The hard quality goes with hardness of feeling, severity of argument, threat, command, and domineering, tyrannical expression. The seat of the quality is in the throat; and it partakes of the guttural in sound.

Softness of quality goes to tenderness of feeling, pity, entreaty, submission, love, &c.

Harshness of quality is an intensification of hardness: it is more guttural and through the teeth, in its extreme exhibition: it there partakes of the snarl of a dog, and the r's, that may occur, are strongly marked.

For example, say in an easy manner without great force or energy,

Aroused to wrath and rage he raved,

and you will, in speaking it, rely principally on the arch or roof of the mouth.

Say the same line, using strong radical stress, and in a louder voice than before, and you will find you will begin to use the throat more: you will feel it on the words wrath and rage especially, so uttered with hard quality of

voice.

But if you utter the same line with an intensified threatening expression, with a vindictive energy about it, your voice will become harsh in quality, and guttural in utterance, especially on the r's, on which the tongue will vibrate.

Try the three ways aloud successively: the last very energetically and angrily.

Then say in the same guttural style with force,

O ye hard hearts, ye cruel men of Rome!

and you will have an exemplification of the hard quality of voice.

The passage before quoted from Young's "Revenge,' Lesson II., affords a good opportunity for the illustration of hardness and harshness of voice: it expresses the intensity of

HATRED.

Why, get thee gone! Horror and night go with thee!
Sisters of Acheron, go hand in hand,

Go dance about the bower and close them in,
And tell them that I sent you to salute them.
Profane the ground, and, for the ambrosial rose
And breath of jessamin, let hemlock blacken,
And deadly nightshade poison all the air :
For the sweet nightingale may ravens croak,
Toads pant, and adders rustle thro' the leaves :
May serpents, winding up the trees, let fall
Their hissing necks upon them from above,
And mingle kisses-such as I would give them!

And the following from Shakspeare's 'Merchant of Venice,' expressing Shylock's fierce thirst for revenge, demands a hard quality of voice, rising to harshness on the repetition of the word 'Revenge!'

He hath disgraced me, and hindered me of half a million; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated my enemies. And what's his reason? I am a Jew! Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter, as a Christian is? If you stab us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. It a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, REVENGE. The villany you teach me, I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.

Softness and smoothness are respectively the reverse of hardness and harshness in quality. A pianist or musician would clearly understand those qualities when I say it is playing piano and dolce; and that smoothness is to the voice what the soft pedal is to the instrument. For example:

Softly sweet in Lydian measures

Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures.

These two lines, from Dryden's celebrated Ode, must have softness and smoothness in delivery; the utterance must harmonise with the sense.

Smoothness might be defined to be a liquid fluency of voice.

These qualities lie in the arched roof and the labial action of the mouth, with protracted vanish of tone.

ON TONICS AND LIQUIDS.

We must fall into this quality of voice if we utter gently and carefully, in slow time, such words as plume, bloom, noon, human, flowing, streamlet, love, lovely, still and calm, dwelling on the liquids.

The liquids 1, m and n, with long tonics, greatly facilitate the exercise of this soft and smooth quality, which is proper for such speeches as Othello's on his meeting with Desdemona at Cyprus.

O my soul's joy! . . .

If it were now to die

'Twere now to be most happy; for my soul

Hath her content so absolute,

That not another comfort like to this

Succeeds in unknown fate!

Othello, Act ii.

Mark the prevalence of the full tonics and liquids in these lines.

On the contrary, Othello's outburst on Iago, quoted previously, should be strongly marked by guttural harshness.

If thou dost slander her and torture me,
Never pray more! abandon all remorse;
On horror's head horrors accumulate;
Do deeds, &c.

And pray remark Shakspeare's consummate art in this, that he has introduced for the very purpose of guttural expression so many gutturals the passage bristles with r's. In those four lines above, there are no less than fifteen gutturals, besides three successive aspirates (horror's head, horrors), all which not only aid but dictate, and almost enforce a current of guttural harshness in this terrible speech.

Now contrast the two last passages as you utter them aloud: the liquids and long tonics (the o's) in the first, and the gutturals in the second, and you will have a perfect idea of hard and harsh, and soft and smooth in quality.

Work at these contrasted passages till you can speak the one as softly as the strains of a flute, the other as harshly as a trumpet.

GENERAL PITCH-TIME AND EXPRESSION.

The general pitch or tone, in reading aloud, should, at the commencement, be somewhat lower than the usual pitch of the speaking voice in animated conversation. As the reader proceeds, the voice will, by a natural tendency