ELOCUTIONARY DRILL. 187 



plays according to a standard interpretation, or a volume of Bright's 

 speeches marked for delivery in the manner say of Mr. Bell's 

 " Emphasized Liturgy." It would show what an intimate i-elation 

 there is between the outward expression and the inward feeling, and 

 rid elocution of the common imputation that it is a sham, a fictitious 

 something imposed on woi'ds. In this event as well as under present 

 circumstances, to gain the power of modulation, to produce it at will, 

 to cultivate and control it, one must dive beneath the word and 

 exercise the voice mechanically, as in singing, upon that which 

 alone may be modulated, namely, the vowel. 



Modulation is said to be of four kinds- -force, pitch, inflection, 

 stress ; or, counting quality, five. Throughout them as an under 

 current flows the element of time. I do not refer to the distinction 

 between vowels as long and short. Imj^ortant as that may be in 

 words, vowel interchange, the history of language, it concerns us here 

 very little. Any and every vowel may be appi-eciably uttered in the 

 132nd part of a second, or be lengthened for a minute. Each modu- 

 lition should be produced in every time. 



Classification. — Orthoepists at the outset of their work are met 

 with this difficulty ; they must adapt the letter to the sound, the 

 sound to the letter or confuse both. Our spelling gi-ew very rigid in 

 the last century and change of the printed character, so frequent in 

 our early history, became a thing tabooed. It would have been well 

 had tlie letters adopted represented the sounds of our language with a 

 considerable degree of fairness. One other condition would permit a 

 particular spelling to remain for all time ; if no new sounds arose, and 

 if the vowels hit upon remained substantially as they were. We 

 know neither of these conditions obtain. In such event we would 

 not have seven sounds indicated by chai-acter o, five by a, six by e, 

 and so many more by u and i. Again, the characters would not 

 interlock each other. In the last century a distinction was not drawn 

 between the stability of a language and its rigidity, and people 

 thought that unless spelling were made and preserved uniform, the 

 language itself would somehow perish. Philological science began 

 with Grimm's discovery of the law of consonantal interchange and 

 may be perfected with a sufficient theory of vowel interchange. The 



