LECTURE X.

The Falling Inflections of the voice-Logical Principles of their application: (1) Where the meaning of a Clause or Sentence is complete; Illustrations; (2) Where it is required to keep Clauses distinct and independent; Illustrations; (3) Where an Interrogation cannot be answered by a simple Affirmative or Negative; Illustra tions; Exceptions; Illustrations; Emotional Uses of the Falling Inflections: (1) In Sentences expressing Strong Conviction or Solemn Affirmation; Illustrations; (2) In Sentences that Express Command or Authority; Illustrations; (3) Where Sentences express Hatred, Anger, &c.; Illustrations-Use of the Staccato; Illustrations-Climax, how best Rendered; Illustrations-Gradual Inflections or Monotone-Uses of the Monotone-When Passages are characterised by Awe or Solemnity; Illustrations.

W

E have now to enter upon an examination of the falling inflections of the voice, and of the uses they serve in Elocution. Let us take these first in reference to the logical principles which govern their application, and afterwards consider them as regards emotional expression. With respect to the former division,

I should give this as

RULE 1. As soon as the meaning of a sentence, or clause of a sentence, is logically complete, then the falling inflection must be employed.

Illustrations for Practice.

1. The princely David with his outlaw band,
Lodged in the cave Adullàm. Wild and fierce,
With lion-like faces and with eagle eyes,

They followed where he lèd. The danger press'd;
Far over all the land the Philistines

Had spread their armies. Through Rephaim's vale
The dark tents muster'd thìck, and David's home—
His father's city Bethlehem, owned them lòrds.
'Twas harvest, and the crops of ripening corn
They ravaged; and with rude feet trampled down
The tender vines. Men hid themselves for fear

In woods or càves.

The brave, undaunted few,

Gathering round David, sought the mountain hòld.

He came, the pure,

2. The setting sun fell low on Zutphen's plain;
The fight was over and the victory won ;
And out of all the din and stir of war,
They bore the flower of Christian chivalry,
The life-blood gushing out.
The true, the stainless; all youth's fiery glow,
All manhood's wisdom blended into one;
To help the weak against the strong; to drive
The Spaniard from a land which was not his,
And claim the right of all men to be free,
Free in their life, their polity, their faith.

3. Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable,

Elaine the lily maid of Astolat,

High in her chamber, up a tower to the east,
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot ;

Which first she placed where morning's earliest ray
Might strike it and awake her with the gleam;
Then, fearing rust or soilure, fashioned for it
A case of silk; and braided thereupon
All the devices blazoned on the shield
In their own tinct; and added of her wit
A border fantasy of branch and flower,
And yellow-throated nestling in the nest.

4. I will tell you :

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold,
Purple the sails, and so perfumed, that

The winds were love-sick with them: the oars were silver;

Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made

The water, which they beat, to follow faster,

As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggared all description: she did lie

In her pavilion (cloth of gold, of tissue)
O'er picturing that Venus, where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With diverse-coloured fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid, did.

5. Now came still evening on, and twilight grey
Had in her sober liv'ry all things clad.
Silence accompanied: for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests,
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale:
She, all night long, her am'rous descant sung.
Silence was pleas'd. Now glow'd the firmament
With living sapphires: Hesperus, that led

The starry host, rode brightest; till the moon,
Rising in clouded majesty, at length
Apparent queen, unveil'd her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

6. We stood beneath the concave of a blue
And cloudless sky :-

With clear voice

That falter'd not, albeit the heart was mov'd,

The Wanderer said :

"One adequate support

For the calamities of mortal life

Exists-one only; an assur'd belief
That the procession of our fate, howe'er
Sad or disturb'd, is ordered by a Being
Of infinite benevolence and power;
Whose everlasting purposes embrace
All accidents converting them to good."

7. I went to see him, and my heart was touch'd
With reverence and with pity. Mild he spake,
And entering on discourse, such stories told
As made me oft revisit his sad cell.

For he had been a soldier in his youth,
And fought in famous battles, when the peers
Of Europe, by the bold Godfredo led,
Against the usurping infidel, display'd
The blessed cross, and won the holy land.
Pleas'd with my admiration, and the fire

His speech struck from me, the old man would shake
His years away, and act his young encounters;

Then, having show'd his wounds, he'd sit him down,
And all the livelong day discourse of war,
To help my fancy,-in the smooth green turf
He'd cut the figures of the marshall'd hosts,
Describ'd the motions, and explain'd the use
Of the deep column, and the lengthen❜d line,
The square, the crescent, and the phalanx firm.
For all that Saracen or Christian knew

Of war's vast art was to this hermit known.

8. Here closed the Sage that eloquent harangue,
Pour'd forth with fervour in continuous stream,
Such as, remote, 'mid savage wilderness,
An Indian chief discharges from his breast.
Meantime the sun,

To us who stood low in that hollow dell,
Had now become invisible,-a pomp
Leaving behind of yellow radiance, spread
Over the mountain sides, in contrast bold

With ample shadows, seemingly, no less
Than those resplendent lights, his rich bequest,
A dispensation of his evening power.

-Adown the path that from the glen had led
The funeral train, the shepherd and his mate
Were seen descending: forth to greet them ran
Our little page; the rustic pair approach,
And we are kindly welcom'd-promptly serv'd
With ostentatious zeal.-Along the floor
Of the small cottage in the lowly dell

A grateful couch was spread for our repose,
Where, in the guise of mountaineers, we slept,
Stretched upon fragrant heath, and lull'd by sound
Of far-off torrents charming the still night,
And, to tired limbs and over-busy thoughts,
Inviting sleep and soft forgetfulness.

9. Dear is the memory of our wedded lives,
And dear the last embraces of our wives,
And their warm tears; but all hath suffered change.
And surely now our household hearths are cold:
Our sons inherit us: our looks are strange,
And we should come like ghosts to trouble joy:
Or else the island princes over-bold
Have eat our substance, and the minstrel sings
Before them of the ten years' war in Troy
And our great deeds as half-forgotten things.

10. The lotos blooms below the barren peak:
The lotos blows by every winding creek;

All day the wind breathes low with mellower tone,
Through every hollow cave and alley lone:

Round and round the spicy downs the yellow lotos-dust is blown.
We have had enough of action and of motion, we

Rolled to starboard, rolled to larboard, when the surge was seething

free,

Where the wallowing monster spouted his foam-fountains in the sea.

11. In the first place, true honour, though it be a different principle from religion, is that which produces the same effects. The lines of action, though drawn from different parts, terminate in the same points. Religion embraces virtue, as it is enjoined by the laws of God; honour as it is graceful and ornamental to human nature. The religious man fears, the man of honour scorns, to do an ill action. The latter considers vice as something that is beneath him, the other as something that is offensive to the Divine Being. The one as what is unbecoming, the other as what is forbidden. Thus Seneca speaks in the natural and genuine language of a man of honour, when he declares, that were there no God to see or punish vice, he would not commit it, because it is of so mean, so base, and so vile a nature.

12. Virtue is the foundation of honour and esteem, and the source of all beauty, order, and happiness in nature. It is what confers value on all the other endowments and qualities of a reasonable being, to which they ought to be absolutely subservient, and without which, the more eminent they are, the more hideous deformities and the greater curses they become. The use of it is not confined to any one stage of our existence, or to any particular situation we can be in, but reaches through all the periods and circumstances of our being.-Many of the endowments and talents we now possess, and of which we are too apt to be proud, will cease entirely with the present state; but this will be our ornament and dignity in every future state to which we may be removed. Beauty and wit will die, learning will vanish away, and all the arts of life be soon forgot; but virtue will remain for ever.

RULE II.-Inasmuch as a falling inflection always suggests to the mind a certain degree of completeness of meaning (just as a rising inflection does of incompleteness) it may be usefully employed in those sentences which consist of several clauses, conveying imperfect sense, and independent of each other's meaning, for the purpose of keeping the several clauses separate and distinct from each other.

Illustrations for Practice.

1. Swarth figures clothed

In strange apparel from the further East,
Bringing their spice and balm from Lebanon
To tempt our Western beaùties; Ethiop boys,
Bound for the market, crouching side by side

With blue-eyed Thracians; merchants with their wares
Were mingled on the deck.

2. You, Lord Archbishop,

Whose See is by a civil peace maintained;

Whose beard the silver hand of peace hath touched;

Whose learning and good letters peace hath tutored,
Whose white investments figure innocence;

You do ill translate yourself

Into the harsh and boisterous tongue of war.

3. And then when Harry Bolingbroke and he
Being mounted, and both roused in their seats;
Their neighing coursers daring of the spur;
Their armed staves in charge; their beavers down;
Their eyes of fire sparkling through sights of steel,
And the loud trumpet blowing them together-
Then, then the King did throw his warder down.

4. The passionate prayer

The wild idolatry-the purple light

Bathing the cold earth from a Hebe's urn.