{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_33175/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_33175","id":"gutenberg_33175","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33175","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Language & Communication","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Teaching & Education","Elocution","Reading","Voice"],"text":"Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was\nproduced from images generously made available by The\nInternet Archive/Canadian Libraries)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE VOICE AND SPIRITUAL EDUCATION\n\n\n\n\n  THE VOICE\n  AND\n  SPIRITUAL EDUCATION\n\n  BY\n\n  HIRAM CORSON, LL.D.\n\n  PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE\n  CORNELL UNIVERSITY\n\n\n  New York\n\n  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY\n  LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.\n  1914\n\n  _All rights reserved_\n\n\n  COPYRIGHT, 1896,\n  BY MACMILLAN AND CO.\n\n\n  Set up and electrotyped March, 1896. Reprinted\n  February, 1897; July, 1901; February, 1903; August,\n  1904; March, 1908; October, 1914.\n\n  Norwood Press\n  J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith\n  Norwood Mass. U.S.A.\n\n\n\n\n_PREFATORY NOTE_\n\n\n_While it is the purpose of this little book to emphasize the importance\nof vocal culture in its relations to literary and general culture, it is\nnot its purpose, except incidentally, to impart elocutionary\ninstruction. Attention is called to a few features of the subject,\nwhich, if realized in any voice, would contribute much to the technical\npart, at least, of good reading._\n\n_Special stress is laid upon the importance of spiritual education as\nthe end toward which all education should be directed, and as an\nindispensable condition of interpretative reading. Such education is\ndemanded for responding to, and assimilating, the informing life of any\nproduct of literary genius; without it, mere vocal training avails\nlittle or nothing. By the spiritual I mean man's essential, absolute\nbeing; and I include in the term the emotional, the susceptible or\nimpressible, the sympathetic, the instinctive, the intuitive,--in short,\nthe whole domain of the non-intellectual, the non-discursive._\n\n_With the kind permission of the editor, I have embodied in the part of\nthe book devoted to the voice, my article on Vocal Culture, published\n'The Atlantic Monthly' for June, 1895._\n\n                                          _H. C._\n    _Cascadilla Cottage,\n        Ithaca, N. Y., 30 Jan., 1896._\n\n\n\n\n_La voix est une revelatrice, une initiatrice, dont la puissance est\naussi merveilleuse qu'inconnue._\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n_Un des plus reels avantages de la lecture a haute voix est precisement\nde vous reveler dans les chefs-d'oeuvre une foule de petites nuances\nignorees du peintre meme qui les y a jetees. Par la, cet art pourrait\ndevenir un puissant instrument d'education. C'est souvent un excellent\nprofesseur de litterature qu'un grand maitre de diction._\n\n    ERNEST LEGOUVE, _de l'Academie francaise_.\n\n\n\n\nTHE VOICE AND SPIRITUAL EDUCATION\n\n\nCan reading be taught? is a question often asked, and partly for the\nreason, it may be, that so many readers who have gone through courses of\nvocal training in schools of elocution, or under private teachers, so\nfrequently offend people of taste and culture by an extravagance of\nexpression, by mimetic gesture, and by offensive mannerisms of various\nkinds. But a reasonable inference cannot be drawn from such readers that\nvocal training must necessarily do more harm than good.\n\nYes, much can be taught, and is taught, and well taught, it may be; the\ndesideratum is the education, intellectual and spiritual, especially the\nlatter, without which the mere teaching and training are vain and\nimpotent.\n\nThe organs of speech can be brought by intelligent training into a\ncomplete obedience to the will and the feelings; and without this\nobedience of his vocal organs, a reader, whatever be his other\nqualifications, cannot do his best. He is in the position of a musical\nperformer who has sympathetically assimilated the composition he is\nrendering, but whose instrument is badly out of tune. A reader may have\nthe fullest possible appreciation of the subject matter, intellectual\nand spiritual, of a poem, and a susceptibility to all the subtlest\nelements of effect involved in its form; but if he have not full control\nof his vocal faculties, he can but imperfectly reveal through his voice,\nhis appreciation and susceptibility. This control can be secured only by\nlong and intelligent training. The voices, generally, of even the most\ncultivated people, have gone more or less astray, and need to be brought\nback from the error of their ways, before they can serve effectively to\ninterpret a literary product.\n\nMany great poets have written subtly organic verse, who could not\nvocally realize its potentialities, they not having their organs of\nspeech sufficiently under control. Samuel Taylor Coleridge is an\nexample. 'Amongst Coleridge's accomplishments,' says De Quincey,\nalluding, in his 'Literary Reminiscences' to Coleridge's lectures on\nPoetry and the Fine Arts, at the Royal Institution, 'good reading was\nnot one; he had neither voice, nor management of voice.' But he must\nimaginatively have heard the wonderful verse of Christabel and Kubla\nKhan, as an organic, inseparable part of the poetical expression. Mere\nliterary skill could not have produced such verse. It was a texture\nwoven by the spirit, which he could not adequately exhibit to the\nphysical ear, as he was not master of the physical means for so doing.\n\nTo read naturally is a common and a very vague phrase. The question is,\nwhat _is_ nature? It is the object of the science and art of reading, to\nrealize as fully as possible the imperfectly realized instincts of the\nvoice. 'There is a power in science which searches, discovers,\namplifies, and completes, and which all the strength of spontaneous\neffort can never reach.'\n\nWhen people speak of the natural in expression, they generally mean\nnature on the plane on which they are best acquainted with it--the plane\nof common speech. But the language of the higher poetry, or of tragedy,\nor even of impassioned prose, is, more or less, an idealized language,\nfor the expression of which a corresponding idealization of voice is\ndemanded. To read, for example, Milton's apostrophe to Light, at the\nbeginning of the third book of Paradise Lost, after the manner of common\nspeech, would be somewhat absurd. The idealization of voice demanded for\nthe reading of such language, is not, however, a departure from nature,\nbut is nature on a higher plane.\n\n'Enter into the _spirit_ of what you read, read _naturally_, and you\nwill read well,' is about the sum and substance of what Archbishop\nWhateley teaches on the subject, in his 'Elements of Rhetoric.' Similar\nadvice might with equal propriety be given to a clumsy, stiff-jointed\nclodhopper in regard to dancing: 'Enter into the spirit of the dance,\ndance naturally, and you will dance well.' The more he might enter into\nthe spirit of the dance, the more he might emphasize his\nstiff-jointedness and his clodhopperishness.\n\nOf this distinguished advocate of 'natural' reading and speaking, Mr.\nGrant, writing in 1835, says: 'Oratory is not his forte, ... he goes\nthrough his addresses in so clumsy and inanimate a way that noble lords\nat once come to the conclusion that nothing so befits him as unbroken\nsilence. He speaks in so low a tone as to be inaudible to those who are\nany distance from him. And not only is his voice low in its tones, but\nit is unpleasant from its monotony. In his manner there is not a\nparticle of life or spirit. You would fancy his grace to be half asleep\nwhile speaking. You see so little appearance of consciousness about him\nthat you can hardly help doubting whether his legs will support him\nuntil he has finished his address.'\n\nThe writer of this justly says of the Archbishop's writings: 'They\nabound with evidences of profound thought, varied knowledge, great\nmental acuteness, and superior powers of reasoning.' But his 'natural'\ntheory in regard to speaking, did not, it appears, avail with him, even\nwhen backed by such abilities.\n\n'Nature,' says the Archbishop, 'or custom, which is a second nature,\nsuggests spontaneously the different modes of giving expression to\ndifferent thoughts, feelings, and designs, which are present to the mind\nof any one who, without study, is speaking in earnest his own\nsentiments. Then, if this be the case, why not leave nature to do her\nown work? Impress but the mind fully with the sentiments, etc., to be\nuttered; withdraw the attention from the sound, and fix it on the sense;\nand nature, or habit, will spontaneously suggest the proper delivery.'\n\nSuch instruction as this is not unlike that which Hamlet gives to\nGuildenstern, for playing upon a pipe, and would be, in the majority of\ncases, hardly more efficacious: 'Govern these ventages with your fingers\nand thumb, give it breath with your mouth, and it will discourse most\nexcellent music. Look you, these are the stops.' Guildenstern replies:\n'But these cannot I command to any utterance of harmony; _I have not the\nskill_.' The last sentence tells the whole story. The Archbishop, with\nall his great abilities, had not the requisite _skill_ in oratorical\ndelivery.\n\nSo this may be said to be the conclusion of the whole matter: the main\nresult which can be secured in teaching reading, and in training the\nvoice, is technique and elocutionary _skill_ of various kinds--a skill\nwhich the student can bring into his service, when voicing his\nintellectual appreciation and spiritual assimilation of a poem or any\nother form of spiritualized thought; the illumination of the\nsubject-matter, intellectual and spiritual, must come from the _being_\nof the reader. He can't give to his hearers what he doesn't possess. The\nsaying of Madame de Sevigne, '_Il faut etre, si l'on veut paraitre_,' is\napplicable to the reader. An attempt to express what is beyond the range\nof his spiritual life and experience, at once betrays his deficiency.\nAnd no amount of mere vocal training will compensate for this\ndeficiency.\n\nThere are two unwarrantable assumptions in what Dr. Whateley writes\nabout Elocution: 1. That a reader or speaker can do with an untrained\nvoice what his mind wills, or his feelings impel him, to do. Not one in\na thousand can. 2. That all principles of Elocution which may be taught\nwill continue in the consciousness of the reader or speaker--that he\nwill be ever thinking of the vocal functions which he exercises. 'The\nreader's attention,' he says, 'being fixed on his own voice, the\ninevitable consequence would be that he would betray more or less his\nstudied and artificial delivery.'\n\nAll true culture, to _be_ true, must be unconscious of the processes\nwhich induced it. But before it is attained, one must be more or less\n'under the law,' until he become a law to himself, and do spontaneously\nand unconsciously what he once had to do consciously, and with effort.\n\nIt may be that Dr. Whateley's views in regard to Elocution were somewhat\nthe reactionary product of the highly artificial style of pulpit oratory\nwhich appears to have been the fashion in the Dublin of his day. (Note\n1.) He was a man of such perfect honesty and integrity, with such a\nresulting aversion to sham and empty display of every kind, that he came\nto regard all training in vocal delivery as unfavorable to genuineness.\nHis theory was fully confirmed, he may have felt, by some of the popular\ntheatrical preachers around him, who made a display of themselves, and\nwho, in the Archbishop's words, 'aimed at nothing, and--hit it.'\n\n\n\n\nWhen I was a small boy, at school, sixty years ago, all the scholars had\nto read aloud twice a day; the several classes standing while they read,\nand toeing a chalk line. The books used were the New Testament and\nLindley Murray's English Reader. The standard instruction imparted was\nvery limited, but very good so far as it went, namely, 'Speak distinctly\nand mind your stops.' Each boy read, at a time, but a single verse of\nthe New Testament, or a single paragraph of the English Reader; the\n'master' himself first reading a verse, or a paragraph, each time the\nreading went around the class.\n\nWell, the result was that all the boys acquired at least a distinct\narticulation and a fluent utterance, properly sectioned off by their\nminding the stops. Some of the boys, of whom I was one, had to read\naloud, at home, from other books. When I showed by my expression, or,\nrather, by my want of it, that I did not understand what I was reading,\nI was at once told so, the passage was explained and read to me, and I\nhad to read it again, to show that I had caught the meaning and the\nproper expression. If I were required to read something which was\nentirely new to me, my eye was exercised in running ahead of my voice,\nand taking in what was coming, to the extent of a sentence or two, in\norder to read with sufficient expression not to be stopped, as I was\nvery impatient of interruption, especially if I particularly enjoyed the\nsubject-matter.\n\nWhen I look back upon these daily exercises in reading, at school and at\nhome, I feel that nothing could have been better at the time. There was\nno such thing as 'speaking a piece,' with gesture, 'limbs all going like\na telegraph in motion,' and straining after effect. It was simply\ncareful, honest reading, with no attempt at make-believe of feeling. No\nencouragement was given to any affectation of that kind; but whatever\nimpressed my listeners as genuine feeling and appreciation on my part,\nwas duly praised; and I was very fond of praise, and was stimulated by\nit to do my best.\n\nI fear that such reading has very much gone out of use, and that\nuntimely technical instruction has taken its place. Call on a college\nstudent to read any prose passage extempore, and what is the result in\nninety-nine cases out of a hundred? Why, he will read it, _experto\ncredite_, in a most bungling way, with an imperfect articulation,\nwithout any proper grouping or perspective; and if the passage be an\ninvolved and long-suspended period, which his eye should run along and\ngrasp as a whole, in advance of his voice, he will be lost in it before\nhe get half way through it. He has had little or no practice in reading\naloud. He has 'parsed' much in the lower schools, but his parsing has\nnot resulted in synthesis (which should be the sole object of all\nanalysis), has not resulted in a knowledge of language as a living\norganism, and the consequence is that his extempore vocalization of the\npassage is more or less chaotic and--afflicting.\n\nExtempore reading requires that the eye be well trained to keep ahead of\nthe voice, and to take in a whole period, or a whole stanza, in order\nthat each part of it be read with reference to the whole, that is, with\nthe proper perspective. To do this demands an almost immediate synthetic\ngrasp, the result of much training.\n\nThe perspective of speech is virtually a part of the meaning. One who\nreads without perspective does not give his hearers the exact meaning,\nfor the reason that, subordinate parts standing out as prominently as\nleading parts, the hearer does not get a correct impression of their\nvarious degrees of importance, unless he do for himself what the reader\nshould do; and, certainly, not many hearers are equal to this--not one\nin a thousand. Our estimates of all things are more or less relative, so\nthat perspective plays a large part in whatever we take account of. What\nwould a picture be without perspective? But it is of equal importance,\nof greater importance, indeed, in the vocal presentation of language.\n\nA true perspective demands, on the part of the reader, the nicest sense\nof the relative values of successive and involved groups or sections of\nthought--those belonging to the main current of thought being brought to\nthe front with a fulness of expression, and the subordinate groups or\nsections according to their several degrees of subordination, being\nthrown back with a corresponding reduction of expression. Along with\nthis, the whole must have that toning which reveals the spirit of the\nwhole. Could there be any better test than reading, of a student's\nknowledge of the organic structure of the language, and the extent to\nwhich the thought is spiritualized? Hardly. The ordinary examinations\nof the schools, through questions, are wholly inadequate for getting at\nsuch knowledge--for evoking a student's sense of the _life_ of the\nlanguage as an organ of the intellectual and the spiritual.\n\nTechnical knowledge is a good thing in its way, but a knowledge of life,\nin whatever form, is a far better thing. And it is only life that can\nawaken life. Technical knowledge, by itself, is only dry bones. The\ntechnical, indeed, cannot by itself be appreciated. It must be\nappreciated as an expression of life--as an expression of the plastic\nspirit of thought and feeling.\n\nReading must supply all the deficiencies of written or printed language.\nIt must give life to the letter. How comparatively little is addressed\nto the eye, in print or manuscript, of what has to be addressed to the\near by a reader! There are no indications of tone, quality of voice,\ninflection, pitch, time, or any other of the vocal functions demanded\nfor a full intellectual and spiritual interpretation. A poem is not\ntruly a poem until it is voiced by an accomplished reader who has\nadequately assimilated it--in whom it has, to some extent, been born\nagain, according to his individual spiritual constitution and\nexperiences. The potentialities, so to speak, of the printed poem, must\nbe vocally realized. What Shelley, in his lines 'To a Lady, with a\nGuitar,' says of what the revealings of the instrument depend upon, may\nbe said, with equal truth, of the revealings of every true poem; it\n\n                'will not tell\n    To those who cannot question well\n    The spirit that inhabits it;\n    It talks according to the wit\n    Of its companions; and no more\n    Is heard than has been felt before,'\n\nby those who endeavor to get at its secrets.\n\nGood reading is a vocal manifestation of responsiveness, on the part of\nthe reader, to the hieroglyphic letter.\n\n\n\n\nSuch early training in reading as I have described, is the best\npreparation for the more elaborate expression demanded by the higher\nliterature. And we shall not have a true, honest vocal interpretation of\nliterature until we return to this early honest reading. I say 'return,'\nfor, so far as my knowledge goes, there is a plentiful lack of it, at\npresent, in primary schools--a lack somewhat due, no doubt, to the\never-increasing amount and variety of knowledge which students are\ncompelled to acquire in the schools. _There is no time left for\neducation._ He would be the ideal teacher who could induce a maximum\namount of education on the basis of a minimum amount of acquirement. But\njust the reverse prevails. Acquirement is made the all in all, and\neducation is left to take care of itself. The acquisition of knowledge,\ntoo, becomes a mere indulgence with thousands of people, in these\ndays--an indulgence which renders them more and more averse to any of\nthat independent activity of mind upon which education so largely\ndepends.\n\nI am quite surprised at what M. Ernest Legouve says, in his 'Petit\nTraite de lecture a haute voix a l'usage des ecoles primaires,' of the\nimportance attached, in America, to reading aloud. In the very opening\nsentence of this work, he says, 'La lecture a haute voix compte, en\nAmerique, parmi les elements les plus importants de l'instruction\npublique; elle est une des bases de l'enseignement primaire.' And\nelsewhere he calls upon the people of France to imitate the United\nStates of North America, in making the art of reading aloud the very\ncorner-stone of public education! Where could M. Legouve have got this\nremarkable opinion of the high estimate, in this country, of reading\naloud, as an educational agency? From whatever source he derived it, it\nis certainly most remote from the truth. What Sir Henry Taylor says of\nthe neglect of the art of reading in England (Correspondence, edited by\nProfessor Dowden, p. 225), is quite applicable to this country. After\nsaying that he regards the reading of Shakespeare to boys and girls, if\nit be well read and they are apt, 'as carrying with it a deeper\ncultivation than anything else which can be done to cultivate them,' he\nadds, 'I often think how strange it is that amongst all the efforts\nwhich are made in these times to teach young people everything that is\nto be known, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall, the\none thing omitted is teaching them to read. At present, to be sure, it\nis a very rare thing to find any one who _can_ teach it; but it is an\nart which might be propagated from the few to the many with great\nrapidity, if a due appreciation of it were to become current. The rage\nfor lecturing would be a more reasonable rage if that were taught in\nlectures which can be conveyed only by voice and utterance, and not by\nbooks.'\n\nHere, by the way, is indicated what the literary lecture should be. It\nis a comparatively easy thing to lecture about literary products and to\ndeal out literary knowledge of various kinds, and cheap philosophy in\nregard to the relations of literature to time and place. A professor of\nliterature might do this respectably well without much knowledge of the\nliterature itself. But what students especially need is to be brought\ninto direct relationship with literature in its essential, absolute\ncharacter; so that the very highest form of literary lecturing is\ninterpretative reading. Such reading brings home to sufficiently\nsusceptible students what cannot be lectured about--namely, the\nintellectually indefinite element of a literary product. Much of what is\notherwise done for students, in the way of lecturing, they could do\nquite as well for themselves.\n\n'A book of criticism,' says Hume, 'ought to consist chiefly of\nquotations.' The same should be said of a literary lecture, with the\nimportant addition to the word 'quotations,' 'effectively read.'\n\nTo return from this digression, what seemed so strange to Sir Henry\nTaylor, is not so strange when it is considered that the dealing out of\nknowledge, in the schools, on the part of the teacher, and the\nacquiring of it on the part of students, leave no time for education of\nany kind except the little which is _incident_ upon the imparting and\nthe acquisition of various kinds of knowledge 'from the cedar of Lebanon\nto the hyssop on the wall.'\n\nPerhaps the greatest danger to which education proper will be more and\nmore exposed, in the future, will be the great increase of knowledge, in\nevery department of thought. This may sound paradoxical; but with the\nincrease of knowledge, the temptation will correspondingly increase to\nmake the acquisition of the greatest possible amount of it, in schools,\ncolleges, and universities, the leading aim. To give the student the\nfullest command of his faculties, should certainly be the prime object,\nto which the acquisition of knowledge should be subservient; but this\nobject seems to be more and more lost sight of, while to cram his mind\nto the utmost, with vague, indefinite, and heterogeneous knowledge, is\ngetting more and more to be, if not the sole, at any rate the chief,\nconsideration. This state of things prevails from our lowest to our\nhighest schools. We hear and read _ad nauseam_ that the word 'education'\nmeans 'a drawing out.' This one etymology everybody knows, if he doesn't\nknow any other. Lecturers and writers on education, and school\ncirculars, keep reiterating it. There are certain truths so ding-donged\nin our ears that they lose all their vitality. One of these certainly\nis, that the word 'education' means 'a drawing out.' Sometimes a teacher\nat a school institute, after presenting this etymology, proceeds to\npresent what he considers the best methods of ramming in!\n\nThere are schools, and their patrons think them excellent, which\nout-herod Herod in their slaughter of the Innocents. Sad, indeed, is it\nthat the young are so debarred, as they are, by the tasks imposed upon\nthem, from all sweet and quickening 'impressions before the letter.' 'As\nin Hood's exquisite parody of George Robins's advertisement,' says\nGeorge Henry Lewes in his novel, Ranthorpe, 'the pump is enumerated as\nhaving \"a handle _within reach of the smallest child_,\" so do our\nillustrious educators wish to place the pump of knowledge within reach\nof the meanest capacity, that infants may forego the mother's milk to\ndrink of its Pierian spring.' The time must come, it is no doubt in the\nvery far future,--there are no indications, at present, of its being in\nthe near future,--when it will be a pedagogical question how to induce a\nmaximum amount of education with a minimum amount of brain-slaughter.\n\nTo get back, now, to the leading subject, vocal culture: a college\nstudent whose voice was neglected in early life, and, worst of all,\nwhose sympathies were not then so attuned to good literature, by the\ninfluences and atmosphere of his home, that he came to have an inward\nimpulsion to vocalize whatever he specially enjoyed in his reading, will\nnot be much profited by a course in soulless elocutionary spouting. One\nmay have an extraordinary natural gift of vocal expression which is\nsuperior to all adverse circumstances; but such an one is a _rara avis\nin terris_. Unless there be an early initiation into literature and its\nvocalization, in advance of the benumbing technical instruction of the\nschools, much cannot be expected from the great majority of students, in\na literary or elocutionary direction. Truly 'illuminative reading,' to\nuse Carlyle's phrase, is, apart from this condition, quite out of the\nquestion.\n\n\n\n\nIn the whole range of linguistic and literary studies, English, Latin,\nGreek, German, French, Italian, Spanish, or whatever be the language and\nliterature studied, vocalization should be made of prime importance. So\nit should even in Anglo-Saxon and early English studies. When I\nconducted these studies, which I did, for more than twenty-five years, I\npronounced to my classes all that was gone over. Beowulf I read to them\nentire. The interest of students in this Anglo-Saxon epic is much\nenhanced when it is fluently and _vigorously_ read. It is the only way\nby which the spirit of the poem can be brought home to them.\n\nTo know Chaucer as a poet, and not merely as a writer of\nfourteenth-century English, his verse, which, after a lapse of five\nhundred years, continues to rank with the best in the literature, _must_\nbe voiced; and to voice it, with the best knowledge of its pronunciation\nwhich has been attained to by Alexander J. Ellis, in his 'Early English\nPronunciation,' and by other phonologists, requires a careful training\nof the voice and much practice. A susceptible reader comes, in time, to\nfeel, to some extent, what the _intonation_, also, of the verse, must\nhave been. To inspire students with a permanent interest in 'the morning\nstar of song,' the teacher must be an accomplished reader of his verse,\nand must train his students to the best reading of it of which they are\ncapable. Of course, a knowledge of the language in its historical\ndevelopment, previous to Chaucer, is desirable, though not\nindispensable, to appreciate his poetry; but the best vocalization, in\nthe fullest sense of the word, which can be attained to, _is_\nindispensable. To know of what earlier inflection any final _-e_ is the\nresidual, is well enough; but I cannot think that any one would insist\nthat such knowledge is indispensable to an appreciation of the poetry.\nPhilology is not the handmaid to poetical cultivation. She can be\ndismissed altogether from service. There are no emergencies, even, where\nit is necessary to engage her temporarily.\n\nIn the study of Latin and Greek, even with our imperfect knowledge of\nthe ancient pronunciation, and our no knowledge of the ancient\nintonation, of these languages, it is all important that the student\nshould read Greek and Roman authors aloud. A student who has first been\ntrained to read Greek and Latin prose with fluency and expression can\nthen have considerable appreciation of verse in advance of any technical\nknowledge. And if he be trained to read in time, he will know what\n'quantity' really means. As Latin and Greek verse is read in the schools\n(when it is read at all), it is accentual, not quantitative. I cannot\nthink that there was any more quantity in Greek and Latin than there is\nin English, or in any other modern language, unless the Greeks and\nRomans _spoke_ more in time than we do, which is not likely. The Romans\nwere probably more measured in their speech than the Greeks. Syllables,\nin Greek and Latin verse, must have been made long or short by an\nintoning of the verse.\n\nWhen Vergil, or Ovid, or any hexameter poet, is read in the schools, his\nverse is the same as that of Longfellow's Evangeline, made up of _xa_,\n_ax_, and _axx_ feet. (Note 2.)\n\nThe following verse from Ovid, for example (Met. I. 143),\n\n    Sanguine | aque ma | nu crepi | tantia | concutit |\n      arma,\n\nis read in the same way as the following from Longfellow's Evangeline:\n\n    Or by the | owl, as he | greeted the | moon\n      with de|moniac | laughter;\n\nand the first and second of the following verses from Ovid (Met. I. 148,\n149),\n\n    Filius | ante di|em patri|os in|quirit in | annos.\n    Victa ja|cet Pie|tas; et | Virgo | caede ma-|dentes\n    Ultima coelestum terras Astraea reliquit,\n\nare read in the same way as the following from Evangeline:\n\n    And as she | gazed from the | window she |\n      saw se|renely the | moon pass\n    Forth from the | folds of a | cloud, and | one\n      star | follow her | footsteps.\n\nOvid's Met. I. 22,\n\n    Nam coe|lo ter|ras et | terris | abscidit | undas,\n\nis read in the same way as Colossians iii. 19:\n\n    Husbands, | love your | wives, and | be not |\n      bitter a|gainst them;\n\nand Ovid's Met. I. 36,\n\n    Tum freta | diffun | di, rapi|disque tum | escere |\n      ventis,\n\nis read in the same way as Psalm ii. 1:\n\n    Why do the | heathen | rage, and the | people\n      im|agine a | vain thing.\n\n_Rebus sic stantibus_, what's the use of talking about quantitative and\naccentual verse, as if they were really two kinds of verse? They are, to\nbe sure, but they are not made so, in reading.\n\nThere is, in fact, no such thing as a spondee in ordinary speech. A true\nspondee must be made by voicing two syllables in equal time, and each\nwithout stress.\n\nAfter having been trained in the 'scanning' of the schools (counting\nverses on the fingers), I threw aside and tried, and successfully tried,\nto forget all the scholarship of Latin verse, and began reading Vergil\naloud and in time. I felt, at first, the movement of the verse backward,\nthe ultimate and the penultimate foot came out first to my feelings; and\nin time, the movement of the entire verse became distinct.\n\nChaucer's verse must be read more in time than modern verse. (Note 3.)\nBut all true verse must be read more in time than prose. And even\nimpassioned prose, like some of De Quincey's, for example, must be read,\nmore or less, in time. Perhaps it may be said that both prose and verse\nshould be read in time according as the thought is spiritualized.\n\nThe choruses in Milton's Samson Agonistes can be properly appreciated\nonly when read in time. The verse has been condemned by some critics, as\nif Milton, whose ear, as De Quincey says, was angelic, could not compose\ngood verse when he dictated, in his blindness (to which the merit of the\nverse of the Paradise Lost and the Paradise Regained, was, no doubt,\nsomewhat due), this last of his great poetic compositions!\n\nEven in the study of modern languages, in the schools, there is not\nenough pronouncing of the original. It is mostly read off in English. If\na teacher of a foreign language, whose pronunciation is correct (if it\nis not correct, he should not teach it), were simply to read aloud to\nhis students, they having the text before their eyes, and were to\nrequire them to read, until they could pronounce correctly and fluently,\nthe language studied, it would be a much better introduction to the\nlanguage than the usual grammatical grind at the outset. A certain\namount of grammatical grind is necessary, but a thorough training in\npronunciation should come first of all. And then, if a student got\nnothing other than a good pronunciation, it would be certainly worth\nmore to him than any amount of grammatical drill without it. A living\nlanguage should not be studied scientifically until it is _known_. And\nthe most important thing to know, at first, is its pronunciation.\n\nThomas Elwood, Milton's young Quaker friend, tells us, in his\nautobiography, of his reading Latin to the blind poet,--how he was\nrequired to get rid of his English pronunciation of the language, which\nhis 'master' disliked, and to learn what he calls 'the foreign\npronunciation,' his description thereof showing it to have been the\nItalian,--and then adds, 'Having a curious ear' (that is, a careful,\naccurate, nice, keenly susceptible ear), 'he understood by my tone, when\nI understood what I read, and when I did not; and accordingly would stop\nme, examine me, and open up the most difficult passages to me.'\n\nThis sentence suggests that much more might be done than is done, in the\nway of getting at students' appreciation of the Latin or Greek they may\nbe reciting, by requiring them to voice the original in advance of\ntranslating. After having attained, by sufficient practice, an easy\nfluency of utterance, they could--or some could--bring out, through\ntheir voices, much which they could not reveal through translation or\nany amount of exegesis. All the members of the class might be on a par,\nso far as translation and exegesis go, in exhibiting their knowledge and\nappreciation of the original; but there would always be a few who could\nreveal through vocalization what is beyond translation and exegesis.\nAnd the professor would not necessarily need to have the 'curious ear'\nof a Milton to detect this kind of superiority of the few.\n\nThis brings me to say that, in literary examinations, whatever other\nmeans be employed, a sufficiently qualified teacher could arrive at a\nnicer and more certain estimate of what a student has appropriated, both\nintellectually and spiritually, of a literary product, or any portion of\na literary product, by requiring him to read it, than he could arrive at\nthrough any amount of catechising. The requisite vocal cultivation on\nthe part of the student is, of course, presumed.\n\nBut even an uncultivated voice would reveal appreciation, or the want of\nit, to some extent. For, after all, it is not so much the cultivated\nvoice as spiritual appreciation, which tells in reading. I have heard\n'poor, but honest' voices read some poems very effectively, and I have\nheard rich, but dishonest voices read very afflictingly. To adapt the\nFrench saying, _le style, c'est l'homme_, it may be said that _la\nlecture a haute voix c'est l'homme_. Reading reveals the reader's\nspiritual appreciation or the absence of it. And it is only to the\nextent that a reader assures his hearers that he has himself experienced\nthe sentiments to which he gives utterance, that he impresses them. To\none who has truly appreciated it, there is nothing more dreary than the\nusual elocutionary rendering of a poem.\n\nSuppose a teacher were to examine a student on such a poem as\nColeridge's Christabel by questioning him about it, and the student were\nto show that he was thoroughly acquainted with all the facts and details\nof the poem; there would still be no evidence of that student's\nsusceptibility to what in the poem constitutes its mysterious\ncharm,--none whatever. The student might be utterly destitute of such\nsusceptibility, and yet he could just as well prepare himself to answer\nall the teacher's questions. A very small boy might do so, whose\nappreciation of poetry had not gone beyond 'How doth the little busy\nbee.' There might be a most susceptible literary genius in the class,\nwho might fall below the other student in such an examination! It is\nquite likely that he would, for he would be chiefly occupied with the\npoem as a poem, and would assimilate its life without retaining a\nrecollection of all the details, to which the other had given exclusive\nattention. Or suppose the poem were Gray's Elegy written in a Country\nChurchyard, and the student were to pass a perfectly satisfactory\nexamination thereupon, on the basis, say, of the valuable notes in\nProfessor Hales's Longer English Poems; what would that signify, in\ncomparison with the reading of the poem, which would unmistakably show\nwhether he had responded, to any extent, or not, to its sweet evening\npensiveness, to the general tenor of the theme, to the moulding spirit\nof the whole?\n\nThat he should understand the articulating thought, all the grammatical\nconstructions (and there are several which need to be particularly\nlooked into), and all points to which attention is called in Professor\nHales's notes, is, to be sure, important; but an examination confined to\nthese would not be any test of his literary capacity, of his\nsusceptibility to the poem as a poem.\n\nIn these remarks, I assume, of course, that the prime object of a\nliterary examination should be to test not so much a student's\nknowingness, as his literary capacity, which means a capacity to respond\nto the spiritual life of a poem, or any other form of literature, in\nthe true sense of the word 'literature.' It is its spiritual life which\nmakes a poem a poem, whatever the thought articulation may be. The\nstudent who is capable of such response should rank higher (nobody but a\nDr. Dryasdust could deny this) than the student who could answer all\nquestions which the most prolific questioner could ask him, but who\ncould afford no evidence, through his reading of it, that the poem was\nanything more to him than was a primrose to Wordsworth's 'Peter Bell.'\n\n\n\n\nAs the student advances to the higher literature, he should be trained\nin the higher, more complex vocal functions demanded for its\ninterpretation; he should understand, all along, in his vocal education,\nthe relation of that education to the rendering of works of genius. He\nshould always know what his vocal exercises are for, what relation they\nhave to the interpreting and symbolizing of thought and feeling.\n\nI remember a teacher who advised his scholars--I was one of them--to go\nout frequently into the open air and exercise their voices. And the poor\nfellows did go, and 'fright the isle from her propriety' with their\nbawling without having any conception of what they were bawling for.\nTheir lungs were exercised thereby, but the bawling did nothing for\ntheir vocal training.\n\nVocal exercise must not only be physiologically intelligent, but there\nmust always be some conception back of it which it is the aim of the\nexercise to realize in the voice. One may have a conception, more or\nless distinct, of how some very significant sentence in Shakespeare, for\nexample, should be uttered, and yet his voice is not sufficiently\nobedient to his will and his feelings. He therefore has something to\nwork after, and in time may vocally realize, to his full satisfaction,\nhis conception; and in doing so, he has acquired some new and valuable\ncontrol of his voice, which he can make use of, whenever required, in\nthe rendering of other expressions.\n\nA true poem is a piece of articulate music which may require to be long\npractised upon by the voice before all its possible significance and\neffectiveness be realized. But there must be an ideal back of the\npractice (merely to keep 'going over' the poem will not do); not, of\ncourse, an entirely distinct ideal, it may be more or less vague, but\nsuch an ideal as may be got in advance through a responsiveness to its\ninforming life. This ideal will become more and more distinct in the\ncourse of the practice.\n\nThis is true of every form of art. The artist starts with an ideal more\nor less vague (but it is an ideal which motives all his work), and this\nideal only gradually takes shape in the process of its realization in a\npicture or a statue. Composing continues to the end. The poet is still\ncomposing, still working after a fuller realization of his ideal, when\nhe is making the last verbal change in his poem. (Note 4.) To quote from\nBrowning's 'A Death in the Desert':\n\n    God's gift was that man should conceive of truth,\n    And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake\n    As midway help, till he reach fact indeed.\n    The statuary ere he mould a shape\n    Boasts a like gift, the shape's idea, and next\n    The aspiration to produce the same;\n    So, taking clay, he calls his shape thereout,\n    Cries ever, 'Now I have the thing I see':\n    Yet all the while goes changing what was wrought,\n    From falsehood like the truth, to truth itself.\n\n           *       *       *       *       *\n\n    God only makes the live shape at a jet.\n\nInterpretative reading goes on in the same way. After a reader's long\nfamiliarity with a poem, and when he thinks he has realized all its\npossibilities of vocal effectiveness, some new vocal movement on a\nsingle word, it may be, is suggested, which is a decided contribution to\nthe effect before reached. The play of Hamlet abounds in little\nspeeches, and single words, even, whose possibilities of expressiveness\ncan hardly be exhausted. Every great poet writes, at times, more\nsignificantly than he knows.\n\nIn the creation of every great work of genius, a large degree of\nunconscious might enters; and this unconscious might the reader with the\nrequisite degree of spiritual susceptibility may respond to. This is an\nactivity of the highest order on the part of a reader. Melody, harmony,\nand every mode of form, are, to some extent, the product of an\nunconscious might. Deep feeling attracts to itself such elements of\nlanguage as serve best to conduct it. Assonance, especially, is a\nmanifestation of it. Paradise Lost abounds with the assonance which the\ndominant feeling of the poet induced.\n\nWhen Hamlet is subjecting his friends to a searching examination in\nregard to the appearance of the ghost of his father, he asks 'His beard\nwas grisly?' and then adds, 'no.' (The word is followed by a period, in\nthe Folio.) What a varied expressiveness this little word 'no' admits\nof! When Macbeth says to his wife, when they are considering the murder\nof the king, 'If we should fail?' she replies 'We fail?' Though the\ninterrogative is used in the Folio, the period would, perhaps, be the\nbetter pointing. However that be, the reading of 'we fail' involves much\nconsideration; and so does the reading of thousands of single words in\nShakespeare's Plays.\n\nBut, after all, it is not upon inflections and emphases and other vocal\nfunctions which pertain more especially to the interpretation of the\narticulating thought, that the true reader chiefly depends. The most\nimportant thing with him is the choral atmosphere in which a\nspiritualized composition requires to be presented. And it is in this\nrespect that the art of reading particularly corresponds with the sister\nart of painting. The artist in form and color bathes his landscape in\n'the light that never was, on sea or land,' or, if not that, in some\nlight or other, some 'tender light which heaven to gaudy day denies,'\nand which serves to reveal the feeling which he aimed to express through\nthe landscape. The landscape itself corresponds in painting with the\narticulating thought in reading; but the spiritual attitude of the\nartist is exhibited through the light in which the landscape is bathed.\nAnd so the spiritual attitude of the reader is exhibited through his\nintonation, which corresponds with atmosphere in painting. A susceptible\nreader will, on the first reading of a poem or an impassioned prose\ncomposition, be more or less immediately responsive to the key-note of\nthe composition. An increased familiarity will finally bring this\nkey-note fully home to his feelings, or as fully as may be; and if he\nhas made the articulating thought his own, he is now prepared to\ninterpret the composition to the ears of others. A reader's success in\ninterpreting such a poem as Tennyson's In Memoriam, for example, can be\nbut partial if he has not adequately caught, and does not vocally\nreproduce, the key-note, however distinctly he may present the\narticulating thought. It is the tone which spiritualizes and quickens\nthe thought; and it is the main object in reading, to spiritualize and\nquicken thought, to bring it into relation with the spiritual being of\nthe hearer.\n\nVocal training, the most scientific and systematic, will not of itself\nmake readers, that is, vocal interpreters of genius. Something more must\nbe done than is at present done, in homes and schools, especially in\nhomes, for the education of the spiritual nature; and this education\nmust be begun early, must precede the education of the intellect. The\npremature forcing open of the bud of reason, which now prevails to a\nlamentable degree, must receive its due condemnation. It is a thing to\nbe condemned from Christian pulpits. As George Henry Lewes says, in his\nnovel, Ranthorpe, 'the child must _feel_ before it can _know_; and\nknowledge, great and glorious as it is, can never be the end of life: it\nis but one of the many means.'\n\n\n\n\nIt is quite superfluous to say that a reader should have a perfect\narticulation; that he should be able to command a wide range of pitch;\nall degrees of force, from _pianissimo_ to _fortissimo_; radical,\nmedian, vanishing, and compound stress; every variety of inflection,\ndirect upward and direct downward inflection; equal and unequal, upward\nand downward, single and double waves; accelerated and retarded\nutterance; many qualities of voice; not to name numerous other vocal\nfunctions and attributes which are means to various kinds of\ninterpretative ends. He should also have a complete knowledge of the\nlanguage he is rendering, as a living organism,--an indispensable\ncondition of his presenting the successive and involved groups of\nthought with the requisite distinctness of outline, and with the\nrequisite perspective, determined by their relative value, of which he\nshould have the nicest sense. A very important condition of perspective,\nI would say by the way, is the light touch which needs to be given to\nwhatever is implied, has been anticipated, should be taken for granted,\netc.,--the light touch which conveys the impression that the mind of the\nreader does not come down upon the parts receiving the same, those parts\nsaying themselves, so to speak, but is occupied with the main current\nof thought. Any untrained voice can emphasize, but only a trained or a\nnaturally unperverted voice can give the light touch successfully. Yet\nit is possible for the heaviest, clumsiest voice to be trained to the\nlight touch, to delicacy of tint, just as one who is clay-fisted may, in\ntime, attain to some delicacy of manipulation. The voice and the hand\nhave wonderful possibilities, rarely realized; the former, when\nconverted from the error of its ways, being, indeed, the most expressive\norgan of the soul; the latter being 'the consummation of all perfection\nas an instrument.'\n\nOne great secret in forcible speech is, that all the force be thrown\nupon the vowels--the inarticulate elements. While sounding them, the\norgans of speech are apart, and if the lungs are kept well inflated, the\nthroat is open, and no friction results; while articulating the\nconsonants, certain two of the organs of speech are in contact, and the\nthroat is more or less closed. If force be thrown upon the consonants,\nthe articulate elements, or certain of them, such as _r_ and _k_, for\nexample, there is more or less friction in the throat. In uttering\nforcibly the word 'struck,' for example, all the force should be thrown\nupon the _[)u]_, the consonants _str_ and _k_ being about the same as in\nordinary utterance.\n\nThe music of speech is chiefly in the vowels. But the consonants must,\nof course, be distinctly articulated and not be drowned in the vocality.\n\nSir Henry Taylor writes to Lady Taunton, May 23, 1862 (Correspondence,\nedited by Edward Dowden), of Tennyson's reading: 'As to his reading, he\nis a very deep-mouthed hound, and the sound of it is very grand; but I\nrather need to know by heart what he is reading, for otherwise I find\nthe sense to be lost in sounds from time to time; and, even when I do\nknow what the words are, I think more of articulation is wanted to give\nthe consonantal effects of the rhythm; for without these effects the\nmelodious sinks into the mellifluous in any ordinary utterance; and even\nwhen intoned by such an organ as Alfred's, if the poetry be of a high\norder, the rhythm so sounded loses something of its musical and more of\nits intellectual significance. In the best verse, not every word only,\nbut every letter, should speak. Nevertheless, his reading is very fine\nof its kind, and it is a very rare thing to hear fine reading of any\nkind.'\n\nIn regard to inflections, or bends, of the voice, of every kind, direct\nupward, or downward, or combinations of both, which are called waves\n(upward waves being a combination of downward and upward inflections, or\nbends, and downward waves the reverse, and double waves being a\ncombination of upward and downward waves, or the reverse), I would say,\nwhat I have said in my 'Primer of English Verse,' that a reader must\nhave a sub-consciousness of a dead level, by which, or from which, to\ngraduate all his departures; and it is only by avoiding all\nnon-significant departures that he imparts to his hearers a\nsub-consciousness of his own standard. There should never be in reading\na non-significant departure from a pure monotony. Significant vocal\nintervals lose their effectiveness when they are mixed up with\nnon-significant ones. Great effects can be secured through very simple\nmeans by a reader who strictly observes this principle. Every little\nbend of the voice tells. But a wriggling voice, the general tenor of\nwhich is a violation of this principle, cannot secure such effects. The\nhearer is presented with a jumble of non-significant and would-be\nsignificant intervals, which is less effective than a pure monotony\nwould be.\n\nAppreciative reading is shown as much, perhaps, in what I will call\n_time_ melody, as in almost any other feature of vocalization. A\nreader's sense of the relative values of successive and involved groups\nof thought, is largely indicated by his varied (melodious) rate of\nutterance. And much of the pleasure which an appreciative listener\nderives from reading, as reading, is this indication on the part of the\nreader of a nice estimate of relative values. He feels that the reader\nis a qualified interpreter. This estimate cannot always be determined\nby what a writer makes, syntactically, principal, and what subordinate,\nin the construction of his language. Of course, a mere variation of time\nis not, of itself, sufficient. There must be an appropriate variation of\ntone-color, etc.\n\nA simile or comparison, for example, must be so read as to indicate the\nreader's estimate of what it illustrates; and this is particularly shown\nby the accelerated or retarded utterance of it, and by the tone-color\ngiven to it.\n\nThe following striking simile from II Kings, xxi. 13, should be read\nwith an accelerated utterance, implying the ease with which the act\nillustrated will be performed: 'And I will stretch over Jerusalem the\nline of Samaria, and the plummet of the house of Ahab: and I will wipe\nJerusalem _as a man wipeth a dish, wiping it, and turning it upside\ndown_.'\n\nThe following comparison (Isaiah, lv. 10, 11) should be read in slower\ntime, in itself considered, and, partly, for the reason that it precedes\nwhat it illustrates (a due expectation must be awakened as to what\nfollows): '_As the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and\nreturneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth\nand bud, and giveth seed to the sower and bread to the eater_; so shall\nmy word be that goeth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void,\nbut it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in\nthe thing whereto I sent it.'\n\nIn still slower time, every appreciative reader would spontaneously read\nthe following comparison (Milton's Paradise Lost, Book I., w. 591-600):\n\n                    his form had not yet lost\n    All her original brightness; nor appeared\n    Less than archangel ruined, and the excess\n    Of glory obscured: _as when the sun, new risen,\n    Looks thro' the horizontal misty air\n    Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,\n    In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds\n    On half the nations, and with fear of change\n    Perplexes monarchs._ Darken'd so, yet shone\n    Above them all the archangel.\n\nAn increased time of utterance must be secured through the prolongable\nvowels and consonants, rather than through pauses, though the latter\nmust also be somewhat extended. Accelerated utterance must not impress\nas hurry.\n\nThe fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel, descriptive of Belshazzar's\nfeast, affords good illustrations of the slighting of speech. (Note 5.)\nTake, for example, the first five verses (the parts which should be\nslighted are indicated by smaller type):\n\n1. Belshazzar, =the king=, made a great feast =to a thousand of his\nlords=, and drank wine =before the thousand=.\n\n2. Belshazzar, =whiles he tasted the wine=, commanded to bring the golden\nand silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the\ntemple which was in Jerusalem; =that the king, and his princes, his\nwives, and his concubines=, might drink therein.\n\n3. =Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the\ntemple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem; and the king and his\nprinces, his wives and his concubines=, drank =in them=.\n\n4. =They drank wine=, and praised the gods of gold, =and of silver, of\nbrass, of iron, of wood, and of stone=.\n\n5. In the same hour came forth fingers =of a man's hand=, and wrote =over\nagainst the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's\npalace=; and the king saw =the part of the hand that wrote=.\n\nThe parts in smaller type have various degrees of subordinate value,\nwhich the nicely appreciative reader would indicate by his reading; but\nthey all belong to the background of the description. Any of these\nparts, if brought fully into the foreground, would be given an undue\nimportance, and would reduce somewhat the prominence and distinctness of\nthe other parts.\n\nIn the first verse, 'the king,' should be read with an abatement of\nvoice, being an understood appositive; 'to a thousand of his lords'\n('thousand' being used for an indefinite large number), is sufficiently\nimplied in 'gave a great feast,' and the voice should be reduced upon\nit, and should not descend upon 'lords,' as it is assumed that the feast\nwas given to the chief men of the kingdom; 'and drank wine _before the\nthousand_:' the voice after descending upon 'wine,' should drift lightly\nover 'before the thousand.'\n\nIn the second verse, 'whiles he tasted the wine' should, as it were,\nsay itself; and then the command of the king, in regard to the sacred\nvessels of the temple, should be brought to the front; 'that the king,\nand his princes, his wives, and his concubines,' should be thrown back\nwith a reduced and somewhat accelerated voice, and prominence given to\n'might drink therein,' the purpose being to invite chief attention to\nthe sacrilegious act of making such use of the sacred vessels. A\ndistinct noting of the different kinds of people present at the feast is\nnot called for here. The voice has other business on hand, namely, the\nbringing forward of the sacrilegious purpose to drink wine from the\nsacred vessels of the temple. Further on in the chapter, in the speech\nof Daniel to the king (v. 23), it is necessary to bring these people\nfully to the front, the melodious movement of the voice being adapted to\nthe special emphasizing of 'thou' and 'concubines,' thus: 'and thou, and\nthy lords, thy wives, and thy concubines,' a somewhat increased pitch\nand force being given to 'concubines.'\n\nIn the third verse, 'Then they brought the golden vessels,' etc., should\nbe read as a matter of course, and not as if it were necessary to invite\nthe attention of the hearer to the fact that the command of the king was\nobeyed. The latter mode of reading would be wholly gratuitous (as it\nshould be assumed that the command of the king was obeyed), and would\nwaste attention; 'and the king, and his princes, his wives, and his\nconcubines' should be again thrown back, and, the voice should descend\nsomewhat forcibly upon 'drank,' thus marking distinctly the sacrilege.\n\nIn the fourth verse, 'They drank wine,' being a mere repetition, should\nsay itself (the mind of the reader not coming down upon it, but keeping\nalong on the upper plane of expression), and the voice should come out\nstrongly upon 'and praised the gods of gold'; but it should be reduced,\nand somewhat accelerated, upon, 'and of silver, of brass, of iron, of\nwood, and of stone.' Their idolatry having been sufficiently brought out\nthrough 'and praised the gods of gold,' it would waste attention to\nbring forward also the several other materials of which their gods were\ncomposed. These should be expressed, as it were, by the way. The mind of\nthe reader is done with the fact of idolatry.\n\nIn the fifth verse, 'In the same hour, came forth fingers ... and\nwrote,' should be brought fully to the front, an increase of time being\ngiven to 'In the same hour,' to mark distinctly the fact that divine\nvengeance followed close upon the sacrilege of drinking from the sacred\nvessels of the temple, which was aggravated by their idolatry (the words\n'hour,' 'fingers,' and 'wrote,' receiving each the falling inflection);\nbut 'of a man's hand' should be slighted, the voice being kept up on\n'hand,' it being assumed that the fingers were, of course, those of a\nman's hand, or, at least, of a human hand. The place just _where_ the\nwriting was done, 'over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the\nwall of the king's palace,' being of no special importance, under the\ncircumstances, should be slighted. To bring it to the front would cause\nan entirely unnecessary expenditure of attention on the part of the\nhearer. It should be left to its own intrinsic value, without any\nenforcement from the voice; 'and the king saw' comes to the front, the\nvoice falling upon 'saw,' and drifting down over 'the part of the hand\nthat wrote.'\n\nAs additional examples, take the last seven verses of the chapter: they\nafford illustrations, too, of the marking of the new idea, as\ndistinguished from the important idea, of a sentence considered by\nitself:\n\n25. And this =is the writing that was written=, MENE, MENE, TEKEL,\nUPHARSIN.\n\n26. This is the interpretation =of the thing=: MENE; God hath numbered thy\nkingdom, =and finished it=.\n\n27. TEKEL: =Thou art weighed in the balances, and art= found wanting.\n\n28. PERES: Thy kingdom =is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians=.\n\n29. =Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, and\nput a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning\nhim, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.=\n\n30. In that night was Belshazzar =the king of the Chaldeans slain=.\n\n31. =And Darius the Median= took =the kingdom, being about threescore and\ntwo years old=.\n\nIn the twenty-fifth verse, 'And this' stands out, 'this' being the new\nidea, the voice drifting, with some acceleration, over 'is the writing\nthat was written'; 'MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN,' that is, 'numbered,\nnumbered, weighed, divisions,' 'mene, mene' being an emphatic\nrepetition. In the twenty-eighth verse, 'peres,' having the same root,\nand meaning 'divided,' is substituted for 'upharsin.'\n\nIn the twenty-sixth verse, 'This is the interpretation' stands out, the\nvoice coming down on 'interpretation' and drifting over, and slighting,\n'of the thing.' When 'mene' is pronounced by Daniel, it must be\nsupposed that its meaning is understood, but not its application; the\nword 'kingdom' must, therefore, be marked with the emphasis; 'and\nfinished it' must be somewhat slighted, as the meaning of the phrase is\nanticipated in 'numbered.'\n\nIn the twenty-seventh verse, the voice moves along with some\nacceleration, over 'thou art weighed in the balances,' the idea of\n'weighed' being anticipated in 'tekel,' and 'art found wanting' is\nbrought strongly out.\n\nIn the twenty-eighth verse, 'kingdom' must receive the emphasis,\n'divided' being anticipated in 'peres'; 'and given to the Medes and\nPersians' we must suppose is not altogether new information to\nBelshazzar, after his having been informed that the division of his\nkingdom is at hand. He knows who will come into possession of it. This\nphrase, therefore, must not be brought fully to the front. It must be\nuttered with some acceleration of the voice and in a way to indicate the\nsupposed feeling of Daniel in regard to the quick work which is to be\nmade of the kingdom.\n\nThe twenty-ninth verse should be read with some acceleration of voice,\nand without any special expression, the reader assuming that the promise\nmade by the king to Daniel, in the sixteenth verse, if he can interpret\nthe writing, was fulfilled. This twenty-ninth verse must not, therefore,\nbe read as imparting new information.\n\nIn the thirtieth verse, 'In that night' must be brought fully out,\nthrough a time emphasis, to mark how immediate was the fulfilment of\nDaniel's interpretation; there must be some acceleration of voice upon\n'was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans,' and a quite strong emphasis\ngiven to 'slain.'\n\nIn the thirty-first verse, 'took' is the foreground word, the emphasis\nof it implying an accordance with Daniel's interpretation; 'being about\nthreescore and two years old,' should be read as a gratuitously affixed\nfact, having no particular bearing upon what has been related.\n\nCultivated people cannot away with what is generally understood by\n'elocution,' which is rather a vocal and Delsartian display than an\nhonest vocalization, which good reading should be, of what has been\nintellectually and spiritually assimilated. Reading is not acting. The\nfirst thing to be done to bring 'elocution' into good repute (it is\ncertainly not in good repute at present) is to free reading from all\n_strain_ of expression--to reduce emphasis and attain to the greatest\ndegree of simplicity _compatible with the subject-matter_. And one\nimportant feature of reading which should receive special attention, as\na means to this end, is the light touch, which conveys the impression\nthat the mind of the reader does not come down upon the parts receiving\nthe same, those parts expressing what has been anticipated, or should\nbe taken for granted, etc., and constituting the remote background of\nexpression.\n\nThe highest result which can be exhibited of literary culture and a\ncorresponding vocal culture, is an organic melody, in the reading of a\ngreat poem, the outcome of the poem's organic life. By melody, in\nreading, is meant that organic variety in the use of all the vocal\nfunctions and affections, that arabesqueness of expression, which does\nnot allow the ear of the hearer to detect a regular recurrence of any of\nthese functions and affections. There is melody of pause, of inflection,\nof rhyme, of rhythm, of time, of force, of emphasis, and of every vocal\naffection. In truly melodious reading, the design or figure, so to\nspeak, is so arabesque that it is not taken in by the ear of the hearer,\nand does not come to his consciousness, but it tells effectively on his\nfeelings. And by 'effectively' I specially mean that the feelings are\nbrought into harmony with, into a state of elective attraction for, the\ncontriving creative spirit which moulds the poetic form. Such reading of\nhigh poetry is the extreme merit of vocal expression. Some of its\nprinciples may be _taught_; but the vitality of it must be the result of\nthe spiritual education of the reader, must be exhaled spontaneously\nfrom his _being_.\n\nA reader with a nice sense of melody may conceal a deficiency of melody\nin the poem he is reading; and he may do this, without arbitrarily\nimposing variety. An imposed variety is not true melody, which must be\nvital, organic. In the reading of Pope's uniform couplets, for example,\nhe may keep down the rocking-horse movement of the verse (Note 6) by a\nskilful management of the pauses (which come so uniformly in the middle\nand at the end of the verses), and of the rhyming words, by an\nacceleration and retardation of voice wherever these are permissible, by\nthe light touch, and by various other means. To counteract the uniform\nconstruction of such verse as the following, for example, from the Essay\non Man, without arbitrarily imposing variety, the reader's art must\napproach the artful:\n\n    Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,\n    Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,\n    Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,\n    Spreads undivided, operates unspent; etc.\n\nor the following, descriptive of the heroine, in The Rape of the Lock:\n\n    On her white breast, a sparkling cross she wore,\n    Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.\n    Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,\n    Quick as her eyes, and as unfix'd as those:\n    Favors to none, to all she smiles extends;\n    Oft she rejects, but never once offends.\n    Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,\n    And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.\n    Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,\n    Might hide her faults, if Belles had faults to hide:\n    If to her share some female errors fall,\n    Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all.\n\nThe absence of _enjambement_ makes it somewhat difficult so to keep down\nthe rhyme emphasis that it may not pester the ear. (Note 7.)\n\nWhere a reader's feelings have been melodized by culture, they will\nprotect him against the influence of a too artificial construction of\nthe verse. He will not impose variety, but he will utter humdrum verse,\nas far as possible, under the conditions of his melodized feeling.\n\n\n\n\nThe importance of cultivating the speaking voice is quite as great as\nthat of cultivating the reading voice. Perhaps it is greater; for the\nspeaking voice has a wider and more constant influence--an influence\nwhich is exerted in all the relations of life, an influence calming or\nirritating, an influence bringing men into friendly or unfriendly\nattitudes toward each other. How demulcent the effect of a gracious\nvoice, and how rasping that of a snappish one! 'The sweetest music,'\nsays Emerson, 'is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it\nspeaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage.\nThe oratorio has already lost its relation to the morning, to the sun,\nand the earth, but that persuading voice is in tune with these.'\n\nOf Emerson's own voice, the Rev. Charles G. Ames, in 'A Memorial\nAddress,' says: 'His speech had a subtle spell,--a charm like Nature's\nown, so that he affected men like Old Honesty ... so silvery, cheery,\nsane, fearless!... There was no false ring, no trick to catch applause\nor to turn off attention from the message to the messenger; no _show_ of\nknowledge or power or art. One might forget it all next hour, through\nsheer moral inability to stay at such an unwonted altitude; but while\nlistening to that high discourse it certainly did seem as if we\nbelonged up there,--as if a man ought to make the very earth a pedestal\nof honor for his feet and wear the sky about his brow as an aureole.'\n\nHow much wrath, with its evil consequences, might be averted by soft\nanswers! How much pleasanter an arrival at a hotel might be than it\noften is, if the slapdash clerk in the office had a voice better attuned\nto a courteous reception of a guest! or an arrival in New York, from\nabroad, if a custom-house official knew how to ask, in a civilized way,\n'What's in that box?' The question is often asked in a way which has a\ndecidedly indurating effect upon the conscience of a traveller, in\nregard to dutiable things he may have brought with him. How afflicting\nthe chaotic clatter of high-pitched voices, at a reception, or an\nevening party! A room jam-full of standing people, 'unaimed prattle\nflying up and down' (true conversation is out of the question) is hard\nto endure, even with the prospect of lobster and of chicken salad, ice\ncream, and numerous other unwholesome things about to be. American\ngirls, before they 'come out,' may talk in a quiet way; but so soon as\nthey 'come out,' many of them think they must show that they _have_\n'come out,' by the high pitch and rapidity of their voices, which quite\ndeprive a nervous man of his self-possession.\n\nHow much 'the charm of beauty's powerful glance' may be heightened or\nlowered by the character of the voice which goes along with it! Woman\ntells on others by a gracious manner, by the beauty of holiness as it is\nmanifested in all her ways, in all her relations, domestic and social,\nand especially by her voice. A woman with a sweet and gracious voice,\nthe index of a sweet and gracious nature, may exert through it, in the\nordinary relations of life, without even knowing it, a better influence\nthan she could by advisedly devoting herself to doing good, even if such\ndevotion took the form of distributing religious tracts! The moral\natmosphere of a home may be not a little due to the voice of the wife\nand mother. The memory, even, of a voice which was toned by love and\nsympathy, may continue to be a sweet influence long after the voice\nitself has been hushed in death. The influence of the voice for good or\nevil, in the domestic, social, and all other relations of life, cannot\nbe estimated. A voice may even have a good or bad reflex action upon its\npossessor. A slovenly articulation, for example, may be the index of a\nmoral slovenliness, and may react upon the latter. Subtle, indeed, and\nimperceptible, are the influences upon ourselves, for good or evil, of\nall our commonest doings.\n\nA fond, worldly mother may be anxiously ambitious that her daughter\nshall have all the accomplishments required for her fullest\nattractiveness when she 'comes out.' Years may be spent upon her\nmusical education, with the poor result, perhaps, of 'fine sleights of\nhand and unimagined fingering, shuffling off the hearer's soul through\nhurricanes of notes to a noisy Tophet'; she may be taught dancing which\nrivals that of a Taglioni, and French, and drawing, and painting; she\nmay be sent abroad to snatch the graces beyond the reach of art, of the\nmost elegant European society; and yet, in the grand scheme of\naccomplishments, the speaking voice is left out and entirely neglected,\nthough she have a voice unpleasantly pitched, and with other remediable\ndefects which are far, very far, from idealizing, transfiguring her! If\nthe time devoted to the piano, with the supposed poor result, had been\ndevoted to a careful cultivation of her voice, her power to charm (that\nbeing the end proposed) would be much more increased than by any or all\nof her other accomplishments.\n\nIt is easy to infer what Shakespeare's opinions were on many subjects,\nalthough his Plays are regarded by some critics as peculiarly\nimpersonal; but they are charged with his personality, and shadow forth,\nnot dimly, his views in regard to many things. The evidence is abundant\nthat the voice was to him very significant, apart from his estimate of\nits importance, as a professional actor, and that he was most\nsusceptible to its charms and to its defects. It is her voice which the\ngrief-stricken Lear is made to speak of, when he bends over the dead\nCordelia: 'Her voice,' he says, 'was ever soft, gentle, and low'; and to\nthis he adds, 'an excellent thing in woman'; Shakespeare, no doubt,\nmeaning that he had in his mind, at the time, the cruel voices,\nexpressive of their hard and wicked hearts, of Regan and Goneril. After\nthe death of Antony, Cleopatra, in her rapturous praise of him, says,---\n\n                    His voice was propertied\n    As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;\n    But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,\n    It was as rattling thunder.\n\nHamlet's advice to the players we may take as an expression of\nShakespeare's own standard of vocal delivery, and as his protest\nagainst a stilted and ranting declamation, which, no doubt,\ncharacterized many of the actors of his day.\n\nThere is evidence in the Plays that, in the process of composition, he\nmust either have heard imaginatively what he was writing, or have\nactually voiced his language as he went along. He did not write for the\neye, but for the ear. And the high vocal capabilities of his language\nmay be somewhat attributable to his hearing of what he wrote. Must he\nnot have heard the effect of monosyllabic words, uttered with the tremor\nand semi-tone of old age, when he wrote King Lear's speeches?--'You see\nme here, you gods, a poor old man, as full of grief as age,' etc., and\n'When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of\nfools,' etc. And must he not have heard the effect of polysyllabic\nwords as expressive of Macbeth's sense of the vastness of his guilt,\nwhen he wrote, 'this my hand will rather the _multitudinous_ seas\n_incarnadine_,' etc.? of the guttural emphasis, expressive of\ndetestation, in the speech of Coriolanus to the rabble?--'You _c_ommon\n_c_ry of _c_urs! whose breath I _h_ate as _r_eek o' the _r_otten fens,'\netc.\n\nAn interesting compilation might be made from the Plays, of passages\nexpressive of strong passion of various kinds, the several vocabularies\nof which testify to Shakespeare's having imaginatively or actually\nvoiced what he wrote. The speech of the Bastard to Hubert, in King John\n(A. iv. S. 3), is a signal example:\n\n    _Bastard._ Here's a good world!--Knew you of this fair work?\n    Beyond the infinite and boundless reach\n    Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death,\n    Art thou damn'd, Hubert.\n\n    _Hubert._ Do but hear me, sir.\n\n    _Bastard._ Ha! I'll tell thee what;\n    Thou'rt damn'd as black--nay, nothing is so black;\n    Thou art more deep damn'd than Prince Lucifer:\n    There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell\n    As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.\n\nI fancy that Shakespeare had a fine voice. If he had not, it is quite\ncertain that he had the highest estimate and appreciation of the voice\nas the organ of the soul. His creative spirit, too, attracted to itself\nthe most effective vocabulary for the vocal expression of every kind of\npassion--the most effective by reason of their monosyllabic or their\npolysyllabic character, of their vowel or their consonantal elements. To\nhim, language was for the ear, not for the eye. The written word was to\nhim what it was to Socrates, 'the mere image or phantom of the living\nand animated word.' (Note 8.)\n\nThe art of printing has caused language to be overmuch transferred from\nits true domain, the sense of hearing, to the sense of sight. The lofty\nidealized language of poetry is known, in these days, chiefly through\nthe eye, and its true power is consequently quiescent for the generality\nof silent readers. In silent reading, an appreciation of matter and\nform must be largely due to an imaginative transference to the ear of\nwhat is taken in by the eye.\n\n\n\n\nThe impression seems to be getting stronger and stronger, in these days\nof excessive teaching and excessive learning, that no one can do\nanything or learn anything without being taught,--without 'taking a\nregular course,' as the phrase is. This seems to be especially true in\nthe matter of vocal cultivation. People go to schools of oratory with\nnothing within themselves which is clamorous for expression; not even a\nvery 'still small voice' urging them to express something. Many who\ndesire, or think they do, to be readers, as there are many who desire,\nor think they do, to be artists, evidently believe that if they be\ntrained in technique they can be readers or artists.\n\nBut suppose some one is impelled to cultivate vocal power because of his\ndesire to express what he has sympathetically and lovingly assimilated,\nof a work of genius: if he endeavor to give an honest expression, so far\nas in him lies, to what he feels, and avoid trying to express what he\ndoes not feel, and if he persevere in his endeavor, with always a\ncoefficient ideal back of his reading, he may--in time, he certainly\nwill--become a better reader than another could if he should set out,\nwith malice prepense, to be an elocutionist, and with that malicious\npurpose, were to employ a mere voice-trainer who should teach him to\nperpetrate all sorts of vocal extravagances, to make faces, and to\ngesticulate when reading what does not need any gesture. Such an one,\nafter passing out of the hands of his trainer, is most likely to go\nforth and afflict the public with his performances, which will be wholly\na pitiable exhibition of himself.\n\nSome of the best readers I have ever known have been of the former\nclass, who honestly voiced what they had sympathetically assimilated,\nand did not strain after effect. But it seems that when one sets out to\nread, with no interior capital, he or she, especially she, is apt to run\ninto all kinds of extravagances which disgust people of culture and\ntaste. The voice, instead of being the organ of the soul, is the\nbetrayer of soullessness.\n\nWithout that interior life which can respond to the indefinite life of a\nwork of genius (indefinite, that is, to the intellect), a trained voice\ncan do nothing of itself in the way of real interpretation. It may bring\nout the definite articulating thought, in a way, but the electric aura\nin which the thought should be enveloped, will be wanting; and where\nthis is wanting, in the expression of spiritualized thought, the true\nobject of reading is but imperfectly realized. What can be got through\nthe eye, it is not the main function of the voice to deliver. There must\nbe the requisite 'drift' and choral intonation--drift, the air, the\npervading, ruling spirit, 'the dominant's persistence,' the prevailing\ntone color.\n\nI am pleased to quote, in this connection, what Professor Edward Dowden\nwrites in his article on 'The teaching of English literature,' contained\nin his recent volume, 'New Studies in Literature': 'Few persons nowadays\nseem to feel how powerful an instrument of culture may be found in\nmodest, intelligent, and sympathetic reading aloud. The reciter and the\nelocutionist of late have done much to rob us of this which is one of\nthe finest of the fine arts. A mongrel something which, at least with\nthe inferior adepts, is neither good reading nor yet veritable acting,\nbut which sets agape the half-educated with the wonder of its airs and\nattitudinizing, its pseudo-heroics and pseudo-pathos, has usurped the\nplace of the true art of reading aloud, and has made the word\n\"recitation\" a terror to quiet folk who are content with intelligence\nand refinement. Happily in their behalf the great sense-carrier to the\nEmpire, Mr. Punch, has at length seen it right to intervene. (Note 9.)\nThe reading which we should desire to cultivate is intelligent reading,\nthat is, it should express the meaning of each passage clearly;\nsympathetic reading, that is, it should convey the feeling delicately;\nmusical reading, that is, it should move in accord with the melody and\nharmony of what is read, be it in verse or prose.'\n\nA training of the organs of speech which brings them into complete\nobedience to the will and the feelings, and a perfect technique,\nimportant and indispensable as they are, cannot, of themselves, avail\nmuch in the interpretation of spiritualized thought. This must be mainly\nthe result of such education as induces an inward preparedness for\nresponding to and assimilating the essential life of a work of genius.\n_Quicquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis_ (whatever is\nreceived, is received according to the measure of the recipient). And it\nis, or should be, the leading object of literary education to enlarge\nthe spiritual measure of the recipient.\n\nNow it must be said that the schools, with all their grammars, their\nrhetorics, their philologies, their psychologies, their histories and\ncheap philosophies of literature, their commentaries and annotations, do\nnot prepare their students to know works of genius in their absolute\ncharacter; for such knowledge implies an adequate education of the\nabsolute, that is, spiritual man, and such education is not induced by\nthe above studies as at present conducted. It demands spiritual life to\nrespond to spiritual life; or, in the words of St. Paul, 'the natural\nman receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are\nfoolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are\nspiritually discerned.'\n\nWhat is generally understood in the schools as a thorough study of a\nwork of genius, is occupied quite exclusively with the language and with\nthat part of the subject-matter which can be intellectually formulated.\nThat part which demands a spiritual response and which it is the main\nobject of reading to vocalize for the purpose of calling forth such\nresponse, is not included in the so-called thorough study. The latter\nmay do much, indeed, to shut off any spiritual response which a student\nmight give if he were not subjected to such study. In this statement no\ndepreciation of scholarship is meant to be implied. Let us have the most\nthorough scholarship possible; but it must not become an end to itself;\nit must be a means to the higher end of intellectual and spiritual\nlife.\n\nWhat chiefly afflicts a cultivated hearer, in 'elocution,' is the\nconspicuous absence of spiritual assimilation on the part of the reader.\nAt best, he voices only what the eye of an ordinary reader could take\nin, and leaves the all-important part to his face, arms, and legs, and\nvarious attitudes of the body. But the spiritual in literature must be\naddressed to the ear. 'A spirit aerial informs the cell of Hearing,'\nsays Wordsworth, in his great poem, 'On the power of sound.'\n\n\n\n\nReading, I have said, is not acting. It is the acting which usually\naccompanies the reading or recitation of the professional elocutionist\nwhich cultivated people especially dislike. When they wish to see\nacting, they prefer going to a theatre. When they listen to reading,\nthey want serious interpretative vocalization; only that and nothing\nmore is necessary, unless it be a spontaneous and graceful movement of\nthe hands, occasionally, such as one makes in animated conversation.\n\nAgain, the most elegant way of vocally interpreting a poem, is to read\nit from a book, rather than to recite it. Recitation has much to do with\nthis acting business. In fact, elocutionists recite in order to have\ntheir arms free to act--to illustrate the thought they are expressing.\nThought should not be helped out by gesture. Gesture results, or should\nresult, from emotion, and should, therefore, be indefinite. Mimetic\ngesture, or mimetic action of any kind, is rarely, if ever, in place. If\na speaker, addressing a _very_ ignorant audience, had to use the word\n'rotatory,' for example, he might make a cyclic movement or two with his\nhand, to illustrate its meaning. But to do so before an audience\npresumably intelligent enough to know the meaning of the word, would be\nimpertinent--a 'wasteful and ridiculous excess.' So, too, it would be,\nto illustrate the word 'somersault,' before an audience of ordinary\nintelligence. The absurdity of mimetic action is well illustrated in the\nfollowing: 'I have heard,' says a writer in 'Expression' (Vol. I., No.\n2), published in Boston, 'of a popular public reader of Boston giving\nlast season Wordsworth's \"Daffodils\"; and as she came to the last two\nlines,--\n\n    And then my heart with pleasure fills,\n    And dances with the daffodils,\n\nshe put her hand to her heart and with pleasure indicated by a\nsentimental flash of the eye upon the audience, danced a few graceful\nsteps expressive of exuberant joy, and bowed herself off the platform\namid the vociferous applause of the audience. The reader's taste in this\ncase was no worse than that of the audience that applauded her. The\nincident shows how great the general lack of taste, and the need of the\nsystematic study of fitness in the relation of thought to its\nexpression.'\n\nI would say rather than 'lack of taste,' lack of spiritual life,\nalthough the former is closely allied with the latter. A reader who has\nassimilated the 'Daffodils,' who can sympathetically reproduce within\nhimself the heart-dance of the poet, can better reveal that\nreproduction through the voice (the requisite vocal culture being\nassumed) than through such mimetic foolery as the above. He would not\nand could not condescend to the latter, if he had feeling deep enough\ntruly to know the poem of the 'Daffodils.' True feeling is always\nserious, even if it be that of deep joy. The trouble with many public\nreaders is, that they don't truly know, have not inwardly experienced,\nwhat they attempt to interpret vocally; and, as a consequence, they\nresort to what disgusts people of real culture.\n\nI was once present, by accident, at a lecture given by a\nDelsarto-elocutionary woman, and in the course of the lecture, she\npresented what, she said, would be false gestures in reciting Whittier's\nMaud Muller. She then recited the poem, with, according to her notions,\n_true_ gestures, which were more in number than Cicero made, perhaps,\nin his orations against Cataline, or Demosthenes, in his oration On the\nCrown. Every idea of the poem told outwardly on her body.\n\nIf a woman, in reading Maud Muller, has emotions which _must_ find vent\nin gesture, and various physical contortions, she ought to be put under\ntreatment that would tone up her system.\n\n\n\n\nThe University of the Future, in order to be a vastly greater power than\nthe University of the Present, must, at least, rank spiritual education\nwith intellectual training and discipline. This the University of the\nnear Future must do; the University of a more remote Future, we must\nbelieve, if we believe that the spiritual is the crowning attribute of\nman--that by which he is linked with the permanent, the eternal, will\nmake all intellectual training and discipline, even all physical\ntraining, so far as may be, subservient to the spiritual man.\n\n    Let us cry 'All good things\n    Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!'\n\nThe rectification of the intellect must, as the greatest poem of the\ncentury, Browning's 'Ring and the Book,' implicitly teaches, be through\nthe rectification of the spiritual, absolute man.\n\nAs bearing directly on my leading subject, the vocal interpretation of\nliterature (that is, spiritualized thought), I would indicate some of\nthe means and conditions of a more spiritual education than is\ncontemplated in the most advanced educational schemes of the day.\n\nWhat may be said to be the predominant idea of the present day,\nentertained especially by scientists and exercising its influence, more\nor less, on the great majority of minds, in regard to the main avenue to\nknowledge and truth? I answer, and I think not unjustifiably, the idea\nthat the analytic, discursive, generalizing intellect, is adequate to\nsolve all solvable problems--that it is the only reliable means of\narriving at a positive knowledge; that, accordingly, education, the\n_highest_ education, consists almost exclusively in learning and in\nbeing trained to discover and apply, the laws, so called, of nature, to\ntrace facts to their (scientific) causes and to advance logically from\ncauses to facts--that upon which the analyzing and generalizing\nintellect cannot be exercised, being set down as unknowable. Of an\n_intuition_ inaccessible to analysis, they take little or no account.\nThis some future age, with a more complete education, than ours, will,\nI am persuaded, regard as the cardinal defect in the education and\nphilosophy of the present age--a defect that tends to deaden, if not to\ndestroy, in many minds, all faith in those spiritual instincts and\nspiritual susceptibilities and apprehensions, which constitute the basis\nof a living hope and faith in immortality, and through which, and\nthrough which alone, man may know, _without_ thought, some of the\nhighest truths, truths which are beyond the reach of the discourse of\nreason. While the reasoning faculties of a man may exist in vigor, the\nties which unite the soul _sympathetically_ and through assimilation,\nwith universal spirituality, may be sundered, and a spiritual world for\nhim there will then be none.\n\nThat there are higher and subtler organs of discernment than the\ndiscursive intellect, and higher things to be discerned than can be\ndiscerned by the senses, the lowliest of men and women, no less than the\nmost exalted in intellect and genius, have, throughout the whole\nrecorded history of the race, borne an incontrovertible testimony. 'The\nnatural condition of humanity,' says William Howitt, 'is alliance with\nthe spiritual; the anti-spiritual is but an epidemic--a disease.'\n\nGreat have been the conquests of Science, the last fifty years, and\ngreat has been their influence on the temporal well-being of mankind.\nBut it must be admitted, perhaps, that these conquests, the product\nmainly of the insulated intellect, have been somewhat at the expense of\n'the interior divinity.'\n\nWordsworth, addressing his friend Coleridge, in the second book of 'The\nPrelude,' says:\n\n                      to thee\n    Science appears but what in truth she is,\n    Not as our glory and our absolute boast,\n    But as a succedaneum, and a prop\n    To our infirmity.\n\nHe has been speaking of mental science.\n\nThe present signs of the times, however, give promise that humanity, far\nas it has drifted in one direction, will assert its _wholeness_, and\nwill 'render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the\nthings that are God's,' and that the awakening of 'the interior\ndivinity,' of the spiritual instincts and intuitions, will be as much\nthe aim of the education of the future as the exercise of the mere\nintellect now is. This awakening must begin in infancy, when the child\nfirst 'rounds to a separate mind,' and can respond to its mother's\nsmile, and feel her protecting care, and the rosy warmth of her love.\nThen will the wise mother regard her child as almost wholly an\nimpressionable being, and will see especially to its surroundings and\nits associations whether they are suitable to be stamped upon its\nplastic mind. As it grows, she will aim to quicken and purify it\nsentiment, and to cultivate a love of the beautiful in form, in color,\nin sound, especially as these are exhibited in the works of Nature; will\nendeavor to bring it into the fullest sympathy with all forms of animal\nlife, down to 'the meanest thing that feels.' It is a good sign when a\nboy loves animals and is kind to them; but when he is bent on killing\nthings, it can be quite safely inferred that he has not received at home\nlessons in love and had his sympathies and affections duly awakened.\nHome-life in this country is not, as a general thing, such as to bring\nthe best affections into a healthy play. There is too much worry, too\nmuch taking thought of the morrow, too much dissatisfaction with the\npresent condition, too much eagerness to get rich. Some fathers never\nsufficiently dismiss their business and cares from their minds, to play\nwith their children and to show them those little attentions which their\nyoung hearts crave; and mothers expend their souls in the cares and\nvexations of housekeeping, or, if, by reason of their position and\nwealth, they are free from these, in social or other matters which shut\nthem off, more or less, from those maternal functions which they should\nconsider it their highest duty to exercise. Filial affection certainly\ndoes not increase in this country, as the years go on. Is it too much to\nsay, perhaps it is, that it is rather the exception than the rule, for\nchildren, after, and often before, their majority, to show a strong\nattachment either for their parents or for each other? And there is a\nword in our language that has quite survived its usefulness; and if\nthings continue to go on as they are now going, it will soon be a fit\nsubject for an Archaic Dictionary--I mean the word REVERENCE. It still\nmaintains its place in our Dictionaries of living vocables, but the\nthing it represents is a _rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno_.\nVain is the attempt to awaken the religious sentiment in a child, to\ncause it to _feel_ the real significance of the words, as it utters\nthem, 'Our Father who art in heaven,' in whom the filial and the\nreverential sentiments are quite extinguished. These sentiments are the\nsoil in which the religious sentiment can best germinate, grow, bud,\nand fragrantly bloom.\n\nDuring a child's earliest years the foundation should be laid for that\nspiritual relationship with Nature which Wordsworth has presented in his\ngreat autobiographic poem, 'The Prelude.' Such relationship but very few\ncould realize in themselves as the great high priest of Nature realized\nit; but all could be brought into a more intimate spiritual relationship\nwith Nature than is favored and promoted, at present, by home influences\nand by school studies. The latter, when prematurely analytical, and\nbrain slaughtering, tend rather to shut off such relationship.\n\nWhat is understood as a scientific observation of nature, is not its\nhighest form, so far, at least, as spiritual culture is concerned. It is\nalmost exclusively an analytic observation, in which the conscious\nintellect plays the chief part. It is study, not spiritual communion.\nThe highest form of observation (if observation it can strictly be\ncalled, which is to so great an extent a rapture of necessity and\nspontaneity) is that which results from the synthetic play of the\nspiritual faculties, and brings the outer world and all its minutest\nfeatures into relation with the inner world of man's spirit, and makes\nhim feel his great allies. It is this kind of observation rather than\nthe other, which 'adds a precious seeing to the eye,' and gives to a man\nsome measure of 'the vision and the faculty divine,' and enables him to\nknow something of the fields that are his own; but from which spiritual\ntorpor may alienate him.\n\n'I, long before the blissful hour arrives,' writes Wordsworth, meaning\nwhen the discerning intellect of man shall be wedded to this goodly\nuniverse in love and holy passion, and shall find the ideal forms of\nPoets, a simple produce of the common day,\n\n    I, long before the blissful hour arrives,\n    Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse\n    Of this great consummation;--and, by words\n    Which speak of nothing more than what we are,\n\nthat is, what we really or potentially are,\n\n    Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep\n    Of death, and win the vacant and the vain\n    To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims\n    How exquisitely the individual mind\n    (And the progressive powers perhaps no less\n    Of the whole species) to the external World\n    Is fitted:--and how exquisitely, too--\n    Theme this but little heard of among men--\n    The external world is fitted to the mind; etc.\n\nThe system of general spiritual education which is both explicitly and\nimplicitly set forth in 'The Prelude,' makes this great autobiographical\npoem one of the most valuable productions in English Literature; and\nteachers capable of bringing its informing spirit home to their students\n(capable by virtue of their own assimilation of it), might do great\nthings in the way of a spiritual quickening of their students.\n\nAnd how much capable mothers might derive from Wordsworth's poetry for\nthe spiritual nurture of their children! Capable mothers are, alas!\ncomparatively few; but forces, to be noticed further on, are now at\nwork, which are increasing the number of such mothers, and will continue\nto increase it more and more, as the ideals of a true womanhood are more\nand more exalted and realized. The kind of regeneration which the world,\nat present, most needs, will have to be largely induced by woman, and\nshe _will_ induce it according as her true rights, which are involved in\nher 'distinctive womanhood,' are recognized and granted her, by her not\nover-generous brother.\n\nSpiritual education is not a matter of abstract instruction. It must\nbe induced on the basis of the concrete and the personal. The\nspiritual faculties have no affinities for the abstract. Christianity\nwas introduced into the world through the personal and concrete;\nrather, it _is_ the personal and the concrete, and its arch-enemy has\never been the abstract, in the form of dogma and stark-naked doctrine.\nDogmatism implies materialism. As one advances spiritually, dogma\ndeclines with him, in inverse proportion. Christianity is essential\nbeing, and not a doctrine, not a body of opinions, not 'a matter of\nantiquarian pedantry or of historical perspective.' In the great words\nof the 'De Imitatione Christi,' 'Cui aeternum verbum loquitur, ille a\nmultis opinionibus expeditur' (he to whom the eternal word speaks, is\nfreed from many opinions); and to fit the soul to be spoken to by the\neternal word, is the true, the ultimate object of spiritual education.\nThe permanent, the eternal, that which is alive for evermore, should,\nindeed, be the object of all education. Phenomena, in themselves, are\nnot educative. A feeding on them alone, if that were possible (man\nnaturally, whatever his condition, seeks other pabulum), would soon\nresult in a general atrophy of all the faculties, intellectual and\nspiritual. To use the words of St. Vincent de Lerins, which he applied\nto the Catholic Church,--would that the Church had always made them\nits controlling principle!--'magnopere curandum est ut id teneamus\nquod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est' (it must be\nespecially seen to, that we hold to that which everywhere, which\nalways, which by all, has been believed).\n\nThere is no exclusiveness in the eternal word; it speaks to every one\nwhose ears are open to it; it enters wherever it is not shut out. It\nspeaks through Nature, through every form of Art (which to be art must\nbe a manifestation of it), through Poetry, 'the breath and finer spirit\nof all knowledge,' through Music, Sculpture, Painting, Architecture,\nthrough all sacred books, and, above all, through sanctified men and\nwomen, of the Present and the Past, 'the noble Living and the noble\nDead.' In the words of Emerson:\n\n    Not from a vain or shallow thought\n    His awful Jove young Phidias brought;\n    Never from lips of cunning fell\n    The thrilling Delphic oracle;\n    Out from the heart of nature rolled\n    The burdens of the Bible old;\n    The litanies of nations came,\n    Like the volcano's tongue of flame,\n    Up from the burning core below,--\n    The canticles of love and woe.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    The word unto the prophet spoken\n    Was writ on tables yet unbroken;\n    The word by seers or sibyls told\n    In groves of oak or fanes of gold\n    Still floats upon the morning wind,\n    Still whispers to the willing mind.\n\nThe kind of books which the young should read, is, of course, an\nimportant consideration. If 'a general insight into useful facts' be\nregarded as the main thing in a child's education, such as 'the royal\ngenealogies of Oviedo, the internal laws of the Burmese empire, by how\nmany feet Mount Chimborazo outsoars Teneriffe, what navigable river\njoins itself to Lara, and what census of the year five was taken at\nKlagenfurt,' and other matters not having much to do with the\nadvancement of the millennium, why the question is easily settled as to\nthe kind of books a child should be provided with, and be required to\nlearn, and recite; but if some vitality of soul, the indispensable\ncondition of intellectual vitality, in after life, be the aim, then a\ndifferent kind of books will be needed--such books as will serve to\nvitalize and guide the instincts, to bring the feelings into a healthful\nplay, and awaken enthusiasm, and thus to prepare the way for the later\nexercise of the reasoning faculties, and for the comprehension of moral\nand religious principles. There is a time to _feel_ the True, the\nBeautiful, and the Good, and a time to regard all these, as far as may\nbe, under intellectual relations. If 'the years that bring the\nphilosophic mind' be anticipated in a child's education, it will be\nlikely, by reason of the premature philosophy served out to it, to\nbecome a stupid man or woman, with a plentiful lack of both intellect\nand soul. Upon the closed bud of reason, while it is not yet ready to be\nunfolded, must be brought to bear the genial warmth of sensibility,\nsympathy, and enthusiasm; and when it opens in its own good season, it\nwill not be dwarfed nor canker-bitten.\n\nSensibility, sympathy, enthusiasm, I repeat, are the elements of the\natmosphere in which the intellectual, the moral, and the religious\nnature of a child can alone germinate and healthily grow, and in later\nyears, bloom and shed a wholesome fragrance.\n\nStories written for the young must be _concrete_ representations of the\nTrue, the Beautiful, and the Good; in other words, they must be works of\nart. Says Browning, in 'The Ring and the Book,'\n\n                        Art may tell a truth\n    Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought,\n\nthat is, bring what is _implicit_ within the soul, into the right\nattitude to become _explicit_--bring about a silent adjustment through\nsympathy induced by the concrete (it cannot be induced by the abstract);\nin other words, prepare the way for the apprehension of the truth--\n\n          do the thing shall breed the thought,\n    Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word;\n\nthat is, Art, so to speak, is the word made flesh,--_is_ the truth, and,\nas Art, has nothing directly to do with an explicit presentation of the\ntruth. 'The highest, the only operation of Art, as of Nature,' says\nGoethe, 'is formation' (Gestaltung).\n\n    So may you paint your picture, twice show truth,\n    Beyond mere imagery on the wall,--\n    So, note by note, bring music from your mind,\n    Deeper than ever the Andante dived,--\n    So write a book shall mean, beyond the facts,\n    Suffice the eye and save the soul beside.\n\nThe greatest moral teachers the world has ever known, have exhibited the\nleast of explicit moralizing. They have embodied their gospels,--clothed\nthem in _circumstance_,--woven them into a tissue of imagery and\nincident and, by so doing, have given them that _vitality_ which alone\ncan awaken sympathy, and thus induce a mental preparedness for a\nreception of the higher truths, and a comprehension of great principles.\nA deep sympathy with truth is the important thing: this implies a\nrectification of the spiritual nature--its harmonization with the\nconstitution of things. A great amount of abstract truth may be lodged\nin one's brain, and this sympathy may be more or less wanting. To secure\nit, the 'Word' of the teacher must become flesh,--it must be\ncontemplated in the flesh, living and breathing,--it must be represented\nas _militant_, subject to accident and antagonism, but assuring men of\nits unquenchable vitality, its relationship with the divine, through the\nmight of its resistance, and through its final _triumph_, though not\nnecessarily according to earthly standards of the triumphant. There are\nnovels which exhibit a somewhat low ideal of life through the general\nsquaring up of things at the end--the good being rewarded outwardly and\nthe bad punished. But\n\n    In the corrupted 'currents of this world,\n    Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,\n    ... but 'tis not so above.\n\nThe teachings of Jesus are clothed in circumstance and imagery which\nwere familiar to all whom he addressed. 'All these things spake Jesus\nunto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto\nthem.' To use the words of Archbishop Trench in his 'Unconscious\nProphecies of Heathendom,' 'In his life and person, the idea and the\nfact at length kissed each other, and were thenceforward wedded\nforever.'\n\nThe liberal-minded reader of the four records which we have of Christ's\nlife and teachings, must admit that he added little or nothing to the\npreviously existing knowledge of truth in the abstract; he rather caused\ntruth which philosophers and moralists had already intellectually\nrecognized, to be known 'by heart.' He presented it _concretely_, in his\nown life and in his teachings, and thus worked it into that 'daily\nbread' for which he commanded us to pray, and which alone will nourish\nhuman sympathy and love. In its previous intellectual, abstract form, it\ndid not, and could not, become an element of spiritual life.\n\nIn the thirty beautiful little stories in the New Testament, educators\nof the young, and indeed all educators in the fullest sense, may see\nthe cardinal principle of their calling, namely, that the greatest power\nof ethical and religious truth can be secured only through the concrete,\nand the personal, through that which is the truth, and not through an\nabstract enunciation--through that form which _is_ loved for its own\nsake; whose beauty is its own excuse for being; and the sense of love\nand beauty, when awakened, makes all things plain. _Ubi caritas, ibi\nclaritas._\n\nMany who have written books for the young professedly to impart\nChristian instruction, have least observed the mode exhibited in the\nteachings of him whom they profess to take as their Great Exemplar.\nTheir instruction is too explicit. It is presented without a\nsufficiency of concrete clothing to keep it warm; sometimes in its\nabstract nakedness. It is thus powerless to awaken the love and sympathy\nof young hearts.\n\nIf the views above expressed are sound, I would say that, in choosing\nreading matter for the young, special preference should be given to such\nstories as serve to awaken the imagination, exercise the sympathies, and\nnourish a lively and joyous enthusiasm. I should wholly exclude\nexplicitly moral and religious stories, and should choose in their\nstead, stories of human sympathy and sacrifice, heroic endurance, and\nunconscious virtues (_conscious_ virtue is always weak), fairy tales,\nand legends gay and sad. A child of healthful, unperverted feelings is\naverse to moral and religious books, as a class. It would rather read\nabout Robinson Crusoe and his faithful man Friday, and it is far better\nthat it should have such preference--far better that it should live,\nwhile a child,\n\n          in the golden prime\n    Of good Haroun Alraschid,\n\ninstead of being prematurely crammed with, to it, lifeless moral and\nreligious principles, 'useful' knowledge, and the sciences. Wholesome to\nevery one would be such 'Recollections of the Arabian Nights' as are\nexpressed by Tennyson:\n\n    'Far off, and where the lemon-grove\n    In closest coverture upsprung,\n    The living airs of middle night\n    Died round the bulbul as he sung;\n    Not he: but something which possessed\n    The darkness of the world, delight,\n    Life, anguish, death, immortal love,\n    Ceasing not, mingled, unrepressed,\n    Apart from place, withholding time,\n    But flattering the golden prime\n        Of good Haroun Alraschid.'\n\nA child cannot be made virtuous by maxims. The life which is before it,\nis not a scheme to be taught, but a drama to be acted.\n\n    Who loves not Knowledge? Who shall rail\n    Against her beauty? May she mix\n    With men and prosper! Who shall fix\n    Her pillars? Let her work prevail.\n\nBut\n\n    What is she, cut from love and faith,\n    But some wild Pallas from the brain\n    Of Demons?\n              Let her know her place;\n    She is the second, not the first.\n\nMan must grow\n\n              not alone in power\n    And knowledge, but by year and hour\n    In reverence and in charity.\n\nBlessings upon all the books that are the delight of childhood and youth\nand unperverted manhood! Precious are the sympathetic tears which dim\nthe page and which it is so wholesome to encourage in early life as a\ncheck to the growth of selfishness and egoism. 'Who,' writes George\nSand, in her 'Lettres d'un Voyageur,' 'does not remember with delight,\nthe first books which he relished and devoured? Has never an old dusty\ncover of some volume found upon the shelves of a neglected closet,\nbrought back to your mind the lovely pictures of early years? Are you\nnot again, in fancy, seated in the green meadow bathed in the evening\nsunlight, where you read it for the first time?'\n\nWhat galleries of sweet, pathetic, inspiriting, and noble pictures, have\nbeen prepared for the modern child!--pictures, which time and all the\ndamp and cold of after life cannot obscure, to those who have enjoyed\nthem. And to what a goodly company is it the privilege of childhood and\nyouth, and early manhood, to be admitted!--the immortal offspring of\ncheerful genius, whose companionship expands and strengthens and\npurifies the heart.\n\nBut the young are lamentably debarred, in these days of excessive, and\nnon-educating, learning, from the wholesome influences, wholesome, in\nthe way of inducing sympathy, enthusiasm, and a play of the imagination,\nwhich the best books of the past and of the present might exert upon\nthem. Their school tasks and examinations absorb all their time, and the\naccompanying worry about 'marks,' saps their minds--'Death loves a\n_shining_ mark.'\n\nLater on, in the higher schools, colleges, and universities, there is no\ntime for _communion_ with great authors. The reading which is done, is\nlargely perfunctory. Speaking from my own long experience, I do not\nthink that one out of twenty of university students, even of those who\nelect courses in English Literature, has read and assimilated the works\nof any one good author, or any single work. This is a statement based on\nan exceptionally long experience. Many have studied literature, as the\nphrase goes, but have no literary education, however well they may have\n'passed' in the kind of work done. And such students pursue the study of\nelocution, with a sufficiently pitiable result. They have never had\nawakened in them the faculties which are demanded for assimilating the\nlife of a work of genius, and consequently can do nothing in the way of\nvocal interpretation. They cannot give through the voice, however well\ntrained it may be, what is not theirs to give.\n\n\n\n\nBelieving as I do, in the imperative need of the kind of education I\nhave suggested, I must, as a natural consequence, believe in the\nco-education of the sexes, in the opening to women of all the avenues\nalong which men only have hitherto gone, and in the removal of all\nobstacles to the exercise of the powers inherent in 'distinctive\nwomanhood.' These things will do more for civilization, in the highest\nsense of the word, that is, the spiritual sense, than all other agencies\ncombined. A true manhood and a true womanhood cannot be reached except\nthrough the mutual influence of the sexes upon each other. They must be\neducated together, such education beginning in the family, and\ncontinuing through all stages of scholastic training up to and through\nthe university. Boys at home, without affectionate sisters, and girls\nwithout affectionate brothers, are at a disadvantage. At no less\ndisadvantage is either sex when separated from the other, in school,\ncollege, or university. For it is only at this period of their lives,\nand in such relations, that they can be fitted, if fitted at all, to\nwalk the world together,\n\n    yoked in all exercise of noble end.\n\nThe moral insight of man, to say nothing of his finer spiritual\ninsight, owes much of its penetrating clearness to the feminine element\nof his nature; and unless this element be developed in due proportion to\nthe intellectual element, he can have, at best, but distorted views of\nright and wrong, justice and injustice. On this side of his nature, the\nrays of an unclouded womanhood must strike, before it can be awakened\ninto a genial vitality, and thus impart health, vigor, and subtlety to\nthe intellectual side. 'You cannot think,' says Ruskin (Sesame and\nLilies: 2. Of Queen's Gardens), 'that the buckling on of the knight's\narmor by his lady's hand was a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It is\nthe type of an eternal truth--that the soul's armor is never well set to\nthe heart unless a woman's hand has braced it; and it is only when she\nbraces it loosely that the honor of manhood fails.' On the other hand,\nwoman can be a true woman, only to the degree to which she is permitted\nto share with man all his highest interests, to sympathize with all his\nnoblest aims, and to work side by side with him in the regeneration of\nthe world. That which is especially distinctive in her nature, must be\nsubdued, toned, and guided by a greater breadth and solidity of\nintellectual culture; and this can be most effectually secured by\nco-education, and by her being afforded the opportunity to move with man\nalong the higher planes of learning and of thought, and to have a larger\nshare with him than she has hitherto had, in the fruits of the world's\nintellectual and moral conquests.\n\nThe general recognition and realization which are near at hand, of\nwoman's equal rights with man in all that pertains to the highest good\nof a human being, will have an especially beneficial influence in the\nmarriage relation, the most important in its bearings of all the\nrelations of human life. There are numberless husbands who pass in\nsociety for kind and generous men, recognizing the rights of all with\nwhom they have dealings, and cheerfully according those rights, but who\nare, in many ways, ungenerous and inconsiderate toward their wives, and\nthat, too, without being in the least aware of it. They would be very\nmuch surprised if any one were to tell them so. And why is this? It is,\nno doubt, in most cases, because of a feeling engendered by the whole\npast constitution of society--a feeling that has become so ingrained as\nto be an unconscious one--that woman has peculiar duties which she must\nfulfil, but that her rights, apart from these peculiar duties, depend\nupon the arbitrary will of man. Children, from a very early age, are\nmade to feel this more or less, according to the influences of their\nhome-life. When a father shows no estimate of the mother's opinions and\nadvice, never talks with her on the higher current subjects of interest,\nnor consults her about the weightier matters with which he has to deal,\nbut regards her (and this he may do in all kindness) as one whose sole\nbusiness it is to look well to the ways of her household, the son's\nideal of woman is not likely to be the highest. Happy indeed is he whose\nhome education has been such that 'faith in womankind beats with his\nblood.' That, by itself, is a liberal education.\n\nFears are entertained by many good people, that co-education, and\nwoman's larger co-operation with man in the affairs of the world, will\ntend to unsex her, to render her _mannish_, and eclipse, more or less,\nthose qualities and graces which have hitherto been regarded as\nconstituting the chief charm and glory of her sex. She may, indeed, have\nless of mere _femineity_, but, in its stead, she will certainly have\nmore womanliness, in the best sense of the word (by virtue of which she\nis a specially commissioned regenerating power in the world), if she is\nreared and educated with the other sex, and allowed her full share in\nall the great interests of human life, social, political, educational,\nmoral, and religious. Under such circumstances she has a better chance\nof becoming\n\n    A perfect Woman, nobly planned,\n    To warn, to comfort, and command,\n\nthan if she be excluded from those interests and lead the restricted\nlife she has ever been obliged to lead by the conventionalities and\nregulations of society.\n\nThe great Italian patriot, Giuseppe Mazzini, 'the prophet and spiritual\nhero of his nation,' and, indeed, of the whole modern world, wrote in\n1858: 'Seek in woman not merely a comfort, but a force, an inspiration,\nthe redoubling of your intellectual and moral faculties. Cancel from\nyour mind every idea of superiority over her. You have none whatever.\n\n'Long prejudice, an inferior education, and a perennial legal inequality\nand injustice have created that apparent intellectual inferiority which\nhas been converted into an argument of continued oppression.... Like two\ndistinct branches springing from the same trunk, man and woman are\nvarieties springing from the common basis--Humanity. There is no\ninequality between them, but--even as is the case among men--diversity\nof tendency and of special vocation.\n\n'Are two notes of the same musical chord unequal or of different nature?\nMan and woman are the two notes without which the Human chord is\nimpossible. They fulfil different functions in Humanity, but these\nfunctions are equally sacred, equally manifestations of that Thought of\nGod which He has made the soul of the universe.\n\n'Consider woman, therefore, as the partner and companion, not merely of\nyour joys and sorrows, but of your thoughts, your aspirations, your\nstudies, and your endeavors after social amelioration. _Consider her\nyour equal in your civil and political life._ Be ye the two human wings\nthat lift the soul towards the Ideal we are destined to attain.'\n\nWilliam Lloyd Garrison, in an introduction to 'Joseph Mazzini, his life,\nwritings, and political principles,' writes:\n\n'Mazzini's concern for the rights of man was never, on any pretext, in a\npurely masculine sense. Years ago he inculcated the equality of the\nsexes in regard to all civil and political immunities. _Largely indebted\nto his mother for the grand impulses which led him to consecrate his\nlife to the service of his country, his generic respect for woman\namounted almost to sanctitude: it was the embodiment of all that is\ntender in affection, fragrant in purity, devout in aspiration, and\nself-sacrificing in love.'_\n\nIt has never been a matter of much regret to me that so little is known\nof Shakespeare's personal history--the circumstances of his outer life.\nOf what his interior life was, we can have no doubt. It must have been a\nlife capable of sympathetically reproducing within itself all the great\ncharacters, men and women, of the Dramas. But if I could wear the\nwishing-cap of Fortunatus, I would wish to know what manner of woman, in\nall particulars, was Mary Arden, the poet's mother. The men whose\nintellectual and, more especially, spiritual gifts to the world, have\nbeen the greatest, and most quickening, have oftener, no doubt, been\nmore indebted, for those gifts, to their mothers than to their fathers.\nThe radiant shapes of the women of Shakespeare's Dramas certainly had\ntheir source in the feminine element, the _ewig weibliche_, of his\nnature, and this element was as certainly, I cannot but think, derived\nfrom, and quickened by, his mother. In what was, without doubt, his\nearliest play, Love's Labor's Lost, Biron, I am quite sure, expresses\nShakespeare's own opinion of the peculiar power of women (A. IV. S.\nIII.):\n\n    From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:\n    They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;\n    They are the books, the arts, the academes,\n    That show, contain, and nourish all the world.\n\nThis was as certainly Shakespeare's own opinion about woman as what\nBiron says (A. I. S. I.) was his own opinion about study:\n\n    Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,\n      That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks;\n    Small have continual plodders ever won,\n      Save base authority from others' books.\n    These earthly godfathers of heaven's lights,\n      That give a name to every fixed star,\n    Have no more profit of their shining nights\n      Than those that walk and wot not what they are.\n    Too much to know is to know nought but fame;\n      And every godfather can give a name.\n\nShakespeare must early have felt his superiority in true education (the\nnimble play of all the faculties) to the merely learned men with whom he\ncame in contact, and must soon have discovered that _he_ drank from\nfountains of which they knew nothing. His own vitality of soul was\nresponsive to the essential life of men and things; and it was through\nthis responsiveness that he attained to a wisdom inaccessible to mere\nlearning and intellectual enlightenment. It was his mother, I like to\nthink, who initiated him into the mysteries of the spirit.\n\n\n\n\nNOTE 1, PAGE 21.\n\nSee Vol. I, pp. 229 _et seq._ of 'Memoirs of Richard Whateley,\nArchbishop of Dublin. With a glance at his contemporaries and times. By\nWilliam John Fitzpatrick, J.P. In two volumes. London: Richard Bentley,\n1864.'\n\n\nNOTE 2, PAGE 47.\n\nThis notation of feet I have used in my 'Primer of English Verse,' _a_\nrepresenting an accented, and _x_, an unaccented, syllable.\n\n\nNOTE 3, PAGE 50.\n\nWe cannot help observing, because certain critics observe otherwise,\nthat Chaucer utters as true music as ever came from poet or musician;\nthat some of the sweetest cadences in all our English are extant in his\n\"swete upon his tongue,\" in completest modulation. Let \"Denham's\nstrength and Waller's sweetness join\" the Io paean of a later age, the\n\"eurekamen\" of Pope and his generation. Not one of the \"Queen Anne's\nmen,\" measuring out tuneful breath upon their fingers, like ribbons for\ntopknots, did know the art of versification as the old rude Chaucer knew\nit. Call him rude for the picturesqueness of the epithet; but his verse\nhas, at least, as much regularity in the sense of true art, and more\nmanifestly in proportion to our increasing acquaintance with his dialect\nand pronunciation, as can be discovered or dreamed in the French school.\nCritics, indeed, have set up a system based upon the crushed atoms of\nfirst principles, maintaining that poor Chaucer wrote by accent only!\nGrant to them that he counted no verses on his fingers; grant that he\nnever disciplined his highest thoughts to walk up and down in a\npaddock--ten paces and a turn; grant that his singing is not after the\nlikeness of their singsong; but there end your admissions. It is our\nineffaceable impression, in fact, that the whole theory of accent and\nquantity held in relation to ancient and modern poetry stands upon a\nfallacy, totters, rather than stands; and that, when considered in\nconnection with such old moderns as our Chaucer, the fallaciousness is\nespecially apparent. Chaucer wrote by quantity, just as Homer did\nbefore him, just as Goethe did after him, just as all poets must. Rules\ndiffer, principles are identical. All rhythm presupposes quantity.\nOrgan-pipe or harp, the musician plays by time. Greek or English,\nChaucer or Pope, the poet sings by time. What is this accent but a\nstroke, an emphasis, with a successive pause to make complete the time?\nAnd what is the difference between this accent and quantity but the\ndifference between a harp-note and an organ-note? otherwise, quantity\nexpressed in different ways? It is as easy for matter to subsist out of\nspace, as music out of time.--_Mrs. E. B. Browning's 'The Book of the\nPoets.'_\n\n\nNOTE 4, PAGE 64.\n\nAvant d'executer son oeuvre, l'artiste la concoit; il enfante au\ndedans de lui, pour emprunter la langue de Bossuet, 'un tableau, une\nstatue, un edifice qui, dans sa simplicite, est la forme, l'original, le\nmodele immateriel de ce qu'il executera sur la pierre, sur le marbre,\nsur la toile ou il arrangera toutes ses couleurs.' Ce modele immateriel\nest pour l'artiste, si l'on veut, un ideal qu'il se propose de realiser\ndans son oeuvre: c'est le patron sur lequel il travaille et qu'il\ns'efforce a reproduire le plus exactement possible. Il y met tous ses\nsoins, toute son etude, et il travaille _avec crainte et tremblement_;\nil craint de defigurer, de mutiler l'image sainte imprimee dans son\nesprit; il craint que sa main, interprete infidele, ne traduise mal sa\npensee; il craint que la copie ne soit qu'une caricature de l'original,\net il efface, il corrige, il rature, il retouche, il refait, il a des\nhesitations, des scrupules, des repentirs; souvent il se decourage, il\nest sur le point d'abandonner l'oeuvre commencee, il a peur de rester\nau-dessous de son sujet; la perfection du modele immateriel le\ndesespere, et ce desespoir provient d'une illusion. D'ordinaire, ce\nmodele ne lui semble si parfait que parce qu'il est encore vague,\nconfus, indetermine. Nous prenons volontiers l'indefini pour la\nperfection; individualiser une idee, c'est lui donner on mode\nparticulier a l'exclusion de tous les autres dont elle etait\nsusceptible, et cette exclusion nous coute, c'est une sorte de\nsacrifice que s'impose notre imagination; elle y a regret, comme\nl'avare, en depensant un ecu pour se donner un plaisir, regrette tous\nles autres plaisirs imaginables que cet ecu lui aurait pu procurer. Car\nil ne faut pas accorder a Schleiermacher que l'oeuvre d'art existe\ndeja tout entiere dans l'esprit de l'artiste avant qu'il ait realise sa\npensee dans le marbre ou sur la toile. Cette pensee est toujours plus ou\nmoins enveloppee, plus ou moins confuse; elle n'est pas encore degagee\nde son delivre, ou plutot c'est un rudiment incomplet, une ebauche\nindistincte ou l'on n'apercoit que les principaux lineaments de\nl'oeuvre; c'est un embryon dont les organes ne sont pas encore\ndeveloppes. C'est en travaillant a executer son plan que l'artiste\nparvient a concevoir ce plan d'une maniere claire et distincte; c'est en\nmanifestant au dehors sa pensee qu'il se la rend manifeste a lui-meme.\nLa composition et l'execution sont deux periodes de l'activite de\nl'artiste que l'abstraction seule peut distinguer; dans le fait, elles\nne se distinguent point, et le peintre compose encore dans le dernier\ncoup de pinceau qu'il donne a sa toile.--_Victor Cherbuliez:\nPhilosophie du Beau.--Etudes sur le Systeme d'esthetique de M. Th.\nVischer. Troisieme article. (Revue Germanique, Tome x, p. 662.)_\n\n\nNOTE 5, PAGE 83.\n\nMy attention was called to this chapter, many years ago, as affording\ngood illustrations of the slighting of speech, by Mr. J. W. Taverner,\none of the best teachers of elocution I have ever known. His daughter,\nMrs. F. Taverner Graham, has embodied much of his instructions in her\nvaluable text-book, entitled 'Reasonable Elocution,' originally\npublished by A. S. Barnes & Co., in 1874. It is now published by the\nAmerican Book Company.\n\n\nNOTE 6, PAGE 99.\n\nJohn Keats, in his poem entitled 'Sleep and Poetry,' after speaking of\nthe greatness of his favorite poets of the Elizabethan period,\ncontinues:\n\n    Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism\n    Nurtured by foppery and barbarism,\n    Made great Apollo blush for this his land.\n    Men were thought wise who could not understand\n    His glories: with a puling infant's force\n    They sway'd about upon a rocking-horse,\n    And thought it Pegasus.\n\nHe alludes, of course, to the rocking-horse movement of the rhyming\ncouplet as used during the Popian period. As used by Chaucer, this\nrocking-horse movement is not so felt.\n\n\nNOTE 7, PAGE 101.\n\nLegouve, in his 'L'Art de la lecture,' chap. vii, 'Les vers libres,'\nsays: les vers libres out un rhythme comme les vers alexandrins, comme\nles vers des strophes, seulement c'est un rhythme cache. Ils obeissent a\nune regle mysterieuse, mais reelle, que vous ne trouverez dans aucun\ntraite de rhetorique, mais qui est ecrite dans l'imagination de tous les\npoetes de genie. Voila pourquoi les vers libres du dix-septieme siecle\nsont excellents, et ceux du dix-huitieme, sauf quelques pieces de\nVoltaire, mediocres; les poetes n'ont pas devine le secret.\n\n\nNOTE 8, PAGE 114.\n\n_Socrates._ I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is\nunfortunately like painting; for the creations of the painter have the\nattitude of life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a\nsolemn silence. And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine\nthat they had intelligence, but if you want to know anything, and put a\nquestion to one of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer.\nAnd when they have been once written down, they are tumbled about\nanywhere among those who may or may not understand them, and know not to\nwhom they should reply, to whom not; and if they are maltreated or\nabused, they have no parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or\ndefend themselves. _Phaedrus._ That again is most true. _Socrates._ Is\nthere not another kind of word or speech far better than this, and\nhaving far greater power--a son of the same family, but lawfully\nbegotten? _Phaedrus._ Whom do you mean, and what is his origin?\n_Socrates._ I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the\nlearner, which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be\nsilent. _Phaedrus._ You mean the living word of knowledge which has a\nsoul, and of which the written word is properly no more than an image?\n_Socrates._ Yes, of course, that is what I mean.--_Plato, Phaedrus, 275\nD, 276, Dr. Jowett's translation._\n\n\nNOTE 9, PAGE 121.\n\nHe refers probably to articles in Punch, contained in the 2d volume for\nthe year 1887, pp. 25, 37, 64, _et al._\n\n\n\n\nINDEX\n\n\n    Ames's, Rev. C. G., description of Emerson's voice, 103, 104.\n\n    Appreciation of subject-matter, not sufficient for interpretative\n        reading, 10, 11.\n\n    Art, its function, 153-157.\n\n\n    Belshazzar's Feast (Daniel v.), as illustrating the slighting of\n        speech, 83-95.\n\n    Books, children's, 150-165.\n\n    Brain slaughter in the schools, 40.\n\n    Browning, Mrs. E. B., quoted on Chaucer's verse, note 3.\n\n    Browning, Robert, quoted on processes of art work, 64;\n      on the function of art, 153-155.\n\n\n    Chaucer's verse must be voiced, 44, 45;\n      must be read in time, 50;\n      Mrs. Browning quoted thereupon, note 3.\n\n    Cherbuliez, Victor, quoted on processes of art work, note 4.\n\n    Child, early education of the, 138 _et seq._\n\n    Children's books, 150-165.\n\n    Christianity, a religion of the personal and the concrete, 147.\n\n    Co-education of the sexes, 167-174.\n\n    Coleridge's reading, 12.\n\n    Comparisons and similes, reading of, 80-82.\n\n    Culture, true, unconscious of the processes which induced it, 20.\n\n\n    De Imitatione Christi, quoted on 'the eternal word,' 147, 148.\n\n    De Quincey, Thomas, quoted on Coleridge's reading, 12.\n\n    Dogma, the arch-enemy of Christianity, 147.\n\n    Dowden, Prof. Edward, quoted on reading, 120, 121.\n\n\n    Education, the danger to which it will be more and more exposed, 38;\n      etymology of the word, 39, 40.\n\n    Elocutionary skill, 18.\n\n    Elwood, Thomas, quoted as to his reading Latin to Milton, 53.\n\n    Emerson, quoted on the human voice, 102, 103;\n      his own voice described, 103, 104.\n\n    _Enjambement_, absence of, in Pope's verse, 101.\n\n    Estimates of all things, relative, 27.\n\n    Eternal Word, The, not exclusive, 149, 150.\n\n    Examinations, literary, 55-60;\n      leading object of, 59.\n\n\n    Faith in womankind, a liberal education, 173.\n\n    Feeling must precede knowing, in a child, 70, 71.\n\n    Femineity _vs._ womanliness, 173, 174.\n\n\n    Garrison, William Lloyd, quoted on Mazzini's advocacy of the\n        equality of the sexes, 177.\n\n    Gesture, mimetic, its absurdities, 128-131.\n\n    Greek verse must be read aloud, and in time, 46.\n\n    Grouping of speech, 28.\n\n\n    Home-life in this country, 139, 140.\n\n    Hume, David, quoted on criticism, 37.\n\n\n    Imitation of Christ, quoted on 'the eternal word,' 147, 148.\n\n    'Impressions before the letter,' 40.\n\n    Inflections, or bends, of the voice, must be always\n      significant, 77-79.\n\n    Interior life demanded in reading, 119.\n\n\n    Jesus, teachings of, clothed in circumstance and imagery, 157-160.\n\n\n    Keats, John, quoted on the Popian period of English poetry, note 6.\n\n\n    Language, as addressed to the eye, must be largely supplemented by\n        the voice, 29, 30.\n\n    Languages, modern, the study of, 51, 52.\n\n    Latin verse, must be read aloud, and in time, 46.\n\n    Legouve, Ernest, quoted in regard to reading, in America, as an\n        educational agency, 34;\n      quoted on 'les vers libres,' note 7.\n\n    Lewes, G. H., quoted on the stuffing of children with\n      knowledge, 40, 41.\n\n    Linguistic studies, importance of vocalization in, 43.\n\n    Literary education, leading object of, 122.\n\n    Literary examinations, 55;\n      leading object of, 59.\n\n    Literary lecture, what it should be, 36, 37.\n\n\n    Manhood, a true, 167.\n\n    Mazzini, Giuseppe, quoted on woman, her power, her equality with\n        man, and her rights, 174-177;\n      William Lloyd Garrison quoted on Mazzini, 177.\n\n    Melody in reading, 97-101.\n\n    Milton's Samson Agonistes, choruses of, must be read in time, 51.\n\n    Mimetic gesture, its absurdities, 128-131.\n\n    Monotony preferable to non-significant intervals, 79.\n\n    Moral influence of the speaking voice, 104-107.\n\n    Moral insight of man, 168, 169.\n\n    Moral teachers, the greatest, not explicit moralizers, 155.\n\n    Mothers, comparatively few, capable, 146;\n      indebtedness of great men to their, 178.\n\n\n    'Natural' reading, 13.\n\n    Nature, spiritual relationship with, 142-145.\n\n\n    Perspective of speech, an important element of interpretative\n        reading, 27.\n\n    Phenomena not in themselves educative, 148.\n\n    Plato quoted on the written and the spoken word, note 8.\n\n    Poem, a, not a poem until it is voiced, 30;\n      a true, 62.\n\n    Poets cannot always vocalize their own verse, 14.\n\n    Pope's verse, its mechanical uniformity, 100, 101;\n      absence of _enjambement_ in, 101.\n\n    'Prelude,' Wordsworth's, its great educative value, 145.\n\n    Printed, or written, language, deficiencies of, to be supplied by\n        the reader, 29, 30.\n\n    Printing, art of, has caused language to be too much known through\n        the eye alone, 114, 115.\n\n\n    Reading, can it be taught?, 9;\n      the main achievable result, 18;\n      extempore, its requirements, 26;\n      the best test of a student's knowledge of language as an\n          organism, 28, 29;\n      must give life to the letter, 29;\n      the conditions for so doing, 30;\n      Shelley quoted thereupon, 31;\n      requirements in early life for its cultivation, 42;\n      art of, its correspondences with that of painting, 68, 69;\n      the requisite physical means of, 72;\n      technique of, 73 _et seq._;\n      is not acting, 126.\n\n    Reading matter for the young, 160-164.\n\n    Reasoning faculties, the premature exercise of, 70, 152, 153.\n\n    Recitation, its evils, 127.\n\n    Reverential sentiments, cultivation of, 141.\n\n    Ruskin, John, quoted on the power of woman, 169, 170.\n\n\n    Scholarship must not become an end to itself, 124.\n\n    Schools do not fit their students for interpretative reading, 123.\n\n    Science, power of, 13;\n      Wordsworth quoted on, 137.\n\n    Shakespeare, reading of, to boys and girls, 35.\n\n    Shakespeare's estimate of the voice, 109-113;\n      his personal history and interior life, 178;\n      quoted on woman, 179;\n      on study, 180;\n      his mother, 178, 181.\n\n    Similes and comparisons, reading of, 80-82.\n\n    Skill, elocutionary, 18.\n\n    Slaughter of the innocents, in schools, 40;\n      G. H. Lewes quoted, 40, 41.\n\n    Slighting of speech illustrated, 83-95.\n\n    Speaking voice, importance of its cultivation as a moral\n        agency, 102-109.\n\n    Speech, slighting of, illustrated, 83-95.\n\n    Spiritual education demanded for interpretative reading, 122;\n      means and conditions of, 133-166;\n      must be induced on the basis of the concrete and the\n          personal, 146, 147.\n\n    Stories for the young, 153.\n\n\n    Taste, true, an expression of spiritual life, 129.\n\n    Taylor, Sir Henry, quoted on reading, 34-36;\n      quoted on Tennyson's reading, 76, 77.\n\n    Teacher, the ideal, 32, 33.\n\n    Tennyson's reading, 76, 77;\n      his 'Recollections of the Arabian Nights,' 162.\n\n    'Thorough' study of a work of genius, 124.\n\n    Time, its importance in vocal expression, 79-82.\n\n\n    Unconscious might, in every work of genius, 65.\n\n    University of the future, what it must do for the spiritual\n        man, 132.\n\n\n    Verse, accentual and quantitative, 46-49.\n\n    Vincent de Lerins, St., quoted on the universal and the\n        eternal, 148, 149.\n\n    Vocal exercises, 60-62.\n\n    Voice, the speaking, importance of its cultivation as a moral\n        agency, 102-109;\n      Shakespeare's estimate of, 109-113.\n\n\n    Whateley's, Archbishop, theory of 'natural' reading, 14;\n      his own oratorical delivery, 15;\n      his assumptions in regard to elocution, 19.\n\n    Woman, her power and rights, Mazzini quoted on, 174-177.\n\n    Womanhood, a true, 167, 170.\n\n    Womanliness _vs._ femineity, 173, 174.\n\n    Wordsworth quoted on hearing, 125;\n      on science, 137;\n      the great educative value of his 'Prelude,' 145.\n\n    Written, or printed, language, deficiencies of, to be supplied\n        by the reader, 29, 30.\n\n\n\n\nThe Aims of Literary Study.\n\n    BY\n    HIRAM CORSON, LL.D.\n\n18mo. Cloth, gilt. 75 cents.\n\n\n\"A book whose intimate companionship every literary man should\ncultivate.\"--_Boston Budget._\n\n\"A source of inspiration.\"--_Boston Beacon._\n\n\"If a copy of this little book could be given to every teacher of\nEnglish in the land, the rising generation would have reason to be\nthankful. Never before, perhaps, was the idea of literary education\nlifted to so high a plane and so successfully carried over from the\nrealm of the purely intellectual into the region of the spiritual. Many\nof the utterances have the precision and brilliancy of epigrams.\"--_The\nEvangelist._\n\n\"A mammoth heap of information in a nutshell.\"--_Cleveland Gazette._\n\n\"It is written in a clear, logical style, and also from a broad and\ncomprehensive knowledge. The true spirit of literature and the right way\nof estimating an author's worth are admirably set forth. The aims and\nideals of the study are excellently set forth, and what is more, set\nforth in a clear, broad, and scholarly manner.\"--_Amherst Student._\n\n\n    THE MACMILLAN COMPANY,\n    66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK.\n\n\n\nTranscriber's Note:\n\nThe oe ligature has been replaced with oe. A lower case u with breve\nhas been represented by [)u] on page 75.","title":"The Voice and Spiritual Education","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":23022}