of voice, which may have reached a high range in the excitement of earnest argument or intense feeling. In this latter regard the long pause is of great use and assistance to the reader and the orator. Its application must be illustrated and acquired by practical exercise.

The system of Rhetorical Pause deserves the student's best attention; for its proper application will contribute greatly to the clearness, flow, and effect of his discourse, as well as to his own ease and delivery. Let him now read aloud the following marked

EXERCISE ON PAUSE.

SENSE TASTE AND GENIUS.

USHER.

The human genius with the best assistance breaks forth but slowly and the greatest men“ have but gradually acquired a just taste and chaste` simple conceptions of beauty- At an immature age* the sense of beauty is weak and confused and requires an excess of coloring to catch the attention It then prefers extravagance and rant to justness a gross false wit to the engaging light of nature and the shewy rich and glaring to the fine and amiable- This is the childhood of taste but as the human genius strengthens and grows to maturity if it be assisted by a happy education the sense of universal beauty awakes it begins to be disgusted with the false and mis-shapen deceptions that pleased before and rests with delight" on ele

gant simplicity on pictures of easy beauty and unaffected grandeur |

The progress of the fine arts in the human mind may be fixed at three remarkable degrees from their foundation to the loftiest height- The basis is a sense of beauty and of the sublime the second step" we may call taste and the last genius |

1.

A sense of the beautiful and of the great is unıversal which appears from the uniformity thereof in the most distant ages and nations- What was engaging and sublime in ancient Greece and Rome is so at this day and as I observed before there is not the least necessity of improvement or science to discover the charms of a graceful or noble deportment There is a fine but an ineffectual light in the breast of man

fall we have admired the planet Venus

After night

the beauty and vivacity of her lustre -the immense distance from which we judged her beams issued and the silence of the night"- all concurred" to strike us with an agreeable amazement But she shone in distinguished beauty without giving sufficient light to direct our steps or show us the objects around- Thus in unimproved nature the light of the mind is bright and useless- In utter barbarity our prospect of it is still less fixed it appears and then again seems wholly to vanish in the savage breastlike the same planet Venus-when she has but just raised her orient beams to mariners above the waves and is now descried now lost through the swelling billows |

The next step is taste the subject of our inquiry which consists in a distinct unconfused knowledge of the great and beautiful- Although you see not many possessed of good taste yet the generality of mankind" are capable of it- The very populace of Athens had acquired a good taste by habit and fine examples so that a delicacy of judgment seemed natural to all who breathed the air of that elegant city We find a manly and elevated sense distinguish the common people of Rome and of all the cities of Greece while the level of mankind" was preserved in those cities while the plebeians had a share in the government" and an utter separation was not made between them and the nobles" by wealth and luxury But when once the common people are rent asunder" wholly from the great and opulent and made subservient to the luxury of the latter then the taste of nature infallibly takes her flight from both parties The poorˇ by a sordid habit and an attention wholly confined to mean views and the rich by an attention to the changeable modes of fancy and a vitiated preference for the rich and costly- lose the view of simple beauty and grandeur—

It may seem a paradox- and yet I am firmly persuaded that it would be easier at this day to give a good taste to the young savages of AmericaTM- than to the noble youth of Europe |

even in the

Genius the pride of man as man is of the creation has been possessed but by few brightest ages- Men of superior genius

D

while they

see the rest of mankind" painfully struggling to comprehend obvious truths-glance" themselves through the most remote consequences like lightning" through a path that cannot be traced They see the beauties of nature with light and warmth and paint them forcibly without effort as the morning sun does the scenes he rises upon instances communicate to objects ness and unaccountable lustre that is not seen in the creations of nature- The poet the statuary the painter have produced images that left nature far behind |

and in several a morning fresh

2. INFLECTION.

The human voice is to be considered as a musical instrument—an organ; constructed by the hand of the Great Master of all Harmony. It has its bellows, its pipe, its mouth-piece; and when we know the "stops" "it will discourse most eloquent music." It has its gamut, or scale of ascent and descent; it has its keys, or pitch,-its tones,-its semi-tones, its bass, its tenor, its alt-its melody, its cadence. It can speak as gently as the lute, "like the sweet south upon a bed of violets," or as shrilly as the trumpet; it can tune the "silver-sweet" note of love, and "the iron throat of war;" in fine, it may be modulated by art to any sound of softness or of strength, of gentleness or harshness, of harmony or discord. And the art that wins this music from the strings is ELOCUTION. The niceties and refinements of this art are to be acquired, step by step, by well-directed practice.

At present, let us learn a simple ascent, (or rise,) and descent, (or fall,) of the voice; of the range of— say one tone in music, upwards or downwards. This ascent or descent of the voice is called by Elocutionists, INFLECTION,* and they have two

SIMPLE INFLECTIONS.

The rising inflection, marked with the acute accent thus on the inflected word.

The falling inflection, marked with the grave accent, thus

*The correct term for this slide of the voice, or change of