1. TO THE CUCKOO.

O BLITHE new-comer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice:
O Cuckoo! shall I call thee bird, or but a wandering Voice?
While I am lying on the grass, thy twofold shout I hear:
From hill to hill it seems to pass, at once far off and near.

Though babbling only to the vale of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring! even yet thou art to me
No bird, but an invisible thing, a voice, a mystery.

The same whom in my school-boy days I listen'd to; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways, in bush, and tree, and sky. To seek thee did I often rove through woods, and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; still long'd for, never seen!

And I can listen to thee yet, can lie upon the plain

And listen, till I do beget that golden time again.
O blessed bird! the earth we pace again appears to be
An unsubstantial, fairy place, that is fit home for Thee!

Wordsworth

2. THE LATE MASSACRE IN PIEDMONT.

AVENGE, O Lord! Thy slaughter'd Saints, whose bones
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipt stocks and stones.
Forget not: in Thy book record their groans

Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piemontese, that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they

To Heaven. Their martyr'd'blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway

The triple tyrant, that from these may grow
A hundred-fold, who, having learnt Thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

10

Milton.

I.

IDEAS AND ELEMENTAL RELATIONS.

IF

L STUDY OF NATURE.

we carefully study the two poems on the preceding page, we feel that noble emotion impelled the two authors to write them; that they simply gave their impulses voice and words. We find that we can read them merely as words, or statements of facts, and that in this case the reading is cold and mechanical. The expression, too, of both poems, — through the voice, its tones, inflections, and pitch, can be made essentially the same.

As we study deeper, however, and become permeated by the spirit of the two poems, — when the ideas become visions in our own mind, and we become thoroughly filled with the emotion, — the vocal rendering of the two begins to differ more and more widely. Each of them begins to have a distinct and definite character. Thus in every poem there is not only a peculiar thought, but also a peculiar spirit, a specific impulse or feeling, which is somehow awakened in the heart of the reader, and which gives definite character to his rendering.

Art is founded upon the study of nature. Of all forms of art, Vocal Expression is the nearest to nature; for it is an art in which nature furnishes not only the impulse and the idea, but also the materials and the agents of manifestation. In all natural expression, man is impelled to speak as the bird is to sing.

Other arts have more or less of a mechanical nature. The mastery of them is primarily dependent upon the control of technical mechanical instruments: the painter must gain command of his brush, the musician of his instrument, the sculptor

of his chisel. The speaker, however, has no tool except his own voice and body; and although for effective expression he must thoroughly train and secure control of these agents, still they have been more or less under his control ever since his first childish struggle to command them. Besides, many of the actions of the voice are involuntary, if not unconscious. A genuine laugh is purely spontaneous: the chief effort of the will is to restrain it. In conversation, we adapt the expression of our thoughts and feelings; the inflections, the degrees of emphasis, and the length of pauses, are involuntarily, if not unconsciously, varied according to the understanding of our hearers. Everyone tells a story to a little child more simply than to a man. Anyone conversing in the midst of noise unconsciously. increases his voice so as to make himself heard. The voice is modulated according to the size of the audience, the character of the hall, or the distance of the hearer.

Many elements of expression are so deep and mystic that they can be awakened only by stimulating their cause. They cannot be adequately performed mechanically, or by a direct, conscious action of the will. To secure them in all their plenitude and force, such an idea or situation must be created by the mind as will awaken the feeling that prompts them.

Vocal Expression is more intense and more adequately manifestive of life than any other art. It is a subjective art, whereas the other arts are objective; but though other arts have an objective, permanent body, and may live for thousands of years, and Vocal Expression dies the moment it is born, still, the transitory art includes more life, and a greater number of elements, than the statue or the painting. The subjective art makes up in intensity what it lacks in permanence. The plenitude of the momentary effect, the deep transfusion and manifestation of nature's life, compensate for the lack of permanent body.

From all this it is clear that, in order to improve expression, a direct and sympathetic observation of nature is fundamentally

necessary. The mind and the voice, the soul and the body, the fundamental modes of nature's actions, all must be thoroughly understood.

As all art is founded upon nature, it follows that certain characteristics of nature are reproduced in art. The characteristics of the one must furnish the laws of the other. To improve expression it is necessary to observe the spontaneous expression of nature herself, and to find the elemental charac teristics. What are the universal qualities of nature and art? What are the fundamental elements which are always found in nature's processes, and are reproduced in all true art, but which are always absent in poor, mechanical, or artificial art? Naturalness is considered the highest characteristic of reading and speaking. What do we mean by it?- what are its elements? First, nature is full of life and growth. All natural impulses are an outgrowth, they are from within, outward. Expression in nature is from a mystic centre to a manifest surface. The leaves of the tree express the plenitude of life welling up from the roots; the rosebud blooms from a pressure outward of inner fullness; the difference between an animal and a machine consists in the fact that in the machine force is applied externally to the mechanism, whereas in the animal there seems to be a centre of life and impulse,—the animal acts from within, the machine is moved from without.

Poor art has the characteristic of the machine, — noble art has the qualities of nature; and this is especially true of speaking. All noble, all natural speaking is from within outward. The central action of the mind is predominant, and actions of voice or body are subordinate; "it is the soul that must speak.”

Again, not only does nature act from within outward, but the action seems to come from one centre. The highest product of physical nature is an organism. Unity is the highest law of art; all parts must seem to inhere. Every word of a poem must seem to be inevitable, it must not seem to be possible to add

another word, or to change a word. If one part of a building does not seem to belong to the whole, the work is imperfect; every part must seem to be necessary to every other part. In the most mechanical product of art, as in the most graceful organism of nature, all parts must seem to have a direct relationship to one centre. Thus every true work of art must possess organic unity. The artist must assimilate the elemental modes of nature's procedure; he must so paint his picture or carve his statue that it shall seem to have grown. This is especially true of expression: it is the process of a living organism, and any inconsistency or violation of organic unity destroys it immediately. Now, organic unity in Vocal Expression can be secured only by awakening the right impulse. Each idea must be so vividly and intensely realized as to bring all man's agents and languages into co-operation.

Freedom is the opportunity granted to anything to accomplish the ends of its being. Nature is free: there is an impulse in a rose-bud to bloom; and if left alone, under normal conditions, the rose will unfold. Everywhere in nature the impulse to move manifests itself in great varieties, in surprising modes of motion,—an impulse of force flows out through the most open road. So it is with speaking. Not only do we speak from within outward, from one central conception of the mind, but there is always an element of freedom in the modulations of the voice. The subtle changes of pitch, the length of pauses, the length and direction of inflection, cannot be made subservient to mechanical rules. To be natural it is necessary to be free.

To be free and natural, however, does not mean to be wildly impulsive or extravagant. In nature, the toad never tries to expand into the ox; there is no impulse in the elm to change itself into an oak. On the contrary, the delicate rose is unfolded in a very firm cup, the leaves of the palm are stitched together most firmly to prevent the premature effusion of life. Freedom is not license, even in nature; but is obedience to spontaneous