3. | Place me in | régions of eternal | winter, |

| Where not a blossom to the ❘ breeze can | open ▾

2. | Sage be neath a | spreading | oak ↑ |
Sate the | Druid | hoary | chíef ; ľ |

| Évery | burning | word he | spoke ♫ |

| Full of rage and | full of grief.

|

SIX AND FOUR BARS.

3. When | he who a | dores thee | has | left but the name |

| Of his | fault and his | sorrow be | hind, ♫ |

| Oh! | say

wilt thou | weep when they |

darken the fame |

| Of a | life that for | thee was re | signed ↑ ? |

SIX BARS.

2. ¡ ↑ A | chilles' | wrath to | Greece the | díreful |

spring

Of woes un number'd | heavenly Goddess

sing. I

In the reading of blank verse, and especially of dramatic blank verse, it is quite unnecessary to make a rest or half-rest even, at the end of each line. The half-rest or suspension at the end of each line, which is generally proper in the reading of verse in rhyme, need not be observed, to the interruption of the sense, in blank verse. Still less must such a pause or suspension be allowed to interrupt the flow of language and feeling in dramatic reading. Milton's and Shakspeare's lines frequently run into each other so as to make of whole passages rhythmical prose, if you read them, as you must do in these cases, without rests, which would break the current of the sense or feeling.

For example, in the opening of the ‘Paradise Lost':

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste, &c.

There can be no rest or appreciable pause of any kind at the end of the first line, it is so intimately connected with, and runs into the second by grammatical construction.

So in the well-known speech in 'Douglas':

My name is Norval, on the Grampian hills
My father feeds his flocks, a frugal swain, &c.

The close of the first line can have no pause or intermission. The voice may indeed dwell upon the two ll's in hills, with the rise of a di-tone, which will give to the ear almost the effect of a pause, without a break.

So in Othello's speech at Cyprus :

If after every tempest come such calms,
May the winds blow till they have wakened death,
And let the lab'ring bark climb hills of seas,
Olympus high, and duck again as low

As hell's from heaven!

In this case a pause or rest of any kind at the close of the last line but one would be a manifest breach of the continuity of the sense, and the flow of the feeling.

If the reader has gone carefully and patiently with me thus far, he will be prepared to go to the final and crowning grace of elocution, the

VOCAL EXPRESSION OF PASSION.

SOME EMOTIONAL QUALITIES OF VOICE: THE HEAD-VOICE, THE TREMOLO, AND THE WHISPER.

The orotund we have already studied and practised. The three qualities or characters of voice above named are almost entirely confined to highly dramatic dialogue; and belong exclusively, almost, to the dramatic art. I shall briefly touch on these here.

The HEAD-VOICE (voce di testa) as distinguished from the chest-voice (voce di petto), is so called because it is produced, apparently, in the head, and not from the chest. It is thin, feeble, and inefficient for ordinary speech; it has not, nor can it have, the full, deep tones that belong to the chest-voice, which are produced by the full play of the lungs acting on the vocal chords; but it is formed at the back of the mouth by a thin stream of sound passing over the back of the palate and scarcely reaching the full fore arch of the mouth; so that the little volume it receives from the lungs being diminished in its passage through the larynx, which is purposely contracted to produce it, it partakes in a very small degree of the tone and quality of the natural voice, and is called falsetto, or false voice, as well as voce di testa.

It is reserved for passages of feeble selflamentation; the extreme lassitude of grief; despondent exclamations of imbecile despair; querulous sorrow; passion that has exhausted its force and wails feebly.

It is the soprano of manly speech; an artificial and feminine anomaly in the male voice. It is the TREBLE of the boy, who gets rid of it as he crosses the line of puberty, to fall into it again, if he live long enough, in the senile imbecility of old age.

Shakspeare, who paints and illustrates so truly every phase of human nature (quid tetigit quod non ornavit ?), well describes this return of the male voice in old age to the thin pipe of youth, as one of the presages of nearness to the 'last stage of all:'

The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well-saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble,

Pipes and whistles in the sound.

In reading this passage aloud it would be proper for the dramatic reader to illustrate practically, in the last lines in italics, the contrast between the full-toned orotund (chest-voice) of vigorous manhood and the