putting force or strong accent on counted, the force is on flint; hard as flint !)—and their wheels like a whirlwind:

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their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young lions; yea, they shall roar and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall deliver it. And in that day they shall roar against them like the roaring-of-the-sea; and if one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.

(The last verse should be marked with the solemnity and low pitch of deep orotund.)

There are hundreds of passages in the Old Testament which, like this, would lose all their grand, solemn, and terrible character unless marked by the orotund.

So there are passages in Shakspeare which almost equally demand it.

Thus Prospero's comment on the last exercise of his art (Tempest, act v.) requires, in the last six lines here given, the use of the orotund:

Our revels now are ended: these our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

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The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this unsubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a wrack behind!

So the passage in Macbeth,' before the murder, demands the deep orotund to express the awe of the silence around, and Macbeth's subdued feeling in harmony with it. But here the orotund must be piano, soft, deep; and it should have the melancholy expression of the

minor.

Long quantity is essential to the slow

time here.

Now o'er the one half world nature seems dead,
And wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep;
Now witchcraft celebrates pale Hecate's offerings,
And wither'd murder, alarum'd by his sentinel, the
wolf,

Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design p. Moves like a ghost!

The orotund in the above passage marks its cadence in the deepest pitch, almost in a whisper, on the four closing words.

You perceive that long quantity, as opposed to strong and crisp accentuation, is one of the distinguishing characteristics of orotund; as sparkling, brisk accentuation marks energetic speech. Take the following example from Shakspeare's 'Henry IV.,' in which Hotspur fiercely and enthusiastically expresses his fiery eagerness

for battle; in which observe the prevalence of abrupt and strongly accented syllables, requiring force and energy of speech, or flashes of utterance and quicker time. This should be marked

staccato.

READ ALOUD:

Let them come.

They come like sacrifices in their trim,
And to the fire-eyed maid of smoky war
All hot and bleeding will we offer them!
The mailed Mars shall on his altar sit
Up to the ears in blood!

Come, let me take my horse,

Which is to bear me, like a thunderbolt,

Against the bosom of the Prince of Wales.

Harry to Harry shall, hot horse to horse meet,

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And ne'er part, till one drop down a corse.

Now I am sure you must have a perfect idea of the two styles by contrast; and will more readily, by the same process, arrive at a just appreciation of the merely natural or conversational style, for common-place subjects and occasions, of which I give you a few examples below.

These are to be marked by middle pitch, a light quality of voice, with neat accentuation, and no prolonged quantity on the indefinite syllables; giving them their due quantity without extension: the time is moderate, not slow,

the phrasing more extended, with fewer rests. The emphatic points must be made easily and lightly.

1. When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two things, their good opinion and our own improvement. Just what we have to say we know; but what they have to say we do not know.

2. Secrecy has been well termed the soul of all great designs. Perhaps more has been effected by concealing our own intentions than by discovering those of our enemy. But great men succeed in both.

3. To tell your own secrets is generally folly; but that folly is without guilt. To reveal those with which we are entrusted is always treachery; and treachery, for the most part, combined with folly.

Read the next example with more force:

4. I have played the fool, the gross fool, to believe
The bosom of a friend would hold a secret
Mine own could not contain.

And this next, conversationally, but softly, and with a sentiment of joy :

5. Now fair Hippolita, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace, four happy days brings in
Another moon: but oh! methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes: she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame, or a dowager,
Long withering out a young man's revenue.
SHAKSPEARE.

LESSON VI.

THE READING OF VERSE AND THE VOCAL EXPRESSION OF PASSION.

In the reading of verse we must be careful to preserve RHYTHM and MELODY.

Rhythm in language is musical movement, by a regulated succession of sounds in certain order.

Verse is the music of language; rhythm is its essential quality, the regularity and ordered movement of which distinguish it from prose.

It is as requisite in reading verse to mark the pulsation (as I will call it) of the linesthat is, their metrical movement—as it is in playing and singing, to mark the time and barring of the music.

English verse, whether in blank verse or in rhyme, consists of the arrangement at regulated intervals of accented and unaccented, or of heavy and light syllables. This impulse and remission of sound-thesis and arsis-constitute rhythm.

Latin and Greek verse are regulated by prosodians by quantity alone, by certain adjust