feited over and over again? Were they to lay a second Petition of Right at the foot of the throne, to grant another lavish aid in exchange for another unmeaning ceremony, and then to take their departure, till, after ten years more of fraud and oppression, their prince should again require a supply, and again repay it with a perjury? They were compelled to choose whether they would trust a tyrant or conquer him. We think that they chose wisely and nobly. The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James the Second no private virtues? Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrowminded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father! A good husband! Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood! We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are told that he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him of having given up his people to the merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hardhearted of prelates; and the defence is, that he took his little son on his knee, and kissed him! We censure him for having violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable consideration, promised to observe them; and we are informed that he was accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning! It is to such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with the present generation. From the "Essay on Milton." Macaulay. The study of Macaulay is a great help to an undisciplined mind; and to read aloud from his works counteracts a tendency to chaotic thinking, to drifting, or to a lack of vigorous conception. In fact, "every defect of mind may have its appropriate receipt," and the teacher may prescribe the study of authors in Vocal Expression according to the student's needs. To make authors models is dangerous; for where a student reads merely a favorite author, he unconsciously imitates the faults of that author. It is often much more helpful for a student to read an author who is strong where he himself is weak. In Vocal Expression a study of authors may thus be made a most important means of correcting imperfect thinking, and of eradicating all defects of delivery. Every author has a peculiar logical action. Byron, in his Elegy on Thyrza," furnishes a fine example of the most subtle logical method, though revealed in exquisite verse. Mr. Palgrave calls this "a masterly example of Byron's command of strong thought and close reasoning in verse." Shelley has a more "wayward intensity," and yet he is none the less logical. His is a more passional method. Problem XXXIII. Present a strong passage, setting ideas over against each other, or making them strongly antithetic. Problem XXXIV. Contrast the logical and antithetic processes of different authors and be true to the spirit of each. 163. ELEGY ON THYRZA. AND thou art dead, as young and fair as aught of mortal birth; and forms so soft and charms so rare too soon return'd to Earth! Though Earth received them in her bed, and o'er the spot the crowd may tread in carlessness or mirth, there is an eye which could not brook a moment on that grave to look. I will not ask where thou liest low nor gaze upon the spot; there flowers or weeds at will may grow so I behold them not: it is enough for me to prove that what I loved and long must love like common earth can rot; to me there needs no stone to tell 'tis nothing that I loved so well. Yet did I love thee to the last, as fervently as thou who didst not change through all the past and canst not alter now. The love where Death has set his seal nor age can chill, nor rival steal, nor falsehood disavow: and, what were worse, thou canst not see or wrong, or change, or fault in me. The better days of life were ours; the worst can be but mine: the sun that cheers, the storm that lours shall never more be thine. The silence of that dreamless sleep I envy now too much to weep; nor need I to repine that all those charms have pass'd away I might have watch'd through long decay. The flower in ripen'd bloom unmatch'd must fall the earliest prey; though by no hand untimely snatch'd, the leaves must drop away. And yet it were a greater grief to watch it withering, leaf by leaf, than see it pluck'd to-day; since earthly eye but ill can bear to trace the change to foul from fair. I know not if I could have borne to see thy beauties fade; the night that follow'd such a morn had worn a deeper shade: thy day without a cloud hath past, and thou wert lovely to the last, extinguish'd, not decay'd; as stars that shoot along the sky shine brightest as they fall from high. As once I wept if I could weep, my tears might well be shed to think I was not near, to keep one vigil o'er thy bed: to gaze, how fondly! on thy face, to fold thee in a faint embrace, uphold thy drooping head; and show that love, however vain, nor thou nor I can feel again. Yet how much less it were to gain, though thou hast left me free, the loveliest things that still remain than thus remember thee! The all of thine that cannot die through dark and dread Eternity returns again to me, and more thy buried love endears than aught except its living years. Byron. 164 ONE word is too often profaned for me to profane it, Shelley. 165 FAREWELL. My blessing with you! and these few precepts in thy memory look thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel; but do not dull thy palm with entertainment of each new-hatch'd, unfledg'd comrade. Beware of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, bear it, that the opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice: take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy: for the apparel oft proclaims the man; and they in France, of the best rank and station are most select and generous, chief in that. Neither a borrower, nor a lender be: for loan oft loses both itself and friend; and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. This above all, to thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man. From "Hamlet." Shakespeare. 166 EARTH gets its price for what Earth gives us; The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, At the devil's booth all things are sold, James Russell Lowell. 167 SOMETIMES a-dropping from the sky, I heard the skylark sing; sometimes all little birds that are, how they seemed to fill the sea and air with their sweet jargoning! And now 't was like all instruments; now like a lonely flute; and now it is an angel's song, that makes the heavens be mute. It ceased; yet still the sails made on a pleasant noise till noon, a noise as of a hidden brook in the leafy month of June, that to the sleeping woods all night singeth a quiet tune. Coleridge. XXL SOLILOQUY. 168 O, WHAT a rogue and peasant slave am I! "Hamlet." ONE Shakespeare. NE of the simplest illustrations of the method of the mind in Vocal Expression, is found in rendering a soliloquy. Shakespeare is almost the only one who has been able to express in literary form the difference between speaking to ourselves and speaking to others. When we speak to ourselves, there is a more transparent manifestation of thinking than when we are speaking to others. When we are talking to others we have more definite purpose; we proceed along a more prescribed path; there is more definiteness in thinking. If we are alone, this purpose is not so manifest. The spontaneous leap of the mind from one idea to another is more free; there is not the same domination over the mind or direction of its action. Although there is always a spontaneous self-direction, yet in soliloquy the self-direction is more spontaneous, - it has less to do with will than when we are speaking to others. A soliloquy, then, will manifest to us the subjective methods of the mind, the free sequence of ideas, far better than the study of the mind in talking. There is more ease, repose, and more flexibility, there is a more direct and complete manifestation of the mind. Thus there is more accentuation in soliloquy than broad, interpretative emphasis. Of course, as the mind dwells on each successive idea for its own sake, as the sequence of ideas is more passive and spontaneous, so will the voice manifest each successive idea more for its own sake, and in direct relation to the preceding one. In speaking to others, however, there is a manifestation of each idea for the sake of a purpose, and a greater subordination of several successive accentuations to one great emphatic word, which lies at the basis of all that is said. Speaking to others is more consciously progressive. Thus, interpretative emphasis is not so manifest in soliloquy as simple successive accentuations. Another difference between soliloquy and conversation is the fact that there are more pauses in soliloquy. The mind rests longer upon the ideas, because thinking is spontaneous and without preparation; because the mind has not previously passed over the successive ideas, or arranged them in a special order; and also because there is no other mind present to modify the passive flow of ideas, causing some points to be accentuated and others to be subordinated, so as to awaken the idea in another. The successive ideas are more equally accentuated. The rhythm |