enable the student to express irony. When he can speak any one passage in an ironical manner, careful practice will soon enable him to give ironical expression to other passages. The expression of irony may vary from the tone which is only just perceptible, to the tone and manner which manifests the feeling with the utmost bitterness and intensity.

EXAMPLES.

1. "This comes,"—at length burst forth the furious chief,"This comes of dastard counsels! Here behold

The fruits of wily cunning! the relief

Which coward policy would fain unfold

To soothe the powers that warred with heaven of old.

O wise! O potent! O sagacious snare!

And, lo! our prince, the mighty and the bold,—

There stands he, spell-struck, gaping at the air,

While heaven subverts his reign, and plants her standard there."

2. "But, Mr. Speaker, we have a right to tax America.” Oh, inestimable right! Oh, wonderful, transcendent right! the assertion of which has cost this country thirteen provinces, six islands, one hundred thousand lives, and seventy millions of money. Oh, invaluable right! for the sake of which we have sacrificed our rank among nations, our importance abroad, and our happiness at home! Oh, right! more dear to us than our existence! which has already cost us so much, and which seems likely to cost us our all.

3. They boast they come but to improve our state, enlarge our thoughts, and free us from the yoke of error! Yes, they will give enlightened freedom to our minds, who are themselves the slaves of passion, avarice and pride. They offer us their protection! Yes, such protection as vultures give to lambs-covering and devouring them.

4. O masters! if I were disposed to stir

Your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage,

I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong;
Who, you all know, are honorable men.
I will not do them wrong; I rather choose
To wrong the dead, to wrong myself, and you,
Than I will wrong such honorable men.

5. The atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman has, with such spirit and decency, charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny; but content myself with hoping that I may be one of those whose follies cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience.

6. Your consul's merciful-for this all thanks:

He dares not touch a hair of Catiline!

APOSTROPHE.

Apostrophe means a turning away from a real audience, or auditor, and addressing an absent or imaginary one. Examples of apostrophe should be given exactly as if the object or thing addressed were a person. The emotional expression of the passage, if any, the student must, as in all other cases, find out for himself by careful study.

EXAMPLES.

1. Roll on, thou dark and deep blue ocean, roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain.
Man marks the earth with ruin-his control
Stops with the shore; upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own,

When, for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and unknown.

2. O happiness! our being's end and aim,

Good, pleasure, ease, content-whate'er thy name:
That something still which prompts th' eternal sigh,
For which we bear to live and dare to die;
Which still so near us, yet beyond us lies;
O'erlook'd, seen double, by the fool and wise;
Plant of celestial seed! if dropp'd below,

Say in what mortal soil thou deign'st to grow?

SOLILOQUY.

In Soliloquy the speaker must proceed as if talking to himself, and never as if talking to another. The eye, though apparently looking with intensity, should have an expression which denotes that the attention is directed to thoughts within and not to things without.

1. To die-to sleep

EXAMPLES.

To sleep?-perchance to dream-aye, there's the rub!
For, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause! There's the respect,
That makes calamity of so long life:

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of the unworthy takes-
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?

2. Beautiful!

How beautiful is all this visible world!
How glorious in its action and itself!

But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit

To sink or soar-with our mixed essence, make
A conflict of its elements.

3. Oh, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven!
It hath the primal eldest curse upon't-
A brother's murder.-Pray, alas! I can not,
Though inclination be as sharp as 't will;
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent,
And like a man to double business bound,
I stand and pause where I shall first begin,
And both neglect. What if this cursed hand
Were thicker than itself with brother's blood,
Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash it white as snow?

RECITING POETRY.

In reciting poetry, you must neither sing it, shout it, nor drawl it; nor must you ignore the meter and the rhyme, but render it so that meter, rythm, and rhyme, without being prominently brought forward, are made sensible to the listener's ear.

If at any time the reader is in doubt how a passage of poetry should be delivered, let him reduce it to conversation, and speak it in the most familiar conversational

manner.

The greatest difficulty in reciting poetry consists in giving that measured flow which distinguishes it from prose, without falling into a chanting pronunciation.

In reciting poetry, inflection, pitch, force, pause, quantity, quality and all other elements of vocal expression, must, with slight modifications just referred to, be used as if the meaning and sentiment were expressed in prose.

STYLE.

Style signifies peculiarities of modulation and of manner, appropriate or otherwise, to the sentiment and to the subject, also to the object of discourse, to the audience addressed, and to the circumstances under which addressed. Nature gives the style; natural peculiarities, it is true, may, by education and the force of circumstances, be somewhat modified, but can not be greatly changed. The style of persons of different temperaments will be very different. There are no rules by which a practical knowledge of style, and the ability to exemplify various styles, can be acquired.

No plainer or better advice can be given on this subject than that of Hamlet to the players: "Let your own discretion be your tutor; suit the action to the word, and the

word to the action, with this special observance: that you overstep not the modesty of nature." If faithfully observed, this simple direction will profit the student more than any or than all the elocutionary rules that have been published on the subject of style.

In Argument, the style must be characterized by directness and earnestness.

In Description, the speaker must proceed in precisely the same manner that he would if he were actually describing the thing spoken of.

In Narration, he must proceed as if narrating some part of his own experience.

In Persuasion, he must use those tones, looks, and gestures only which he knows are appropriate to persuasion. In Exhortation, he must appeal, beseech, and implore, as the case may require.

In the Dramatic, and in Pieces of a Mixed Character, he must vary the style to suit the sentiment and character of the passage. When the student understands the principles and rules which have been discussed sufficiently well to be able to give a correct, practical exemplification of each of them, he ought to select passages for himself suitable as exercises in cadence, pause, parenthesis, antithesis, climax, amplification, repetition, and transition; also in pitch, force, stress, movement, quantity, in personation, in style, etc.

NATURALNESS.

The end and aim of art is to imitate nature, and no art is worthy of criticism that expresses itself falsely. Perhaps the greatest difficulty which most intelligent students of elocution have to overcome, consists in the inability to be natural in delivering the language of the author, as if the reader or speaker gave spontaneous expression to his own