Interested in a subject, and thinking they were engaging the minds of the children, teachers were too apt to hold forth beyond the proper limits, forgetting for the time the real end in view.

As to the objective teaching of to day, I think many educators are trying to guard against the mistakes of the past, and I know they are reaching better results. What all teachers should particularly avoid is trying to do too much. Do not help the pupils more than is absolutely necessary. Let them find out for themselves. Finally, I would have the examination conform to the teaching you have in view; for as the examination, so will be the teaching. Let it be no text-book recitation or examination in book knowledge. Let the questions be put so as to draw out the child, and ascertain his general knowledge and growth of mind. If superintendents and school officers will keep this end in view, the teaching will be greatly improved.

LECTURE IX.

THE SCIENCE AND ART OF READING.
(With Illustrations of Inflection, Emphasis, and Stress.)

BY PROF. S. S. BLOCH.

HE special phases of elocution designed for our consideration this morning are inflection, emphasis, and stress, their co-relation and interdependence for proper and natural effects. Before proceeding to treat of them, permit me to present a few thoughts on reading as a science and art.

Notwithstanding all that has been said against reading as a "fine art," it always will receive that dignified title from those who will give thoughtful and unprejudiced consideration to the subject ; for like all the other arts, it appeals to the emotions, to the moro-sensuous elements in man. It demands for its expression, means that are akin with form, color, etc. Indeed, it is not only a distinct fine art, but in its entirety forms a chain linked by all the fine arts.

Indulge me in a brief

analogy between reading and the remaining fine arts. Architecture finds its equivalent in the con

struction and development of the human physique. He is the best architect who builds the most symmetrical form. The muscular and æsthetic development of the body demands the most careful attention and knowledge of the intricacy of the human form divine. In his thoroughly developed condition, man indeed becomes "Express and admirable in form and moving! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!" Sculpture has its component part in dramatic attitude, necessarily employed in all emotional and passional renderings. We know how eagerly sculptors seek the artistic posing and attitudinizing of famous actors, that they may render permanent in marble the grace of motion of the stage. It is a noteworthy fact that the lamented Charles Fechter, in many respects the most wonderful of all actors, whose every gesture was poetry set in motion, was an adept with the chisel and mallet.

Painting finds its kinship in the human face, a surface capable of a variety of expression only equalled by the variety of the emotions themselves. Any person of emotional discernment, when listening to a good actor or reader, will at once perceive in his countenance an accurate, unerring reflection and picture of the various emotions called into play. Under the influence of the sacred spark, the eye, the lip, the brow are means that will give color and tone to the face, the transfigured beauty of

which the brush of a Raphael or Titian might emulate, with a master's enthusiasm, to fix upon the canvas, and pause in the attempt. Poetry recognizes its ideal relation in the speaker's soul; for without soul, utterance will be dry, uninteresting, and unmagnetic. This is the element which imparts ideality to conception, and distinguishes the eloquent and sincere rendering from the mechanical and superficial. Music (and I consider this last because it is more intimately connected with the subject in hand) finds its analogy in the speaking voice. Without musical quality underlying the speaking voice, you cannot have melodious delivery. As the notes of the musical scale, under a certain order of succession, constitute the melody of song, so a succession of concrete and discrete intervals of the speaking scale constitutes the melody of speech. It is the professed design of a thorough system of elocution to explain how to resolve the most complicated delivery as perfectly and as clearly as the art of music resolves the complicated movements of song. I would not affirm that the speaker or reader absolutely requires the accuracy of musical pitch, or any other technical requirement; but the musical principle of quality, tone, light and shade, should play a prominent part in any well-cultivated speaking voice. The terms piano and forte, with their various degrees; crescendo and diminuendo, legato, sostenuto, and stac

cato; time, andante and allegro; the marks of emphasis and expression, - may be as fitly applied to elocution as song. In singing, the tones move horizontally; in speaking, they glide vertically: the same quality dominating both.

Thus, from even this hasty comparison, I trust it will be seen that the dignified appellation of “fine art" can be justly bestowed upon reading. As such, scientific principles underlie it as they do all the other arts. These we shall be compelled to pass by, by simply referring to them. As an art, it strives to reproduce nature in the simplest, truest, and most artistic manner. It takes choice selections from nature, and must present them in a manner at once wholesome, progressive, eloquent, and irresistible. It is nature idealized. And by that we must not understand that nature receives an additional and foreign force, for in her original and not denaturalized condition she is ideal enough. The great dramatic master, in his play of "A Winter's Tale," gives us the relation between nature and art:

"Nature is made better by no mean,

But nature makes that mean; so o'er that art,
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art

That nature makes. The art itself is nature."

Prerequisites to the Study of Oratory.

The questions so often asked by my pupils, and others entering upon a course of elocutionary study,