ELOCUTIONARY DRILL. 191 



We now come upon the question what is a vowel, and how is it 

 distinguished from a consonant ? Both ai-e sounds and therefoi-e 

 consist of vibrations. In vowels they proceed without jar or inter- 

 ruption, are regular or periodic ; in consonants they are not regular, 

 not periodic, and proceed with more or less of jar. A manometer 

 reflecting a gas jet which is agitated now by a vowel, and again by a 

 consonant, will make the difference evident. The outline of the one 

 appears uniformly curved, the other is ragged, jagged or distorted. 

 The same instrument tells the internal difference between one conson- 

 ant and another. Thus L and R have a kind of periodicity which is 

 not so remotely separated from the contour of the vowels, at least of 

 compounds, while G (hard) K. Y. P. etc., are extravagant. The dis- 

 tinction is summed up thus : a vowel is a tone, a consonant is a noise. 

 Tones are many, noises infinite. 



But, it may be asked, if vowels are tones, and music consists of 

 tones, more properly of compound tones or notes, how on this theory 

 do you distinguish speaking from singing, speech from music set to 

 words 1 Helmholtz provides the answer. He investigated the 

 nature of music and I'esolved its development into three stages which 

 for our purposes shall stand reversed. First, you have the harmonic 

 music of our own day with its vast accompaniments, tempered tuning, 

 subtile use of intervals once deemed dissonant and its reduction of 

 all sounds to a key-note which governs throughout. Music of this 

 kind has little in common with speaking. What a feeling of ai'tifice, 

 strainedness. uni-eality, one might almost say hypocrisy runs through- 

 out our best operas ! No sane man ever expressed himself so in real 

 life, or could be conceived so to do. Galvanic grimaces ai'e pawned 

 on us for genuine laughter. The middle ages have another species 

 which knows neither key-note, tempered tuning, nor accompaniment, 

 rigidly discards dissonances, is built for many voices and called poly- 

 phonic. From this you may step back into the ancient world, say of 

 Greece, where a monophonic or one voiced music reigns, without 

 dissonance, key-note, tempered tuning, accompaniment or the need 

 of any. It is a succession of unrelated or independent sounds in 

 themselves regular which follow one another as the feeling, thought 

 and rhythm of the verbal composition may demand. In this manner 

 hymns and ballads were rendered at the Isthmian and other games. 

 A partial survival of it may be detected in the intoning of religious 



