and shuffling slide; one slips or glides to one side, when he ought to advance; another points his foot directly forward, which throws him into the shouldering attitude already described; some stand as motionless as statues, through a whole address; others are perpetually shifting their place without cause; and others, again, make every change of posture a formal and laborious operation.

Changes of attitude ought to be made either for the effect of quietness and repose, as a natural relief, at the end of a bold passage of earnest address, or for force of emphasis in an energetic assertion or a warm appeal. The former is properly a quiet retiring movement, made at the close of a paragraph or head of discourse, or at the beginning of such a portion of an address, when the language is less intense than in the strain immediately preceding it: the latter is a spirited advance, made during the act of speaking, and in strict time with the emphasis of the voice and the gesture of the arm. In either case, the movement is not obtrusive but is merged in the general effect. The frequency of change in attitude should always be left dependent on the comparative quietness or animation of the composition to which the speaker is giving utterance: the former style requires few, the latter may require many changes;-the former, retiring; the latter, advancing movements.

THE CHARACTER OF ORATORICAL ACTION.

The prevalent neglect of speaking, as an art, causes many great errors of habit in early life, which continue unremoved in subsequent stages. Among these, the mode of using the hand is conspicuous. The analogy on which the hand is used in oratory, is that of imparting, giving, or bestowing; as speaking is the audible and visible impartation or communication of sentiment. The analogy, in detail, is that of delivering an object, as, for example, a ball, into the hand of another. Such an act requires an open and sloping position of the hand,

and a slight parting of the two outer fingers from the two middle ones, as the necessary condition of giving.

The suggestion hence arising to the student, is that every position of the hand which holds it crooked, or level, or flat, or inclined upward, or which keeps the fingers confined, is inappropriate, because inconsistent with giving, imparting, or communicating. The recipient holds out a hollow hand, with crooked, or bent fingers: the giver opens and slopes his hand, and partially separates the outer fingers from the others, as mentioned. The speaker who appeals to our feelings, expands his hand, as the natural expression of appeal or of entreaty, in the spirit of free and persuasive communication.

Yet how often we see the hand of the speaker held out flat and close, like a piece of board, or edgewise, like a chopping knife, or feebly hollowed, like that of a beggar receiving alms. Sometimes, on the contrary, we see it clinched in a style which calls up the associations of 'strife and debate,' and 'smiting with the fist of wickedness.'

The palm, (the seat of the great expansion of the sympathetic nerve,) has in it a most eloquent natural language. It is to the hand what the countenance is to the head, the seat of expression. The free opening, then, of the hand, is one of the primary conditions of visible eloquence.*

The use of the arm, in oratorical action, is another practi

* Manus vero, sine quibus trunca esset actio ac debilis, vix dici potest, quot motus habeant, cum pene ipsum verborum copiam persequantur. Nam cæteræ partes loquentem adjuvant, hæ, (prope est ut dicam,) ipsæ loquuntur. An non his poscimus? pollicemur? vocamus? dimittimus? minamur? supplicamus? abominamur? timemus? interrogamus? negamus? gaudium, tristitiam, dubitationem, confessionem, pœnitentiam, modum, copiam, numerum, tempus, ostendimus? Non exdem concitant? supplicant? inhibent? probant? admirantur? verecundantur? non in demonstrandis locis atque personis adverbiorum atque pronominum obtinent vicem? ut in tanta per omnes gentes nationesque linguæ diversitate hic mihi omnium hominum communis sermo videatur.-Quintil. l. xi. c. 3.

The value attached, by the ancients, to the eloquence of the hand, as an instrument of expression, is unequivocally intimated in the fact that the whole art of elocution was comprehended under the term Χειρονομεία.

cal point of great moment to the right effect of address. The confined and angular movements of the arm, which take place in the natural and appropriate gestures of the parlour or the study, when the persons who are addressed are seated near to the speaker, are utterly inapplicable to the act of addressing a public assembly, in which the speaker's action is to be directed, (if rightly performed,) to the remotest not less than the nearest of his audience. The larger space, in the latter instance, demands larger scope for the arm in action, as certainly as it demands the full tone of voice used in public speaking, and not the comparatively slight utterance used by the fireside. The style of gesture, then, in public address, requires a free action of the arm, terminating, usually, in its full extension, in whatever line a sentiment prompts, avoiding, however, such a degree of extension as terminates in a rigidly straight line, which is always an offence to the eye, as associating with a stiff or mechanical style of action.

A prevalent fault of gesture, in the pulpit, is that of allowing it to fall habitually in a line drawn from the speaker's side. This style of action might be applicable, were all his audience placed in one long row at his right hand. But as they are actually seated in front of him, his hand,—if its action is to have any meaning,-should be presented in front, and obliquely from his own body.

A horizontal sweep or swing of the arm, is the habitual gesture of some pulpit orators. But this style belongs only to descriptive effect, or to that of negation and removal, while assertion, the prevalent mood of speaking, - demands a downward movement of the arm, more or less direct according to the form of a sentiment. The horizontal line of action is that which properly terminates the expression of general ideas, as coincident in character with the expansive horizontal sweep of the eye, in an extensive view; for the phenomena of gesture are analogous, in their influence on imagination, to the effect of ocular action on external objects, and on visible motion: hence the energetic character of the descent of the arm, in a strong assertion, the expansive effect of a wide

horizontal motion, the elevation and sublimity associated with a lofty or ascending gesture, the direct character of an action which throws the speaker's arm in front, the wider effect of an oblique line outward, the still wider of the line extended from the side, the association of remoteness in time or place, which accompanies a gesture directed obliquely backward from the body, the appealing effect of the open hand, the threatening and intimidating or the determined effect of the clinched hand, the marked significance of the pointing finger, the repellant character of the extended arm and opposing hand, the solemn or impressive effect of the upraised hand of awe, wonder, grief, joy, adoration; the supplicating effect of the clasped hands, the welcoming and appealing power of the outspread arms, the triumphant and exulting style of the wave of the hand.

A fault exhibited by some speakers, consists in a ceaseless motion of the arms; the principle of gesture being that of applying the ictus of the arm along with the emphasis of the voice, and reserving the consummation of an action till that

moment.

Another error is that of keeping the arms habitually down by the side, and, at long intervals, bringing them up in action, or that of perpetually raising and dropping the arms, at short intervals. The proper regulation of action is founded on the principle that the hand should remain at the point to which it was brought by the movement of the preceding gesture, till occasion call for the preparation requisite to a new action, and that the dropping of the hand should be reserved for the completion or termination of a sentiment, and should be the visible indication that a pause of considerable length is about to take place.

On the obvious fault of speaking without action, it is unnecessary to enlarge. Such a mode of address can be natural only in cases influenced by the second nature of a habit of morbid reserve, or of a constitutional coldness, which disqualifies a man for the offices of eloquence. The frequency of gesture is properly dependent on the character of sentiment

and style. An essay, or a lecture, or a merely doctrinal or didactic sermon, may require comparatively little action; as the themes of such discourses address themselves to the understanding and the reason, and can derive little aid from suggestive or descriptive gesture. An argumentative discourse may, from its earnestness of feeling, require frequent and strong gesture of the direct and downward character. Poetic description and glowing appeal may need continual and varied action, in coincidence with the natural demands of feeling and imagination. The spirit of a just criticism,—that which regards eloquence, and every constituent of eloquence, as the expression of the man, and not of the mere artist,—will always permit the vexed question of the proper frequency of gesture to be decided, in part, by the temperament and tendency of the individual. The active and the ardent cannot speak earnestly without a comparative copiousness of action. Their style of language, indeed, if true to their nature, is such as to demand it: they incline to impressive moods of feeling and forms of imagination, as we perceive by their figurative modes of expression. Persons of a serene temper are naturally moderate in gesture, as they are tranquil in thought. The reflective mind rather shuns external manifestations; and the phlegmatic constitution causes it perhaps to seem unnecessary and superfluous. The morbid condition of any temperament, however, leads necessarily to excess and disproportion; and critical objections to action, not less than the violations of principle in modes of gesture, are not unfrequently the fruits of an unhealthy taste.

No influence is more unfriendly to a genial and appropriate development of habit, as regards action in speaking, than that arbitrary criticism which makes one constitution, or one temperament, or one tendency, the rule for all. One man may use but one or two gestures, in a given paragraph; and his grave and reserved habit may make his manner seem perfectly appropriate another, of more active tendencies, may double the number of actions, without seeming unnatural. Gesture resembles emphasis: its force and frequency depend,