less immediately responsive to the key-note of
the composition. An increased familiarity will finally bring this
key-note fully home to his feelings, or as fully as may be; and if he
has made the articulating thought his own, he is now prepared to
interpret the composition to the ears of others. A reader's success in
interpreting such a poem as Tennyson's In Memoriam, for example, can be
but partial if he has not adequately caught, and does not vocally
reproduce, the key-note, however distinctly he may present the
articulating thought. It is the tone which spiritualizes and quickens
the thought; and it is the main object in reading, to spiritualize and
quicken thought, to bring it into relation with the spiritual being of
the hearer.

Vocal training, the most scientific and systematic, will not of itself
make readers, that is, vocal interpreters of genius. Something more must
be done than is at present done, in homes and schools, especially in
homes, for the education of the spiritual nature; and this education
must be begun early, must precede the education of the intellect. The
premature forcing open of the bud of reason, which now prevails to a
lamentable degree, must receive its due condemnation. It is a thing to
be condemned from Christian pulpits. As George Henry Lewes says, in his
novel, Ranthorpe, 'the child must _feel_ before it can _know_; and
knowledge, great and glorious as it is, can never be the end of life: it
is but one of the many means.'

It is quite superfluous to say that a reader should have a perfect
articulation; that he should be able to command a wide range of pitch;
all degrees of force, from _pianissimo_ to _fortissimo_; radical,
median, vanishing, and compound stress; every variety of inflection,
direct upward and direct downward inflection; equal and unequal, upward
and downward, single and double waves; accelerated and retarded
utterance; many qualities of voice; not to name numerous other vocal
functions and attributes which are means to various kinds of
interpretative ends. He should also have a complete knowledge of the
language he is rendering, as a living organism,--an indispensable
condition of his presenting the successive and involved groups of
thought with the requisite distinctness of outline, and with the
requisite perspective, determined by their relative value, of which he
should have the nicest sense. A very important condition of perspective,
I would say by the way,