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Sound His stupèndous praise, whose grèater voice,
Or bìds you róar, or bíds your roarings fàll.
Sōft rōll your incense, hérbs, and fruits, and flowers,
In mingled clouds to Hím, whose sùn exálts,
Whose breath perfúmes you, and whose pencil paints.
Ye forests, bènd: ye harvests, wàve to Him,
Breathe your still song into the rèaper's heart,
As hòme he goes beneath the joyous moòn.
Ye that keep watch in heaven, as earth asleep
Unconscious líes, effuse your mildest bèams,
Ye constellations, while your angels stríke,
Amid the spangled ský, the silver lỳre.
Great source of day! best image here below
Of thy Creátor, ever pouring wide,

From world to wōrld, the vital òcean round,
On Nature write with èvery béam His pràise.
The thunder ròlls; be hùsh'd the prōstrate wōrld,
While cloud to cloúd returns the solemn hymn.
Bleat out afresh, ye hills: ye mòssy rocks,
Retain the sound: the broad responsive lōw,
Ye valleys, ráise, for the grêat Shepherd reigns,
And His unsùffering kíngdom yet will còme.
Ye woodlands all, awake; a boundless song
Búrst from the gròves; and when the restless dáy,
Expiring, lays the warbling world asléep,
Sweetest of birds! sweèt Philomela, charm
The listening shades, and téach the night His pràise.
Yè chief, for whom the whole creation smíles;
At once the head, the heart, and tòngue of áll;
Crówn the great hymn: in swarming cīties vást,
Assembled men, to the dèep organ join
The long-resounding vòice, oft breaking clear,
At sòlemn páuses, through the swelling bàss ;
And, as each mingling flame increases éach,
In one united árdour rise to heaven.
Or, if you rather choose the rural shade,
And find a fane in every sacred grove;
Thére let the shèpherd's flúte, the virgin's láy,
The prompting séraph, and the poet's lyre,
Still sing the Gòd of Seasons as they ròll.

For me, when I forget the darling theme,
Whether the blossom blows, the Summer ray
Russets the pláin, inspiring Autumn gleams,
Or Winter rises in the blackening east;
Be my tongue mùte, may fáncy paint no more,
And, dèad to joy, forgét my heart to bèat.
Should fáte command me to the farthest verge
Of the green éarth, to distant bàrbarous clímes,
Rivers unknown to sóng; where first the sun
Gilds Indian moúntains, or his setting bèam
Flames on Atlantic ísles; 'tis noùght to mé;
Since God is èver présent, èver félt,

In the void waste as in the city fùll:
And where Hé vìtal bréathes, there múst be jòy.
When even at lást the solemn hour shall cōme,
And wing my mystic flight to fùture worlds,
I chéerful will obey: there with new powers,
Will rísing wonders sìng: I cannot gò,
Where Universal Lōve not smiles around,
Sustaining all yon órbs, and all their súns:
From seeming èvil still educing good,
And better thence again, and better stíll,
In infinite progrèssion.—But I lòse
Myself in Him, in Líght Inèffable!

Còme, thén, exprèssive Sílence, mùse His praise.

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-Thomson.

RHETORICAL ACTION.

Gesture, in order to be impressive, must be natural. That which is natural is generally both graceful in quality and appropriate in kind. If rhetorical action is either awkward in itself or unsuitable to the language, feeling, or circumstances which accompany it, it is alike objectionable. Better never raise the arm, than raise it unseasonably; better never appear in earnest, if not actually so. The action that is not the ebullition of feeling, will always seem out of

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place, and therefore extravagant. It should be the legitimate expression of earnestness; an earnestness not assumed, however, merely because it may be thought desirable, but genuine because felt, and felt so intuitively that the speaker is, at the moment, perhaps unconscious of its existence. When otherwise, the action becomes cold and formal— the result of a moral reason rather than a physical spontaneity. The speaker is thereby forced into a false position with his audience, and pays the forfeit of his misconception in a laboured indulgence of strut and rant, that land him the deeper into discontent with himself and his subject. His audience seek it not, for it offends them—the subject requires it not, for he has not yet felt his subject and he flounders about from one false tack to another, seeking some touch of nature to guide him, and finding none. We know nothing more melancholy than the exhibition of him who gesticulates simply because he has seen another do so in similar circumstances, and supposes he should do the same. That other may have been received with rapture, because he felt his author; while this fails, simply because he does not. In the former, the action was acceptable, because the natural and necessary reflex of the intensity felt-in the latter, the character is never seen, only the reciter. He had observed the other throw up his arms, stamp and fume, and be applauded in doing so, and he does the same; but why he should fail while the other succeeded, is to him all a mystery.

The safest rule, then, obviously is to follow the impulse of nature. Any attempt to guide the speaker must be in accordance with this, and should be viewed not so much as indicating when gesture should be used, as how it is to be regulated when the springs of action have been so awakened as to make gesture indispensable. Principles of gesture do not communicate feeling, any more than principles of modulation. The orator gesticulates when nature promptswhen he feels that for the body to be any longer silent

would be impossible. Nature will manifest herself. He then feels he may as soon cease to speak as cease to act. The action that has its origin in the mere will and caprice of the speaker, and its object in the mere desire of pleasing, is seldom successful. It may raise a laugh when it is Some speakers are seldom passive—

meant to woo a tear. not knowing how to dispose of their arms, their feet, their eye. With them it is a fault ever to be at rest-they see no grace, no propriety, no expression, in a pause or in inaction; and simply because they do not follow nature. They will not wait till they are warmed with their subject, but set out, ab initio, with the professed purpose of making an impression, forgetting that there is no impressiveness without corresponding earnestness. Others, again, err on the score of tameness. They have contracted such a dislike, it may be, to all that borders on extravagance, that they will not lift a finger during their whole harangue. If they feel their subject, they show it only in the rapidity of their Action they avoid, forgetting that action ceases to be extravagant the moment it flows from intensity. It is then proper, nay, necessary, if they have any regard for themselves, their subject, or their audience. These suffer by false modesty-the others, by their own false notions of earnestness. What is a vice in the former, would become a virtue in the latter. The fear of offending constrains the one the thirst of applause moves the others, who think themselves so much the better speakers that they can bellow and gesticulate as few ever did before them.

utterance.

If nature, then, is to constitute the basis of rhetorical action—to be both the principle and test of propriety-how may the student be so schooled into the perception of what is natural, as to discover it where he had never seen it before, and detect the absence of it in those who hitherto seemed to possess it?

In the first place, natural action will harmonise with the

subject. Is the subject moving-admitting the higher flights of oratory?-so will be the action. The head will be uplifted, the eye open, the arm extended, the whole figure drawn up to a more than ordinary height, as if the orator felt he could not tower sufficiently above his audience. Is the subject commonplace, conventional, prosaic?-the action will be proportionally subdued, less elevated, and less exciting. And why? Because nature wills it. To be excited without reason, is just as unnatural as to be calm and unconcerned under the strongest excitement. In the true orator, him who consults nature, and is willing to be led by it, every gesture, weak or violent, will harmonise with the emotion that calls it forth; seeming rather to form part of the emotion than to be suggested by it. Action, in such a speaker, is the language of the body, and is always in harmony with that of the tongue.

In the second place, action, when the offspring of emotion, will be instantaneous. There will be no drawling-no sawing of the air-the emphatic stroke of the arm, the quiver of the lip, the start of the limb, will accompany the emphasis of the voice, thereby telling powerfully on the feelings that are addressed. The reverse of this is that tediousness of gesture, that long sweep of the arm, which falls tamely on the eye, and resolves itself into a most tiresome and drivelling monotony. The gesture of an impassioned orator may not be always the most polished, but it will always be more or less impressive, because always in season with the excitement that gave it birth. Who that has heard Dr Chalmers or Gavazzi, in the excitement of their delivery, ever failed to be struck with this! How amazingly impressive by the very instantaneousness of their action!— the flash of the eye, the elevation of the arm, the clenching of the hand, united so simultaneously with the emphasis of voice and language, as to form a combination of forces altogether irresistible-if not terrific. Not so where there is a

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