tual appreciation and spiritual assimilation of a poem or any
other form of spiritualized thought; the illumination of the
subject-matter, intellectual and spiritual, must come from the _being_
of the reader. He can't give to his hearers what he doesn't possess. The
saying of Madame de Sevigne, '_Il faut etre, si l'on veut paraitre_,' is
applicable to the reader. An attempt to express what is beyond the range
of his spiritual life and experience, at once betrays his deficiency.
And no amount of mere vocal training will compensate for this
deficiency.

There are two unwarrantable assumptions in what Dr. Whateley writes
about Elocution: 1. That a reader or speaker can do with an untrained
voice what his mind wills, or his feelings impel him, to do. Not one in
a thousand can. 2. That all principles of Elocution which may be taught
will continue in the consciousness of the reader or speaker--that he
will be ever thinking of the vocal functions which he exercises. 'The
reader's attention,' he says, 'being fixed on his own voice, the
inevitable consequence would be that he would betray more or less his
studied and artificial delivery.'

All true culture, to _be_ true, must be unconscious of the processes
which induced it. But before it is attained, one must be more or less
'under the law,' until he become a law to himself, and do spontaneously
and unconsciously what he once had to do consciously, and with effort.

It may be that Dr. Whateley's views in regard to Elocution were somewhat
the reactionary product of the highly artificial style of pulpit oratory
which appears to have been the fashion in the Dublin of his day. (Note
1.) He was a man of such perfect honesty and integrity, with such a
resulting aversion to sham and empty display of every kind, that he came
to regard all training in vocal delivery as unfavorable to genuineness.
His theory was fully confirmed, he may have felt, by some of the popular
theatrical preachers around him, who made a display of themselves, and
who, in the Archbishop's words, 'aimed at nothing, and--hit it.'

When I was a small boy, at school, sixty years ago, all the scholars had
to read aloud twice a day; the several classes standing while they read,
and toeing a chalk line. The books used were the New Testament and
Lindley Murray's English Reader. The standard instruction imparted was
very limited, but very good so far as it went, namely, 'Speak distinctly
and mind your stops.' Eac