Chapter II: Part 2

2. Belshazzar, =whiles he tasted the wine=, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; =that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines=, might drink therein.

3. =Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem; and the king and his princes, his wives and his concubines=, drank =in them=.

4. =They drank wine=, and praised the gods of gold, =and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone=.

5. In the same hour came forth fingers =of a man's hand=, and wrote =over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace=; and the king saw =the part of the hand that wrote=.

The parts in smaller type have various degrees of subordinate value, which the nicely appreciative reader would indicate by his reading; but they all belong to the background of the description. Any of these parts, if brought fully into the foreground, would be given an undue importance, and would reduce somewhat the prominence and distinctness of the other parts.

In the first verse, 'the king,' should be read with an abatement of voice, being an understood appositive; 'to a thousand of his lords' ('thousand' being used for an indefinite large number), is sufficiently implied in 'gave a great feast,' and the voice should be reduced upon it, and should not descend upon 'lords,' as it is assumed that the feast was given to the chief men of the kingdom; 'and drank wine _before the thousand_:' the voice after descending upon 'wine,' should drift lightly over 'before the thousand.'

In the second verse, 'whiles he tasted the wine' should, as it were, say itself; and then the command of the king, in regard to the sacred vessels of the temple, should be brought to the front; 'that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines,' should be thrown back with a reduced and somewhat accelerated voice, and prominence given to 'might drink therein,' the purpose being to invite chief attention to the sacrilegious act of making such use of the sacred vessels. A distinct noting of the different kinds of people present at the feast is not called for here. The voice has other business on hand, namely, the bringing forward of the sacrilegious purpose to drink wine from the sacred vessels of the temple. Further on in the chapter, in the speech of Daniel to the king (v. 23), it is necessary to bring these people fully to the front, the melodious movement of the voice being adapted to the special emphasizing of 'thou' and 'concubines,' thus: 'and thou, and thy lords, thy wives, and thy concubines,' a somewhat increased pitch and force being given to 'concubines.'

In the third verse, 'Then they brought the golden vessels,' etc., should be read as a matter of course, and not as if it were necessary to invite the attention of the hearer to the fact that the command of the king was obeyed. The latter mode of reading would be wholly gratuitous (as it should be assumed that the command of the king was obeyed), and would waste attention; 'and the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines' should be again thrown back, and, the voice should descend somewhat forcibly upon 'drank,' thus marking distinctly the sacrilege.

In the fourth verse, 'They drank wine,' being a mere repetition, should say itself (the mind of the reader not coming down upon it, but keeping along on the upper plane of expression), and the voice should come out strongly upon 'and praised the gods of gold'; but it should be reduced, and somewhat accelerated, upon, 'and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.' Their idolatry having been sufficiently brought out through 'and praised the gods of gold,' it would waste attention to bring forward also the several other materials of which their gods were composed. These should be expressed, as it were, by the way. The mind of the reader is done with the fact of idolatry.

In the fifth verse, 'In the same hour, came forth fingers ... and wrote,' should be brought fully to the front, an increase of time being given to 'In the same hour,' to mark distinctly the fact that divine vengeance followed close upon the sacrilege of drinking from the sacred vessels of the temple, which was aggravated by their idolatry (the words 'hour,' 'fingers,' and 'wrote,' receiving each the falling inflection); but 'of a man's hand' should be slighted, the voice being kept up on 'hand,' it being assumed that the fingers were, of course, those of a man's hand, or, at least, of a human hand. The place just _where_ the writing was done, 'over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace,' being of no special importance, under the circumstances, should be slighted. To bring it to the front would cause an entirely unnecessary expenditure of attention on the part of the hearer. It should be left to its own intrinsic value, without any enforcement from the voice; 'and the king saw' comes to the front, the voice falling upon 'saw,' and drifting down over 'the part of the hand that wrote.'

As additional examples, take the last seven verses of the chapter: they afford illustrations, too, of the marking of the new idea, as distinguished from the important idea, of a sentence considered by itself:

25. And this =is the writing that was written=, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.

26. This is the interpretation =of the thing=: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, =and finished it=.

27. TEKEL: =Thou art weighed in the balances, and art= found wanting.

28. PERES: Thy kingdom =is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians=.

29. =Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.=

30. In that night was Belshazzar =the king of the Chaldeans slain=.

31. =And Darius the Median= took =the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old=.

In the twenty-fifth verse, 'And this' stands out, 'this' being the new idea, the voice drifting, with some acceleration, over 'is the writing that was written'; 'MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN,' that is, 'numbered, numbered, weighed, divisions,' 'mene, mene' being an emphatic repetition. In the twenty-eighth verse, 'peres,' having the same root, and meaning 'divided,' is substituted for 'upharsin.'

In the twenty-sixth verse, 'This is the interpretation' stands out, the voice coming down on 'interpretation' and drifting over, and slighting, 'of the thing.' When 'mene' is pronounced by Daniel, it must be supposed that its meaning is understood, but not its application; the word 'kingdom' must, therefore, be marked with the emphasis; 'and finished it' must be somewhat slighted, as the meaning of the phrase is anticipated in 'numbered.'

In the twenty-seventh verse, the voice moves along with some acceleration, over 'thou art weighed in the balances,' the idea of 'weighed' being anticipated in 'tekel,' and 'art found wanting' is brought strongly out.

In the twenty-eighth verse, 'kingdom' must receive the emphasis, 'divided' being anticipated in 'peres'; 'and given to the Medes and Persians' we must suppose is not altogether new information to Belshazzar, after his having been informed that the division of his kingdom is at hand. He knows who will come into possession of it. This phrase, therefore, must not be brought fully to the front. It must be uttered with some acceleration of the voice and in a way to indicate the supposed feeling of Daniel in regard to the quick work which is to be made of the kingdom.

The twenty-ninth verse should be read with some acceleration of voice, and without any special expression, the reader assuming that the promise made by the king to Daniel, in the sixteenth verse, if he can interpret the writing, was fulfilled. This twenty-ninth verse must not, therefore, be read as imparting new information.

In the thirtieth verse, 'In that night' must be brought fully out, through a time emphasis, to mark how immediate was the fulfilment of Daniel's interpretation; there must be some acceleration of voice upon 'was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans,' and a quite strong emphasis given to 'slain.'

In the thirty-first verse, 'took' is the foreground word, the emphasis of it implying an accordance with Daniel's interpretation; 'being about threescore and two years old,' should be read as a gratuitously affixed fact, having no particular bearing upon what has been related.

Cultivated people cannot away with what is generally understood by 'elocution,' which is rather a vocal and Delsartian display than an honest vocalization, which good reading should be, of what has been intellectually and spiritually assimilated. Reading is not acting. The first thing to be done to bring 'elocution' into good repute (it is certainly not in good repute at present) is to free reading from all _strain_ of expression--to reduce emphasis and attain to the greatest degree of simplicity _compatible with the subject-matter_. And one important feature of reading which should receive special attention, as a means to this end, is the light touch, which conveys the impression that the mind of the reader does not come down upon the parts receiving the same, those parts expressing what has been anticipated, or should be taken for granted, etc., and constituting the remote background of expression.

The highest result which can be exhibited of literary culture and a corresponding vocal culture, is an organic melody, in the reading of a great poem, the outcome of the poem's organic life. By melody, in reading, is meant that organic variety in the use of all the vocal functions and affections, that arabesqueness of expression, which does not allow the ear of the hearer to detect a regular recurrence of any of these functions and affections. There is melody of pause, of inflection, of rhyme, of rhythm, of time, of force, of emphasis, and of every vocal affection. In truly melodious reading, the design or figure, so to speak, is so arabesque that it is not taken in by the ear of the hearer, and does not come to his consciousness, but it tells effectively on his feelings. And by 'effectively' I specially mean that the feelings are brought into harmony with, into a state of elective attraction for, the contriving creative spirit which moulds the poetic form. Such reading of high poetry is the extreme merit of vocal expression. Some of its principles may be _taught_; but the vitality of it must be the result of the spiritual education of the reader, must be exhaled spontaneously from his _being_.

A reader with a nice sense of melody may conceal a deficiency of melody in the poem he is reading; and he may do this, without arbitrarily imposing variety. An imposed variety is not true melody, which must be vital, organic. In the reading of Pope's uniform couplets, for example, he may keep down the rocking-horse movement of the verse (Note 6) by a skilful management of the pauses (which come so uniformly in the middle and at the end of the verses), and of the rhyming words, by an acceleration and retardation of voice wherever these are permissible, by the light touch, and by various other means. To counteract the uniform construction of such verse as the following, for example, from the Essay on Man, without arbitrarily imposing variety, the reader's art must approach the artful:

Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives thro' all life, extends thro' all extent,
Spreads undivided, operates unspent; etc.

or the following, descriptive of the heroine, in The Rape of the Lock:

On her white breast, a sparkling cross she wore,
Which Jews might kiss, and infidels adore.
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose,
Quick as her eyes, and as unfix'd as those:
Favors to none, to all she smiles extends;
Oft she rejects, but never once offends.
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike,
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike.
Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride,
Might hide her faults, if Belles had faults to hide:
If to her share some female errors fall,
Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all.

The absence of _enjambement_ makes it somewhat difficult so to keep down the rhyme emphasis that it may not pester the ear. (Note 7.)

Where a reader's feelings have been melodized by culture, they will protect him against the influence of a too artificial construction of the verse. He will not impose variety, but he will utter humdrum verse, as far as possible, under the conditions of his melodized feeling.

The importance of cultivating the speaking voice is quite as great as that of cultivating the reading voice. Perhaps it is greater; for the speaking voice has a wider and more constant influence--an influence which is exerted in all the relations of life, an influence calming or irritating, an influence bringing men into friendly or unfriendly attitudes toward each other. How demulcent the effect of a gracious voice, and how rasping that of a snappish one! 'The sweetest music,' says Emerson, 'is not in the oratorio, but in the human voice when it speaks from its instant life tones of tenderness, truth, or courage. The oratorio has already lost its relation to the morning, to the sun, and the earth, but that persuading voice is in tune with these.'

Of Emerson's own voice, the Rev. Charles G. Ames, in 'A Memorial Address,' says: 'His speech had a subtle spell,--a charm like Nature's own, so that he affected men like Old Honesty ... so silvery, cheery, sane, fearless!... There was no false ring, no trick to catch applause or to turn off attention from the message to the messenger; no _show_ of knowledge or power or art. One might forget it all next hour, through sheer moral inability to stay at such an unwonted altitude; but while listening to that high discourse it certainly did seem as if we belonged up there,--as if a man ought to make the very earth a pedestal of honor for his feet and wear the sky about his brow as an aureole.'

How much wrath, with its evil consequences, might be averted by soft answers! How much pleasanter an arrival at a hotel might be than it often is, if the slapdash clerk in the office had a voice better attuned to a courteous reception of a guest! or an arrival in New York, from abroad, if a custom-house official knew how to ask, in a civilized way, 'What's in that box?' The question is often asked in a way which has a decidedly indurating effect upon the conscience of a traveller, in regard to dutiable things he may have brought with him. How afflicting the chaotic clatter of high-pitched voices, at a reception, or an evening party! A room jam-full of standing people, 'unaimed prattle flying up and down' (true conversation is out of the question) is hard to endure, even with the prospect of lobster and of chicken salad, ice cream, and numerous other unwholesome things about to be. American girls, before they 'come out,' may talk in a quiet way; but so soon as they 'come out,' many of them think they must show that they _have_ 'come out,' by the high pitch and rapidity of their voices, which quite deprive a nervous man of his self-possession.

How much 'the charm of beauty's powerful glance' may be heightened or lowered by the character of the voice which goes along with it! Woman tells on others by a gracious manner, by the beauty of holiness as it is manifested in all her ways, in all her relations, domestic and social, and especially by her voice. A woman with a sweet and gracious voice, the index of a sweet and gracious nature, may exert through it, in the ordinary relations of life, without even knowing it, a better influence than she could by advisedly devoting herself to doing good, even if such devotion took the form of distributing religious tracts! The moral atmosphere of a home may be not a little due to the voice of the wife and mother. The memory, even, of a voice which was toned by love and sympathy, may continue to be a sweet influence long after the voice itself has been hushed in death. The influence of the voice for good or evil, in the domestic, social, and all other relations of life, cannot be estimated. A voice may even have a good or bad reflex action upon its possessor. A slovenly articulation, for example, may be the index of a moral slovenliness, and may react upon the latter. Subtle, indeed, and imperceptible, are the influences upon ourselves, for good or evil, of all our commonest doings.

A fond, worldly mother may be anxiously ambitious that her daughter shall have all the accomplishments required for her fullest attractiveness when she 'comes out.' Years may be spent upon her musical education, with the poor result, perhaps, of 'fine sleights of hand and unimagined fingering, shuffling off the hearer's soul through hurricanes of notes to a noisy Tophet'; she may be taught dancing which rivals that of a Taglioni, and French, and drawing, and painting; she may be sent abroad to snatch the graces beyond the reach of art, of the most elegant European society; and yet, in the grand scheme of accomplishments, the speaking voice is left out and entirely neglected, though she have a voice unpleasantly pitched, and with other remediable defects which are far, very far, from idealizing, transfiguring her! If the time devoted to the piano, with the supposed poor result, had been devoted to a careful cultivation of her voice, her power to charm (that being the end proposed) would be much more increased than by any or all of her other accomplishments.

It is easy to infer what Shakespeare's opinions were on many subjects, although his Plays are regarded by some critics as peculiarly impersonal; but they are charged with his personality, and shadow forth, not dimly, his views in regard to many things. The evidence is abundant that the voice was to him very significant, apart from his estimate of its importance, as a professional actor, and that he was most susceptible to its charms and to its defects. It is her voice which the grief-stricken Lear is made to speak of, when he bends over the dead Cordelia: 'Her voice,' he says, 'was ever soft, gentle, and low'; and to this he adds, 'an excellent thing in woman'; Shakespeare, no doubt, meaning that he had in his mind, at the time, the cruel voices, expressive of their hard and wicked hearts, of Regan and Goneril. After the death of Antony, Cleopatra, in her rapturous praise of him, says,---

His voice was propertied
As all the tuned spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
It was as rattling thunder.

Hamlet's advice to the players we may take as an expression of Shakespeare's own standard of vocal delivery, and as his protest against a stilted and ranting declamation, which, no doubt, characterized many of the actors of his day.

There is evidence in the Plays that, in the process of composition, he must either have heard imaginatively what he was writing, or have actually voiced his language as he went along. He did not write for the eye, but for the ear. And the high vocal capabilities of his language may be somewhat attributable to his hearing of what he wrote. Must he not have heard the effect of monosyllabic words, uttered with the tremor and semi-tone of old age, when he wrote King Lear's speeches?--'You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, as full of grief as age,' etc., and 'When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools,' etc. And must he not have heard the effect of polysyllabic words as expressive of Macbeth's sense of the vastness of his guilt, when he wrote, 'this my hand will rather the _multitudinous_ seas _incarnadine_,' etc.? of the guttural emphasis, expressive of detestation, in the speech of Coriolanus to the rabble?--'You _c_ommon _c_ry of _c_urs! whose breath I _h_ate as _r_eek o' the _r_otten fens,' etc.

An interesting compilation might be made from the Plays, of passages expressive of strong passion of various kinds, the several vocabularies of which testify to Shakespeare's having imaginatively or actually voiced what he wrote. The speech of the Bastard to Hubert, in King John (A. iv. S. 3), is a signal example:

_Bastard._ Here's a good world!--Knew you of this fair work?
Beyond the infinite and boundless reach
Of mercy, if thou didst this deed of death,
Art thou damn'd, Hubert.

_Hubert._ Do but hear me, sir.

_Bastard._ Ha! I'll tell thee what;
Thou'rt damn'd as black--nay, nothing is so black;
Thou art more deep damn'd than Prince Lucifer:
There is not yet so ugly a fiend of hell
As thou shalt be, if thou didst kill this child.

I fancy that Shakespeare had a fine voice. If he had not, it is quite certain that he had the highest estimate and appreciation of the voice as the organ of the soul. His creative spirit, too, attracted to itself the most effective vocabulary for the vocal expression of every kind of passion--the most effective by reason of their monosyllabic or their polysyllabic character, of their vowel or their consonantal elements. To him, language was for the ear, not for the eye. The written word was to him what it was to Socrates, 'the mere image or phantom of the living and animated word.' (Note 8.)

The art of printing has caused language to be overmuch transferred from its true domain, the sense of hearing, to the sense of sight. The lofty idealized language of poetry is known, in these days, chiefly through the eye, and its true power is consequently quiescent for the generality of silent readers. In silent reading, an appreciation of matter and form must be largely due to an imaginative transference to the ear of what is taken in by the eye.

The impression seems to be getting stronger and stronger, in these days of excessive teaching and excessive learning, that no one can do anything or learn anything without being taught,--without 'taking a regular course,' as the phrase is. This seems to be especially true in the matter of vocal cultivation. People go to schools of oratory with nothing within themselves which is clamorous for expression; not even a very 'still small voice' urging them to express something. Many who desire, or think they do, to be readers, as there are many who desire, or think they do, to be artists, evidently believe that if they be trained in technique they can be readers or artists.

But suppose some one is impelled to cultivate vocal power because of his desire to express what he has sympathetically and lovingly assimilated, of a work of genius: if he endeavor to give an honest expression, so far as in him lies, to what he feels, and avoid trying to express what he does not feel, and if he persevere in his endeavor, with always a coefficient ideal back of his reading, he may--in time, he certainly will--become a better reader than another could if he should set out, with malice prepense, to be an elocutionist, and with that malicious purpose, were to employ a mere voice-trainer who should teach him to perpetrate all sorts of vocal extravagances, to make faces, and to gesticulate when reading what does not need any gesture. Such an one, after passing out of the hands of his trainer, is most likely to go forth and afflict the public with his performances, which will be wholly a pitiable exhibition of himself.

Some of the best readers I have ever known have been of the former class, who honestly voiced what they had sympathetically assimilated, and did not strain after effect. But it seems that when one sets out to read, with no interior capital, he or she, especially she, is apt to run into all kinds of extravagances which disgust people of culture and taste. The voice, instead of being the organ of the soul, is the betrayer of soullessness.

Without that interior life which can respond to the indefinite life of a work of genius (indefinite, that is, to the intellect), a trained voice can do nothing of itself in the way of real interpretation. It may bring out the definite articulating thought, in a way, but the electric aura in which the thought should be enveloped, will be wanting; and where this is wanting, in the expression of spiritualized thought, the true object of reading is but imperfectly realized. What can be got through the eye, it is not the main function of the voice to deliver. There must be the requisite 'drift' and choral intonation--drift, the air, the pervading, ruling spirit, 'the dominant's persistence,' the prevailing tone color.

I am pleased to quote, in this connection, what Professor Edward Dowden writes in his article on 'The teaching of English literature,' contained in his recent volume, 'New Studies in Literature': 'Few persons nowadays seem to feel how powerful an instrument of culture may be found in modest, intelligent, and sympathetic reading aloud. The reciter and the elocutionist of late have done much to rob us of this which is one of the finest of the fine arts. A mongrel something which, at least with the inferior adepts, is neither good reading nor yet veritable acting, but which sets agape the half-educated with the wonder of its airs and attitudinizing, its pseudo-heroics and pseudo-pathos, has usurped the place of the true art of reading aloud, and has made the word "recitation" a terror to quiet folk who are content with intelligence and refinement. Happily in their behalf the great sense-carrier to the Empire, Mr. Punch, has at length seen it right to intervene. (Note 9.) The reading which we should desire to cultivate is intelligent reading, that is, it should express the meaning of each passage clearly; sympathetic reading, that is, it should convey the feeling delicately; musical reading, that is, it should move in accord with the melody and harmony of what is read, be it in verse or prose.'

A training of the organs of speech which brings them into complete obedience to the will and the feelings, and a perfect technique, important and indispensable as they are, cannot, of themselves, avail much in the interpretation of spiritualized thought. This must be mainly the result of such education as induces an inward preparedness for responding to and assimilating the essential life of a work of genius. _Quicquid recipitur, recipitur ad modum recipientis_ (whatever is received, is received according to the measure of the recipient). And it is, or should be, the leading object of literary education to enlarge the spiritual measure of the recipient.

Now it must be said that the schools, with all their grammars, their rhetorics, their philologies, their psychologies, their histories and cheap philosophies of literature, their commentaries and annotations, do not prepare their students to know works of genius in their absolute character; for such knowledge implies an adequate education of the absolute, that is, spiritual man, and such education is not induced by the above studies as at present conducted. It demands spiritual life to respond to spiritual life; or, in the words of St. Paul, 'the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.'

What is generally understood in the schools as a thorough study of a work of genius, is occupied quite exclusively with the language and with that part of the subject-matter which can be intellectually formulated. That part which demands a spiritual response and which it is the main object of reading to vocalize for the purpose of calling forth such response, is not included in the so-called thorough study. The latter may do much, indeed, to shut off any spiritual response which a student might give if he were not subjected to such study. In this statement no depreciation of scholarship is meant to be implied. Let us have the most thorough scholarship possible; but it must not become an end to itself; it must be a means to the higher end of intellectual and spiritual life.

What chiefly afflicts a cultivated hearer, in 'elocution,' is the conspicuous absence of spiritual assimilation on the part of the reader. At best, he voices only what the eye of an ordinary reader could take in, and leaves the all-important part to his face, arms, and legs, and various attitudes of the body. But the spiritual in literature must be addressed to the ear. 'A spirit aerial informs the cell of Hearing,' says Wordsworth, in his great poem, 'On the power of sound.'

Reading, I have said, is not acting. It is the acting which usually accompanies the reading or recitation of the professional elocutionist which cultivated people especially dislike. When they wish to see acting, they prefer going to a theatre. When they listen to reading, they want serious interpretative vocalization; only that and nothing more is necessary, unless it be a spontaneous and graceful movement of the hands, occasionally, such as one makes in animated conversation.

Again, the most elegant way of vocally interpreting a poem, is to read it from a book, rather than to recite it. Recitation has much to do with this acting business. In fact, elocutionists recite in order to have their arms free to act--to illustrate the thought they are expressing. Thought should not be helped out by gesture. Gesture results, or should result, from emotion, and should, therefore, be indefinite. Mimetic gesture, or mimetic action of any kind, is rarely, if ever, in place. If a speaker, addressing a _very_ ignorant audience, had to use the word 'rotatory,' for example, he might make a cyclic movement or two with his hand, to illustrate its meaning. But to do so before an audience presumably intelligent enough to know the meaning of the word, would be impertinent--a 'wasteful and ridiculous excess.' So, too, it would be, to illustrate the word 'somersault,' before an audience of ordinary intelligence. The absurdity of mimetic action is well illustrated in the following: 'I have heard,' says a writer in 'Expression' (Vol. I., No. 2), published in Boston, 'of a popular public reader of Boston giving last season Wordsworth's "Daffodils"; and as she came to the last two lines,--

And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils,

she put her hand to her heart and with pleasure indicated by a sentimental flash of the eye upon the audience, danced a few graceful steps expressive of exuberant joy, and bowed herself off the platform amid the vociferous applause of the audience. The reader's taste in this case was no worse than that of the audience that applauded her. The incident shows how great the general lack of taste, and the need of the systematic study of fitness in the relation of thought to its expression.'

I would say rather than 'lack of taste,' lack of spiritual life, although the former is closely allied with the latter. A reader who has assimilated the 'Daffodils,' who can sympathetically reproduce within himself the heart-dance of the poet, can better reveal that reproduction through the voice (the requisite vocal culture being assumed) than through such mimetic foolery as the above. He would not and could not condescend to the latter, if he had feeling deep enough truly to know the poem of the 'Daffodils.' True feeling is always serious, even if it be that of deep joy. The trouble with many public readers is, that they don't truly know, have not inwardly experienced, what they attempt to interpret vocally; and, as a consequence, they resort to what disgusts people of real culture.

I was once present, by accident, at a lecture given by a Delsarto-elocutionary woman, and in the course of the lecture, she presented what, she said, would be false gestures in reciting Whittier's Maud Muller. She then recited the poem, with, according to her notions, _true_ gestures, which were more in number than Cicero made, perhaps, in his orations against Cataline, or Demosthenes, in his oration On the Crown. Every idea of the poem told outwardly on her body.

If a woman, in reading Maud Muller, has emotions which _must_ find vent in gesture, and various physical contortions, she ought to be put under treatment that would tone up her system.

The University of the Future, in order to be a vastly greater power than the University of the Present, must, at least, rank spiritual education with intellectual training and discipline. This the University of the near Future must do; the University of a more remote Future, we must believe, if we believe that the spiritual is the crowning attribute of man--that by which he is linked with the permanent, the eternal, will make all intellectual training and discipline, even all physical training, so far as may be, subservient to the spiritual man.

Let us cry 'All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!'

The rectification of the intellect must, as the greatest poem of the century, Browning's 'Ring and the Book,' implicitly teaches, be through the rectification of the spiritual, absolute man.

As bearing directly on my leading subject, the vocal interpretation of literature (that is, spiritualized thought), I would indicate some of the means and conditions of a more spiritual education than is contemplated in the most advanced educational schemes of the day.

What may be said to be the predominant idea of the present day, entertained especially by scientists and exercising its influence, more or less, on the great majority of minds, in regard to the main avenue to knowledge and truth? I answer, and I think not unjustifiably, the idea that the analytic, discursive, generalizing intellect, is adequate to solve all solvable problems--that it is the only reliable means of arriving at a positive knowledge; that, accordingly, education, the _highest_ education, consists almost exclusively in learning and in being trained to discover and apply, the laws, so called, of nature, to trace facts to their (scientific) causes and to advance logically from causes to facts--that upon which the analyzing and generalizing intellect cannot be exercised, being set down as unknowable. Of an _intuition_ inaccessible to analysis, they take little or no account. This some future age, with a more complete education, than ours, will, I am persuaded, regard as the cardinal defect in the education and philosophy of the present age--a defect that tends to deaden, if not to destroy, in many minds, all faith in those spiritual instincts and spiritual susceptibilities and apprehensions, which constitute the basis of a living hope and faith in immortality, and through which, and through which alone, man may know, _without_ thought, some of the highest truths, truths which are beyond the reach of the discourse of reason. While the reasoning faculties of a man may exist in vigor, the ties which unite the soul _sympathetically_ and through assimilation, with universal spirituality, may be sundered, and a spiritual world for him there will then be none.

That there are higher and subtler organs of discernment than the discursive intellect, and higher things to be discerned than can be discerned by the senses, the lowliest of men and women, no less than the most exalted in intellect and genius, have, throughout the whole recorded history of the race, borne an incontrovertible testimony. 'The natural condition of humanity,' says William Howitt, 'is alliance with the spiritual; the anti-spiritual is but an epidemic--a disease.'

Great have been the conquests of Science, the last fifty years, and great has been their influence on the temporal well-being of mankind. But it must be admitted, perhaps, that these conquests, the product mainly of the insulated intellect, have been somewhat at the expense of 'the interior divinity.'

Wordsworth, addressing his friend Coleridge, in the second book of 'The Prelude,' says:

to thee
Science appears but what in truth she is,
Not as our glory and our absolute boast,
But as a succedaneum, and a prop
To our infirmity.

He has been speaking of mental science.

The present signs of the times, however, give promise that humanity, far as it has drifted in one direction, will assert its _wholeness_, and will 'render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's,' and that the awakening of 'the interior divinity,' of the spiritual instincts and intuitions, will be as much the aim of the education of the future as the exercise of the mere intellect now is. This awakening must begin in infancy, when the child first 'rounds to a separate mind,' and can respond to its mother's smile, and feel her protecting care, and the rosy warmth of her love. Then will the wise mother regard her child as almost wholly an impressionable being, and will see especially to its surroundings and its associations whether they are suitable to be stamped upon its plastic mind. As it grows, she will aim to quicken and purify it sentiment, and to cultivate a love of the beautiful in form, in color, in sound, especially as these are exhibited in the works of Nature; will endeavor to bring it into the fullest sympathy with all forms of animal life, down to 'the meanest thing that feels.' It is a good sign when a boy loves animals and is kind to them; but when he is bent on killing things, it can be quite safely inferred that he has not received at home lessons in love and had his sympathies and affections duly awakened. Home-life in this country is not, as a general thing, such as to bring the best affections into a healthy play. There is too much worry, too much taking thought of the morrow, too much dissatisfaction with the present condition, too much eagerness to get rich. Some fathers never sufficiently dismiss their business and cares from their minds, to play with their children and to show them those little attentions which their young hearts crave; and mothers expend their souls in the cares and vexations of housekeeping, or, if, by reason of their position and wealth, they are free from these, in social or other matters which shut them off, more or less, from those maternal functions which they should consider it their highest duty to exercise. Filial affection certainly does not increase in this country, as the years go on. Is it too much to say, perhaps it is, that it is rather the exception than the rule, for children, after, and often before, their majority, to show a strong attachment either for their parents or for each other? And there is a word in our language that has quite survived its usefulness; and if things continue to go on as they are now going, it will soon be a fit subject for an Archaic Dictionary--I mean the word REVERENCE. It still maintains its place in our Dictionaries of living vocables, but the thing it represents is a _rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno_. Vain is the attempt to awaken the religious sentiment in a child, to cause it to _feel_ the real significance of the words, as it utters them, 'Our Father who art in heaven,' in whom the filial and the reverential sentiments are quite extinguished. These sentiments are the soil in which the religious sentiment can best germinate, grow, bud, and fragrantly bloom.

During a child's earliest years the foundation should be laid for that spiritual relationship with Nature which Wordsworth has presented in his great autobiographic poem, 'The Prelude.' Such relationship but very few could realize in themselves as the great high priest of Nature realized it; but all could be brought into a more intimate spiritual relationship with Nature than is favored and promoted, at present, by home influences and by school studies. The latter, when prematurely analytical, and brain slaughtering, tend rather to shut off such relationship.

What is understood as a scientific observation of nature, is not its highest form, so far, at least, as spiritual culture is concerned. It is almost exclusively an analytic observation, in which the conscious intellect plays the chief part. It is study, not spiritual communion. The highest form of observation (if observation it can strictly be called, which is to so great an extent a rapture of necessity and spontaneity) is that which results from the synthetic play of the spiritual faculties, and brings the outer world and all its minutest features into relation with the inner world of man's spirit, and makes him feel his great allies. It is this kind of observation rather than the other, which 'adds a precious seeing to the eye,' and gives to a man some measure of 'the vision and the faculty divine,' and enables him to know something of the fields that are his own; but from which spiritual torpor may alienate him.

'I, long before the blissful hour arrives,' writes Wordsworth, meaning when the discerning intellect of man shall be wedded to this goodly universe in love and holy passion, and shall find the ideal forms of Poets, a simple produce of the common day,

I, long before the blissful hour arrives,
Would chant, in lonely peace, the spousal verse
Of this great consummation;--and, by words
Which speak of nothing more than what we are,

that is, what we really or potentially are,

Would I arouse the sensual from their sleep
Of death, and win the vacant and the vain
To noble raptures; while my voice proclaims
How exquisitely the individual mind
(And the progressive powers perhaps no less
Of the whole species) to the external World
Is fitted:--and how exquisitely, too--
Theme this but little heard of among men--
The external world is fitted to the mind; etc.

The system of general spiritual education which is both explicitly and implicitly set forth in 'The Prelude,' makes this great autobiographical poem one of the most valuable productions in English Literature; and teachers capable of bringing its informing spirit home to their students (capable by virtue of their own assimilation of it), might do great things in the way of a spiritual quickening of their students.

And how much capable mothers might derive from Wordsworth's poetry for the spiritual nurture of their children! Capable mothers are, alas! comparatively few; but forces, to be noticed further on, are now at work, which are increasing the number of such mothers, and will continue to increase it more and more, as the ideals of a true womanhood are more and more exalted and realized. The kind of regeneration which the world, at present, most needs, will have to be largely induced by woman, and she _will_ induce it according as her true rights, which are involved in her 'distinctive womanhood,' are recognized and granted her, by her not over-generous brother.

Spiritual education is not a matter of abstract instruction. It must be induced on the basis of the concrete and the personal. The spiritual faculties have no affinities for the abstract. Christianity was introduced into the world through the personal and concrete; rather, it _is_ the personal and the concrete, and its arch-enemy has ever been the abstract, in the form of dogma and stark-naked doctrine. Dogmatism implies materialism. As one advances spiritually, dogma declines with him, in inverse proportion. Christianity is essential being, and not a doctrine, not a body of opinions, not 'a matter of antiquarian pedantry or of historical perspective.' In the great words of the 'De Imitatione Christi,' 'Cui aeternum verbum loquitur, ille a multis opinionibus expeditur' (he to whom the eternal word speaks, is freed from many opinions); and to fit the soul to be spoken to by the eternal word, is the true, the ultimate object of spiritual education. The permanent, the eternal, that which is alive for evermore, should, indeed, be the object of all education. Phenomena, in themselves, are not educative. A feeding on them alone, if that were possible (man naturally, whatever his condition, seeks other pabulum), would soon result in a general atrophy of all the faculties, intellectual and spiritual. To use the words of St. Vincent de Lerins, which he applied to the Catholic Church,--would that the Church had always made them its controlling principle!--'magnopere curandum est ut id teneamus quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est' (it must be especially seen to, that we hold to that which everywhere, which always, which by all, has been believed).

There is no exclusiveness in the eternal word; it speaks to every one whose ears are open to it; it enters wherever it is not shut out. It speaks through Nature, through every form of Art (which to be art must be a manifestation of it), through Poetry, 'the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge,' through Music, Sculpture, Painting, Architecture, through all sacred books, and, above all, through sanctified men and women, of the Present and the Past, 'the noble Living and the noble Dead.' In the words of Emerson:

Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle;
Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,--
The canticles of love and woe.

* * * * *

The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sibyls told
In groves of oak or fanes of gold
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.

The kind of books which the young should read, is, of course, an important consideration. If 'a general insight into useful facts' be regarded as the main thing in a child's education, such as 'the royal genealogies of Oviedo, the internal laws of the Burmese empire, by how many feet Mount Chimborazo outsoars Teneriffe, what navigable river joins itself to Lara, and what census of the year five was taken at Klagenfurt,' and other matters not having much to do with the advancement of the millennium, why the question is easily settled as to the kind of books a child should be provided with, and be required to learn, and recite; but if some vitality of soul, the indispensable condition of intellectual vitality, in after life, be the aim, then a different kind of books will be needed--such books as will serve to vitalize and guide the instincts, to bring the feelings into a healthful play, and awaken enthusiasm, and thus to prepare the way for the later exercise of the reasoning faculties, and for the comprehension of moral and religious principles. There is a time to _feel_ the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, and a time to regard all these, as far as may be, under intellectual relations. If 'the years that bring the philosophic mind' be anticipated in a child's education, it will be likely, by reason of the premature philosophy served out to it, to become a stupid man or woman, with a plentiful lack of both intellect and soul. Upon the closed bud of reason, while it is not yet ready to be unfolded, must be brought to bear the genial warmth of sensibility, sympathy, and enthusiasm; and when it opens in its own good season, it will not be dwarfed nor canker-bitten.

Sensibility, sympathy, enthusiasm, I repeat, are the elements of the atmosphere in which the intellectual, the moral, and the religious nature of a child can alone germinate and healthily grow, and in later years, bloom and shed a wholesome fragrance.

Stories written for the young must be _concrete_ representations of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good; in other words, they must be works of art. Says Browning, in 'The Ring and the Book,'

Art may tell a truth
Obliquely, do the thing shall breed the thought,

that is, bring what is _implicit_ within the soul, into the right attitude to become _explicit_--bring about a silent adjustment through sympathy induced by the concrete (it cannot be induced by the abstract); in other words, prepare the way for the apprehension of the truth--

do the thing shall breed the thought,
Nor wrong the thought, missing the mediate word;

that is, Art, so to speak, is the word made flesh,--_is_ the truth, and, as Art, has nothing directly to do with an explicit presentation of the truth. 'The highest, the only operation of Art, as of Nature,' says Goethe, 'is formation' (Gestaltung).

So may you paint your picture, twice show truth,
Beyond mere imagery on the wall,--
So, note by note, bring music from your mind,
Deeper than ever the Andante dived,--
So write a book shall mean, beyond the facts,
Suffice the eye and save the soul beside.

The greatest moral teachers the world has ever known, have exhibited the least of explicit moralizing. They have embodied their gospels,--clothed them in _circumstance_,--woven them into a tissue of imagery and incident and, by so doing, have given them that _vitality_ which alone can awaken sympathy, and thus induce a mental preparedness for a reception of the higher truths, and a comprehension of great principles. A deep sympathy with truth is the important thing: this implies a rectification of the spiritual nature--its harmonization with the constitution of things. A great amount of abstract truth may be lodged in one's brain, and this sympathy may be more or less wanting. To secure it, the 'Word' of the teacher must become flesh,--it must be contemplated in the flesh, living and breathing,--it must be represented as _militant_, subject to accident and antagonism, but assuring men of its unquenchable vitality, its relationship with the divine, through the might of its resistance, and through its final _triumph_, though not necessarily according to earthly standards of the triumphant. There are novels which exhibit a somewhat low ideal of life through the general squaring up of things at the end--the good being rewarded outwardly and the bad punished. But

In the corrupted 'currents of this world,
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
... but 'tis not so above.

The teachings of Jesus are clothed in circumstance and imagery which were familiar to all whom he addressed. 'All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them.' To use the words of Archbishop Trench in his 'Unconscious Prophecies of Heathendom,' 'In his life and person, the idea and the fact at length kissed each other, and were thenceforward wedded forever.'

The liberal-minded reader of the four records which we have of Christ's life and teachings, must admit that he added little or nothing to the previously existing knowledge of truth in the abstract; he rather caused truth which philosophers and moralists had already intellectually recognized, to be known 'by heart.' He presented it _concretely_, in his own life and in his teachings, and thus worked it into that 'daily bread' for which he commanded us to pray, and which alone will nourish human sympathy and love. In its previous intellectual, abstract form, it did not, and could not, become an element of spiritual life.

In the thirty beautiful little stories in the New Testament, educators of the young, and indeed all educators in the fullest sense, may see the cardinal principle of their calling, namely, that the greatest power of ethical and religious truth can be secured only through the concrete, and the personal, through that which is the truth, and not through an abstract enunciation--through that form which _is_ loved for its own sake; whose beauty is its own excuse for being; and the sense of love and beauty, when awakened, makes all things plain. _Ubi caritas, ibi claritas._

Many who have written books for the young professedly to impart Christian instruction, have least observed the mode exhibited in the teachings of him whom they profess to take as their Great Exemplar. Their instruction is too explicit. It is presented without a sufficiency of concrete clothing to keep it warm; sometimes in its abstract nakedness. It is thus powerless to awaken the love and sympathy of young hearts.

If the views above expressed are sound, I would say that, in choosing reading matter for the young, special preference should be given to such stories as serve to awaken the imagination, exercise the sympathies, and nourish a lively and joyous enthusiasm. I should wholly exclude explicitly moral and religious stories, and should choose in their stead, stories of human sympathy and sacrifice, heroic endurance, and unconscious virtues (_conscious_ virtue is always weak), fairy tales, and legends gay and sad. A child of healthful, unperverted feelings is averse to moral and religious books, as a class. It would rather read about Robinson Crusoe and his faithful man Friday, and it is far better that it should have such preference--far better that it should live, while a child,

in the golden prime
Of good Haroun Alraschid,