utter want of skill in expression, as regards the use of the voice, and the appropriate accompaniments of action.

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The dull and lifeless speaker may become animated, if he will resolutely set about accomplishing the task. The training prescribed in the practice of elocution, will present him with subjects of exercise, drawn from the most inspiriting passages of the most powerful writers. It will accustom him to glow over inspiring themes. It will show him the natural modes of uttering and imparting vivid emotions. It will train his organs to lively exertion. It will invigorate his tones, enhance his emphasis, sharpen his inflections, enliven his accents, breathe life into his whole expression, mould his frame into pliancy and eloquent effect, impel his arm, kindle his eye, flush his cheek with genuine emotion, and light up his whole manner with a feeling which radiates from within. All men are thus eloquent in childhood: all who have the force of resolution and the persevering diligence requisite for the endeavour, may recover the buried talent.'

The style of the pulpit, while it requires, in common with all modes of expression, the due animation of a living effect, forbids, of course, that mere animal vivacity which is incompatible with dignity and sobriety of manner, and borders on puerility by incessant motion and gesticulation, a talkative style of utterance, with high pitch, unreserved loudness, rapid enunciation, half-mimetic tones, abrupt and startling variations, grotesque expression, and dramatic attempts at humour.

Original and eccentric characters, such as Rowland Hill and John Campbell, can be tolerated, and even occasionally relished for their native buoyancy of spirits: their exuberance of action and expression, even when it violates decorum, is pardoned, in consideration of the striking effect which, for the moment, it imparts to a thought usually uttered and received in a languid and passive mood. But mere animal spirits, in a speaker, without the depth and original force of such men, serve only to discompose and annoy the mind of the hearer who desires grave and impressive instruction on momentous subjects.

To acquire expressive power of voice and manner, the process is the same which the judicious artist adopts. Study nature deeply and intensely, till you imbibe its beauty, its freshness, and its power: devote ample time to the cultivation of a relish for genuine art, in all its varied forms;—for all the fine arts are but modifications of the one great art of expression. Above all, imbue your mind with the spirit of poetry, by the habitual studious reading of the works of the master spirits of our vernacular literature. Study, especially, the dramatists,read them diligently aloud, with full force of feeling,-as a matter of professional culture and self-training; and the ear will inevitably open to the impressions of living emotion in tone and action; every expressive trait in your own mental character will thus be quickened, and the power of penetrating the heart and swaying the sympathies of others, be acquired,—to an indefinite extent.

Could the young preacher be but induced to bestow a tithe of the labour which is bestowed by the young player, on the acquisition of a vivid and expressive manner, in word and act, every pulpit might become comparatively a station for transmitting and diffusing the electric influence of a speaker inspired, soul and body,-by divine truth.

EARNESTNESS AND APATHY.

The mere vividness of an emotion may lead to animated expression, in countenance, voice, and action. Such a result may be unconscious and even unintentional, as is evinced in the natural communications of childhood.

But of the deliberate and voluntary speaker, who has a definite aim in utterance, we expect more than mere vivacity. The orator,—and such, for the time, is the minister in the pulpit, has a grave purpose to accomplish,-a specific end in view, toward which his own mind is impelled, and toward which he wishes to conduct the minds of his hearers.

He has within him a deep-felt emotion, which he wishes to impart to the hearts of others. He is earnestly desirous to impress the pervading sentiment of his own soul on the sympathies of his audience. He calls imagination to his aid, to give form to his idea and figure to his language. He reasons, he argues, he persuades, he awes, he impels, he entreats, he warns, he threatens, he exhorts, he melts, he terrifies, he arouses, he subdues, he wins. His success is the reward of his earnest desire to compass his object. His triumph has been achieved, undoubtedly, by intellectual force appropriately directed, but through what means? His glowing and irresistible eloquence was not a mere affair of the brain and These instruments have done their work well. But what would have been their effect without the aid of the liv ing tongue and the expressive action? What gave the thoughts of the speaker an entrance to the heart, was not merely their intellectual life and power, or their ideal beauty, but the earnestness of his tone, look, and gesture.

the pen.

The diffidence or the lethargic indifference of some preachers, cuts them off from all such effects. They may feel what they say; but they speak as though they felt it not. The earnest pleader might justly seem to say of them, in the expressive words of the great dramatist, Their words come from their lips,-ours from our breast.' Their own souls are not apparently aroused by what they utter; and how can it be expected that they should awaken others? If the preacher's tone is, in such cases, any index to his heart, he is indifferent as to the result. It may be, indeed, that he is one of those who disapprove of much emotion in the pulpit, and that he is an advocate of calm dignity, and manly reserve of manner. His Stoic exterior is not to be disturbed by vehe→ mence or excitement; and the slumbering soul is therefore to be left to its fatal lethargy.

But the fault of apparent apathy in the preacher, is more frequently owing to the absence of expressive facility. It sometimes, indeed, is caused by a depth of inward feeling which in vain struggles for utterance through undisciplined

and unpractised organs. The suppressed and choking voice sometimes, in these circumstances, discloses, to the attentive ear, the true nature of the hinderance. But from whatever source it springs, the fault of inexpressive utterance belies the truths which fall from the lips, and which should pierce the heart with the thrill of intense emotion.

Earnestness is the natural language of sincerity; it is the condition of persuasion. It is the security for the orator's success, most of all, in the case of him who is not contending for palpable rights and outward interests, but who is pleading the most momentous of all causes,-that which is ever pending between the soul and God.

Earnestness is the most prominent trait of eloquence. It is a thing not to be mistaken. It depends not on science. It is a direct product of the soul. It has no half-way existence. Either it is not, or it comes 'beaming from the eye, speaking on the tongue, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object.' Nothing can take its place. Decorum, without it, becomes hollow formality; gravity, coldness; dignity, reserve: all expression loses life and power.

Yet earnestness is external in its character, and may be counterfeited, even, by assuming certain outward signs of tone and action. It needs but a little attention and reflection to note and discriminate its traits. Every observer perceives its characteristic glance of the eye; its energetic, warm, breathing, heart-issuing voice, its pithy emphasis, its acute and keen inflection, its vivid intonation, its animated movement; its forcible and spirited and varying action, its speaking attitude and posture; its eloquent glow of pervading inspiration. We see it manifested in all its power, as the instinctive art of eloquence which nature teaches to the child, to the mother, to the loving youth, to the unconscious savage.

Earnestness, as a habit in expression, is one of those traits which education tends to quell rather than to aid. Early, in the conventional forms of school life, it gives way to reserve and morbid apathy, or to an arbitrary decorum. Inexpres

sive modes of action and utterance become, thus, inseparable from the prevalent habits of the student and the professional man. Resolute self-culture alone can replace the lost power in individuals. He who would recover it effectually, must watch narrowly the sources of influence on mind and character. He must frequent those mental resorts whence he may derive energetic and stirring impulses: he must learn to detect, and apply to his own being, the elements of inward life and force, to see the deep and living reality within all external forms. He must learn to deal with thoughts rather than words, and with things more than with mere thought. He who inhales the inner air of truth and reality, cannot be an indifferent spectator of life, or an indifferent pleader for its duties. The words and tones and looks and actions of the human being, are profound and instructive realities to him. He cannot be indifferent to their power: he will study them thoroughly; he will use them effectively.

One efficacious means of infusing an earnest spirit into expression, is the attentive study of the great models of eloquence, ancient and modern. It is true, that the process of verbal translation, and the routine of formal declamation, in academic exercises, have extracted much of the freshness and the life of eloquence from the best pages of classic oratory, by blunting the student's sensibility to their peculiar power and beauty. But to every true scholar there comes a time when the trammels of early association are laid aside with the other transient impressions of boyhood, and the man, in the maturity of his mind, perceives and appreciates the living force of the great masters in oratory; and then Demosthenes and Cicero and Chatham are, to his view, themselves again, in their original power and splendour.

The daily practice of reading aloud, and declaiming from these authors, cannot but rouse and impel a mind that truly feels their power. The sympathetic spirit must catch something of their glowing earnestness and breathing life of utterance. Language such as theirs it is hardly possible for the