1872.) Music of Speech. 291 
of long and short quantity, is ascribable much of the power 
and beauty of speech. This being the character of the 
accentual function, Mr. Steele, by an original view of the 
relations between accent, quantity, and pause, made a division 
of the line of speech, analogous to that of the bars of musical 
notation. These may be called accentual seCtions. We 
will attempt to explain part of the system of Mr. Steele 
by the following sentence, using italics in place of his 
symbol for the accented syllable, and numbering the sections 
merely for reference :— 
I 2 3 4 £5, 8 6 
|] Inthe | sec—ond | cent—u-ry | 1 of the | christ—ian | e—ra | 
7 8 9 10 Ir 12 
lthe | em—pire of | Rome | | compre- | hend—edthe | fair—est | 
13 I4 15 16 17 18 
part ofthe | earth] | landthe | most] | civ—i-lised | por—tion | 
19 20 
1 of man | kind. | 
Mr. Steele first assumes the time of the several bars to 
be equal, like that of the bars in music, the term bar 
meaning not the vertical lines but the space between them. 
He next subdivides a sentence into bars, each of equal 
time, that time consisting either altogether of verbal sound 
or of a verbal sound and of a silent time or pause. Supposing, 
then, a bar or accentual section to contain in its verbal 
time, one, and never more than one, accented syllable, 
or heavy Poze, as he calls it, and one or more unaccented, 
which he calls the light Poize ; ; the beginning of the bar is 
always occupied by the Baay. accent, mand the end by the 
light, or in their absence by a respectively equivalent silent 
time or pause (1). In the first bar of the above example there 
is no heavy accent, for the sentence begins with two light 
syllables, but its time is indicated by the symbol of a silent 
pause; while the two light are set at the end of the 
accentual section. The word second, in the next bar, has a 
heavy syllable followed -by a light one, and thus makes 
a full and audible time. In the third bar, the word century 
has a heavy, followed by two light syllables. The fourth 
has the same time in syllable and pause as the first. And 
soon. It is worthy of remark, that if this sentence is read 
without its linear divisions, the voice of a good reader is 
disposed to make its pauses in those very places, and of that 
duration, visibly indicated by the vertical lines placed before 
the accented syllable and by the symbols of pauses both in 
the light and heavy part of.the bar. It will, perhaps, be 
asked here—What is the meaning of these divisions? And 
what useful purpose they serve in instruction? All works on 
