ous extent to which it has been carried by a few popular teachers, and especially by their humble imitators. A judicious medium is what we want; five characters in music and six vowels in writing, enter into an infinitude of combinations, melody, and language. So the elementary modifications of voice, in speaking, are few, and easily understood; and to mark them, so far as distinction is useful, does not require a tenth part of the rules which some have thought necessary."

Now, in view of these facts, we cease to wonder that even intelligent people should urge the objection under consideration. But let the objectors fully understand that the system they condemn is a "counterfeit presentment," a meretricious thing tricked out with tinsel ornaments to conceal its deformity and impose upon the credulous and unreflecting. How dif ferent from that noble art which Cicero admired and practiced, and Quintilian taught and which a few rare spirits in our own land have introduced in its native grandeur, efficiency, and grace!

Another objection to the study of elocution, which has frequently been made, is that it tends to produce a theatrical manner; and we know that a dread of incurring this imputation acts as a powerful restraint on many public speakers. If by theatrical is meant "the start and stare practiced at the glass"-"noise and fury signifying nothing"-mouthing the words and "tearing the passion to tatters," I say, emphatically, "pray you, avoid it," for this is rank affectation, and an outrage upon the modesty of nature. The term theatrical has come by association, in the minds of many, to be con

sidered as equivalent to rant and bluster, and violent gesticulation.

Now, elocution teaches to observe a just medium between the sing-sing voice, the see-saw gesture, and the unimpassioned delivery which is sometimes witnessed in the senate and at the bar, but more generally in the pulpit, and the strong, diversified display of the theatre.

By a proper attention to the study of elocution, is it not possible to acquire a just, impressive, and pleasing manner of delivery, consistent with the dignity of the senate, with the solemnity of the pulpit, yet perfectly free from that which is reprobated as theatrical?

By elocution the vocal organs are to be trained, and a pleasing and efficient delivery is to be acquired. To succeed in imparting these graces, the living teacher, a proficient in his art, must exemplify the tones and inflections of his voice in their endless variety, and the appropriate gestures used in reading and in speaking-and this will supersede, to a great extent, the necessity of ingenious but perplexing notations, and of all but a few important rules.

Elocution labors to remove whatever is stiff, formal, affected, or artificial-whatever hinders the tone and graceful expression of feeling, and makes every tone of the voice, and gesture of the body true to nature. Elocution is but the handmaid of nature, whose glory it is to follow this supreme directress ! Elocution makes all its teachings subservient to the expression of feeling-of genuine emotion. It teaches the reader and the speaker that the art he employs to secure the object he has in view, be it instruction, persuasion, or entertainment,

must be carefully concealed. It teaches him that art is but the organ through which nature speaks, and that the highest achievement of art is to conceal art.*

DR. LONGMORE.

REFLECTIONS AT SEA.

THEN, with her white sails courting the gale, did the queenly ship launch upon the deep, and as the breeze came lightly leaping the crested billows, she spread her white arms to meet it, and then a right merry race they ran over the open sea." Or should the gale in maddened mood come lashing the waves in fury, and hurling them mountain high, as he rushed onward, shrieking in his rage, she bent meekly to his wrath, and gathering her white robes about her, passed, sighing, over the rough pathway his rage had wrought!

But now the proud ship bids defiance both to the angry winds and transverse seas, and with her iron will she walks the mighty deep, strong in her strength. Oh, the grandeur of the scene as I cast my eyes around-one mighty mass of waters! and my heart thrilled with an awful sense of the majesty of God! For a moment I closed my eyes—I could not look--I could not have spoken.

Ars est celare artem.

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handy work."

"Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters, who maketh the clouds his chariot, who walketh upon the wings of the wind!"

I raised my eyes and looked upon this glorious expanse; and I could not believe it possible for any one to doubt the existence of a God! Let the skeptic, if such there be, stand here with me. Would he seek a more grand display of His power?--would he look for a higher manifestation of the Almighty?

Who is there that can view this broad, fathomless ocean, and not feel in his inmost soul that God is here? That He rides in majesty upon the waves, upholding that glorious heaven above us! That He setteth bounds to these rushing waters and sayeth to the winds, "Be still!"

MRS. C. H. BUTLER.

ST. PETER'S.

Ir is the sanctuary of space and silence. No throng can crowd these aisles; no sound of voices or of organs can displace the venerable quiet that broods here. The Pope, who fills the world with all his pompous retinue, fills not St. Peter's; and the roar of his quired singers, mingling with the sonorous chant of a host of priests and bishops, struggles for an instant

against this ocean of stillness, and then is absorbed into it like a faint echo. The mightiest ceremonies of human worship— celebrated by the earth's chief Pontiff, sweeping along in the magnificence of the most imposing array that the existing world can exhibit-seem dwindled into insignificance within this structure. They do not explain to our feelings the uses of the building. As you stand within the gorgeous, celestial dwelling--framed not for man's abode the holy silence, the mysterious fragrance, the light of ever-burning lamps, suggest to you that is the home of invisible spirits-an outer court of Heaven, visited, perchance, in the deeper hours of a night that is never dark within its walls, by the all-sacred AwE itself. When you enter St. Peter's, RELIGION, as a local reality and a separate life, seems revealed to you. At every hour, over some part of the floor, worshippers may be seen kneeling, wrapt each in solitary penitence or adoration. The persons mystically habited, who journey noiselessly across the marble, bow and cross themselves, as they pass before this or that spot, betoken the recognition of something mysterious that is unseen, invisible. By day illuminated by rays only from above, by night always luminous within-filled by an atmosphere of its own, which changes not with the changing cold or heat of the seasons without-exhaling always a faint, delightful perfume-it is the realm of piety-the clime of devotiona spiritual globe in the midst of the material universe.

H. B. WALLACE.