Culture of the style, the manners, and the voice.

The gift of speech.

simple style. The youth who begins to move in company, makes many mortifying failures before he learns the golden mean between stiff and awkward manners, the result of diffidence, and that over-much politeness which characterizes the egotistic and selfsatisfied spirit. So in the education of the voice. This simplicity and plainness of utterance which is always found in our most successful speakers, is the last grace of speech to be acquired.

The elements which we have now noticed, are the ones to which careful attention should be given in a systematic training of the voice. Speech is among the noblest of the gifts which Heaven has been pleased to bestow upon man; and it was not bestowed, as a wily diplomatist has observed, to conceal our thoughts, but to enable us to hold ingenuous and delightful communion with each other. It is that gift which distinguishes man from all other created beings, and enables him to fill up the measure of existence with sociality, and thus diversify and gladden its otherwise unendurable monotony.

The limit to the improvement of the voice, like that of the mind itself, is indefinite. It is an instrument of great power and compass, capable of exciting the most intense grief and ungovernable joy; of electrifying a people with patriotic enthusiasm, and of paralyzing the heart with appalling fear; of

Conclusion.

touching, as with an unseen hand, sympathies for the sorrowing and pity for distress, and moving the tenderest feelings of maternal love.

It is the duty of every one to give the voice the most careful training. It is a shame for a man to possess a gift so inestimable, and not be able, on account of a defect in early education, to use it with taste and propriety. Its culture should form a prominent part in the instruction imparted in all our schools. It should be constantly subjected during youth to that exercise which will strengthen it, and should not be left to neglect even to the latest years of life.

LECTURE V.

D

THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE.

URING the latter part of the last century, a club

of literary gentlemen in London were accustomed weekly to sup together. From my earliest reading, I have always been attracted by the charms which seemed to cluster about it. They were brought together because their tastes and their attainments were congenial. Their learning and discrimination were so far superior to the society which they encountered in the daily walks of the world, that it was cheering to meet with mutual appreciation and sympathy. They met for a social interchange of opinions. They cast, as into a common treasury, the curiosities of literature which they had chanced to pick up in their daily reading. They discussed the merits of authors. They talked of current events, and criticised with unrestrained freedom the measures of parties. They read to each other fragments of those literary productions upon which they chanced to be engaged, and commented upon their beauties and defects. Sometimes the party was convulsed with mer

Literary club in London. Leading peculiarity. Patterns of English style.

riment, at others it was wrapped in the most profound attention, as they discoursed of the principles of morality, and those sublime truths which exalted intellects have searched out. The hours were agreeably varied by the light artillery of wit, and humor, and satire, and anon by the heavy ordnance of reason and solid argumentation. The members of that club were men of rare ability. Their writings have made and will keep the literature of England respectable throughout the world in all coming time.

The leading peculiarity, the crowning excellence of this school of literary men, was their great skill in the use of language. It is true, they had won distinction in their specialties. Every Englishman will point with pride to Burke, as the first of English orators. Johnson is the moralist and the lexicographer. Goldsmith is the pleasant bard; Reynolds the painter, and Garrick the actor. They are not, however, in these departments, preeminently models; but when we select for patterns of purity and elegance of English style, we unhesitatingly produce the genial writings of Goldsmith, the finished periods of Johnson, and the magnificent speeches of Burke.

For eminence in conversational power, for social entertainment, for enlightened opinions in the various departments of high art, that club has never

Excelled in language.

Present tendency.

been surpassed or equaled. Among its members, the acknowledged head was Dr. Johnson. Though mingling in social intercourse as equals, he acted the monarch. When he essayed to speak, all other tongues were silent, and while he had aught to say, no other entertainment was desired. This superiority was not due to him preeminently for the soundness of his opinions; for his notions were often eccentric, and his unconquerable prejudices frequently allured him into false positions. But his strength was in his great skill in the use of language. The art in which he excelled all others, and by which he inspired his friends and admirers with respect and reverence, was in his power of expression. It enabled him to invest his thoughts with unusual interest. There was a loftiness and a nobility in his style of conversation, which his companions could not assume. All his thoughts were marked with that peculiar charm which the great master painters, by a rare combination of colors, give to their pictures.

The importance of the gift of language, and the necessity of its study and cultivation, are frequently underrated. In the modern systems of education, the attempt is made to treasure up vast stores of knowledge, and to fathom the intricacies of the abstruse sciences at the expense of the study of language. Since the results of the recent researches in