original tendency,were it a spontaneous product of genius,-would be not only tolerable but positively agreeable, as a trait of elocution. The objection lies in the obvious fact, that the manner is arbitrary and conventional,-a mere matter of acquired habit,-a compound result of the influence of academic precedent and example, blending with a few accidental peculiarities of personal tendency. For the speaker in the pulpit is often found

reading his sermon with precisely the same tones and inflections, and the same gestures, with which he declaimed at school, when doing his best to play the juvenile representative of Cicero pleading against Verres, or Chatham rebuking the inhumanity of Lord Suffolk. The preacher may be discoursing on the worth of the soul, and the vastness of eternal interests, and the danger of tampering with them; but habit has set so irrevocably the key of his voice, that the whole sermon sounds, sentence for sentence, cadence for cadence,an exact copy of the utterance with which, when a candidate for college honours, he read his essay on the rhetorical traits of eminent writers.

The habit of reading and declaiming sentences as such, which results from the uniformity of custom at school, converts every paragraph into a succession of detached sentiments, each marked by an identical 'beginning, middle and end' of tone in the voice-no matter what the difference of style or of subject. A similar effect is produced on gesture. Action is limited to two or three forms,-perhaps, not even more than one,-perpetually recurring, whether the natural emotion connected with the language of the sentence be joy or grief, complacency or aversion, courage or fear.

An early culture adapted to the purposes of expression, would make the young pupil sensitively alive to the difference of character and effect in the feelings of the heart, as expressed in the various tones of the voice, and the diversified language of mien and action, in the body. It would convert the human organs into so many instruments obedient to the skilful touch; uttering, with unerring certainty, the exact music of each emotion, as it rose in the soul of the speaker. It would impart pliancy and grace and power to every member of the corporeal frame, in the act of executing the forms in which imagination naturally imbodies the thoughts and feelings of the mind, when animated by the spirit of communication. Eloquence, in its external shape, would thus resemble the natural effect of the shifting lights and shades and the changing colours of the mental scene.