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? Is he not 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. Revenge. If 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.

CHAPTER V.

FORCE.

A PRIMARY characteristic of utterance, as expressive of emotion, is the degree of its energy or force.

The effect of any feeling on sympathy is naturally inferred from the degree of force with which the sound of the voice, in the utterance of that feeling, falls upon the ear of the hearer. The cause of this impression upon the mind is obviously the law of organic sympathy, by which one part of the human frame naturally responds to another. A powerful emotion not only affects the heart and the lungs, and the other involuntary agents of life and of expression, but starts the expulsory muscles into voluntary action, and produces voice, the natural indication and language of feeling: The degree of force, therefore, in a vocal sound, is intuitively taken as

the measure of the emotion which causes it. Except only those cases in which the force of feeling paralyzes as it were the organs of the voice, and suggests the opposite measure of inference, by which a choked and struggling utterance, a suppressed or inarticulate voice, or even absolute silence, becomes the index to the heart.

The command of all degrees of force of voice must evidently be essential to true and natural expression, whether in reading or speaking. Appropriate utterance ranges through all stages of vocal sound, from the whisper of fear and the murmur of repose to the boldest swell of vehement declamation and the shout of triumphant courage. But to give forth any one of these or the intermediate tones with just and impressive effect, the organs must be disciplined by appropriate exercise and frequent practice.

The want of due training for the exercise of public read、 ing or speaking, is evinced in the habitual undue loudness of some speakers and the inadequate force of others.

Force of utterance, however, has other claims on the attention of students of elocution besides those which are involved in correct expression. It is, in its various gradations, the chief means of imparting strength to the vocal organs, and power to the voice itself. The due practice of exer

cises in force of utterance does for the voice what athletic exercise does for the muscles of the body; it imparts the two great conditions of power, vigor and pliancy.

It is a matter of great moment, in practising the exercises in force, to observe at first with the utmost strictness, the rule of commencing with the slightest and advancing to the most energetic forms of utterance. When practice has imparted due vigor and facility, it will be a useful variation of order to commence with the more powerful exertions of the voice and descend to the more gentle. It is a valuable attainment, also, to be able to strike at once, and with perfect ease and precision, into any degree of force, from whispering to shouting.

The perfect command of every degree of force, and an exact discrimination of its stages, as classified by degree and character of emotion, are indispensable to correct and impressive elocution. Extensive and varied practice on force, in all its gradations, becomes therefore an important point in the vocal culture connected with elocution. For drill exercises repeat tables of Elements in the musical gradations of "pianissimo" (very soft), "piano" (soft), " mezzo piano (moderately soft), mezzo (moderate), "mezzo forte" (moderately loud), "forte" (loud), and "fortissimo" (very loud), in successive stages, commencing with the slightest and most delicate sound that can be uttered in 'pure tone," and extending to the most vehement force of shouting and calling in the open air and with all the power that the voice can yield.

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Persons who practise such exercises several times a day,1 for ten or fifteen minutes at a time, will find a daily gain in vocal power and organic vigor to be the invariable result: every day will enable them to add a degree to their scale of force.

The kind of exercise now recommended, if presented in a form addressed to the eye, might be marked thus:

Each dot represents in this scale, one and the same sound,

1 It may not be improper to remark here, that vocal exercise should be practised at a point of time as nearly as may be INTERMEDIATE to the hours assigned for meals; as the organs are then in their best condition, neither embarrassed nor exhausted, as regards the state of the circulation. The rule of the Italian vocal training, which prescribes powerful and continued exertion of voice, before breakfast, with a view to deepen the " register," implies a state of organs already inured to fatigue; and the stereotype direction of the old physicians, to declaim after dinner, with a view to promote digestion, implies either a meal in the poet's style of "spare fast, that oft with gods doth diet," or a strength of the digestive organ that can render it callous to the powerful shocks which energetic declamation always imparts by impassioned emotion to that chief "local habitation" of the "sympathetic" nerve.

or word, repeated with a gradually increasing force. The repetition of the same sound, for at least a dozen times, is preferred to a change of elements, because by repetition the ear becomes as it were a more exact judge of the successive degrees of force, when not distracted by attention to anything else than the one point of mere loudness.

DYING REQUEST. - Mrs. Hemans.

Leave me thy footstep with its lightest sound,
The very shadow of thy waving hair,

Wakes in my soul a feeling too profound,

Too strong for aught that lives and dies, to bear
Oh! bid the conflict cease!

1 "Suppressed" force is not limited exclusively to the forms of the whis per, or the half-whisper. Still, it is usually found in one or other of these ; and, on this account, although sometimes intensely earnest and energetic in the expression of feeling, it is a gradation of utterance which, in point of 66 vocality," ," ranks below even the "moderate" and "subdued" forms of pure tone." We regard, at present, its value in vocal force, - not in "expression."

("Explosive" Utterance.)

Terror.

LINES ON THE EVE OF WATERLOO. - Byron.

The foe! they come, they come!

Effusive Half-whisper.

Awe and Tenderness.

EVENING PRAYER AT A GIRL'S SCHOOL.- Mrs. Hemans.

Hush! 't is a holy hour:— the quiet room

Seems like a temple, while you soft lamp sheds A faint and starry radiance through the gloom

And the sweet stillness, down on young bright heads, With all their clustering locks, untouched by care, And bowed as flowers are bowed with night—in prayer.

Expulsive Half-whisper.

Horror.

EUGENE ARAM.-Hood.

Down went the corse with a hollow plunge,

And vanished in the pool;

Anon I cleansed my bloody hands,

And washed my forehead cool,
And sat among the urchins young
That evening, in the school.

Explosive Half-whisper.

Frenzied Fear.

ANCIENT MARINER. - Coleridge.

About, about, in reel and rout,
The death-fires danced at night;