man's people and their monuments are dust; but he is alive: he has survived them, as he told us that he had it in his commission to do, by a thousand years, ." and shall a thousand more."

66

All the literature of knowledge builds only ground-nests, that are swept away by floods or confounded by the plough; but the literature of power builds nests in aërial altitudes of temples sacred from violation, or of forests inaccessible to fraud. This is a great prerogative of the power literature; and it is a greater which lies in the mode of its influence. The knowledge literature, like the fashion of this world, passeth away. An Encyclopædia is its abstract; and in this respect it may be taken for its speaking symbol, that, before one generation has passed, an Encyclopædia is superannuated; for it speaks through the dead memory and unimpassioned understanding, which have not the rest of higher faculties, but are continually enlarging and varying their phylacteries. But all literature, properly so called — literature κατ' coxn," for the very same reason that it is so much more durable than the literature of knowledge is (and by the very same proportion it is) more intense and electrically searching in its impressions. The directions in which the tragedy of this planet has trained our human feelings to play, and the combinations into which the poetry of this planet has thrown our human passions of love and hatred, or admiration and contempt, exercise a power bad or good over human life that cannot be contemplated, when stretching through many generations, without a sentiment allied to awe. And of this let every one be assured, — that he owes to the impassioned books which he has read many a thousand more of emotions than he can consciously trace back to them. Dim by their origination, these emotions yet arise in him, and mould him through life like the forgotten incidents of childhood.

BUT who is He, with modest looks,
And clad in homely russet brown?
He murmurs near the running brooks]
A music sweeter than their own.

He is retired as noontide dew,
Or fountain in a noon-day grove;
And you must love him, ere to you
He will seem worthy of your love.

The outward shows of sky and earth,
Of hill and valley, he has viewed;
And impulses of deeper birth
Have come to him in solitude.

De Quincey,

A Poet's Epitaph.

In common things that round us lie
Some random truths he can impart,—
The harvest of a quiet eye

That broods and sleeps on his own heart.

But he is weak; both Man and Boy,
Hath been an idler in the land;
Contented if he might enjoy

The things which others understand.

Come thither in thy hour of strength;
Come, weak as is a breaking wave!
Here stretch thy body at full length;
Or build thy house upon his grave.

Wordsworth.

XX. VOCAL MANIFESTATIONS OF IMAGINATION: TOUCH

THE modulations of the voice are few and simple,- pause, inflection, change of pitch, touch, texture, and tone-color.

These may seem at first inadequate; but when we study the other arts, we find that the means of expression are always few and simple. There are but three colors; and these, with light and shade, and possibly the addition of line, are the painter's means of representing the infinite complexity of light and color, form and texture in Nature. Vocal expression, therefore, in having but a few simple elements, or means of expression, shares the character of all other arts.

The question arises, What are the peculiar effects of the imagination upon these vocal modulations?

All of these elements are used by the different powers of the man. But there are certain of these elements, such as inflection, which have a more immediate relationship to thinking and the intellect. Certain others, such as color and texture, have a more intimate relation with feeling. All these elements have a specific meaning and function; but they are used simultaneously, and for the revelation of the whole man.

What is the difference between the use of these elements in giving expression to ordinary thinking and in the expression of higher imaginative action and feeling?

Ordinary thinking accentuates them, enlarges them. Imagination tends to use them more delicately. Ordinary thinking expresses or emphasizes an idea by making a point salient, by making an inflection or a change of pitch longer, by giving a touch more force; but the imagination expresses itself more by a sympathetic modulation of the whole. As imagination relates ideas to each other, so it sympathetically relates and brings into unity very diverse vocal modulations. Ordinary thinking uses an inflection consciously, and with great deliberation; the imagination modulates the voice more spontaneously and unconsciously. Imagination makes all technique more transparent; brings the modulations nearer the soul, the execution nearer the feeling, so that all technical means are more concealed. Reason emphasizes more by isolation.

The imagination is the faculty that deals with relations. If a book and a hat be placed upon a sofa, and an unimaginative painter asked to paint them, he will make a study with each in more or less isolation,- simply presenting facts clearly and definitely. But the imaginative painter will look through the mere isolated facts concerning each object, and find a mystic kinship or connecting idea, and paint a picture full of expression.

The chief language of imagination is the refinement and harmonious co-operation of all the modulations of the voice.

There are, however, certain peculiar intimacies between the imagination and some modulations of the voice. One of these is touch; as has been shown, the imagination excludes everything that is crude or exaggerated, and uses that which is more subtle and simple. Touch is especially liable to be perverted by mere mechanical or muscular use of the voice. Besides, touch is the most immediate and direct effect of force upon the voice; and as imagination is spontaneous and immediate in its action, its presence always gives delicacy, decision, and definiteness to the vocal touch. These qualities of touch also, when present, tend to awaken the imagination of the auditor.

While imagination renders the touch delicate, it must not be understood that there is consequently a lack of force. Notice the intensity and decision of the touch, in the following extract:—

Self-Dependence.

"Ан, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters,

On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,

Feel my soul becoming vast like you!"

And with joy the stars perform their shining,

And the sea its long moon-silver'd roll;

For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.

Arnold.

Thus it is not alone in the delicacy and decision of the touch that imagination reveals itself, but in the variety of the modulations of the touch which imagination causes. Sometimes there is a very important representative element in the touch; for instance, notice the difference between the touch in these two illustrations: :

SWIFT ran the searching tempest overhead;

And ever and anon some bright white shaft

Burned thro' the pine-tree roof, here burned and there,

As if God's messenger thro' the close wood screen
Plunged and replunged his weapon at a venture,
Feeling for guilty thee and me: then broke
The thunder like a whole sea overhead.

Of a sudden the sun shone large and bright,

As if he were staying away the night;

Browning.

And the rain on the river fell as sweet

As the pitying tread of an angel's feet.

Alice Cary.

PROBLEM XX. Give a decided but delicate touch with the voice which will be as suggestive as the brush-stroke of the greatest painter.

CHRISTMAS HYMN.

It was the calm and silent night!

Seven hundred years and fifty-three
Had Rome been growing up to might,
And now was Queen of land and sea.
No sound was heard of clashing wars;
Peace brooded o'er the hushed domain;
Apollo, Pallas, Jove, and Mars,

Held undisturb'd their ancient reign,

In the solemn midnight

Centuries ago.

'T was in the calm and solemn night! The senator of haughty Rome Impatient urged his chariot's flight,

From lordly revel rolling home. Triumphal arches gleaming swell

His breast with thoughts of boundless sway;
What reck'd the Roman what befell

A paltry province far away,
In the solemn midnight
Centuries ago.

Within that province far away

Went plodding home a weary boor:
A streak of light before him lay,

Fall'n through a half-shut stable door
Across his path. He passed-for nought
Told what was going on within ;
How keen the stars! his only thought;
The air how calm and cold and thin,
In the solemn midnight