But to return to the speech-note, which musically is called a slide-sound to distinguish it from that of song and of instruments. When the slide consists of a simple rise or fall of the voice, it is named a Concrete, or a simple Concrete. The slides are named according to the interval passed through, as a tone, third, fourth, &c. either rising or falling, as the case may be. Mr Steele represented them by diagonal lines drawn on the musical staff, thus indicating at once both the pitch and the extent of the slide or concrete.

When the slide or concrete is bent upon itself, in any form whatever it is named a Wave concrete. The forms of wave are very numerous, as the diagram from Mr Steele will suggest.

There is no occasion here to enter upon the description of them, as we have no space to illustrate their functions in discourse.

LOUDNESS. The distinctions under this general term are similar to those in music. Thus the sounds

of speech may individually be of a greater or less degree of loudness; the degree may be uniform, or it may increase, or decrease, or both, on a single sound and finally, the loudness may be variously modified on the successive sounds.

QUALITY. The distinctions under this term are also similar to those of music and song. Thus the natural, the falsetto, and the pure-tone of speech, may be full, sonorous, clear, silvery, thin, reedy, &c.

:

DURATION. And the distinctions under this general term are similar to those of music. The duration of the speech-notes is of course limited by the syllabic quantity and as the syllabic quantities are not in a fixed ratio [of either 2 to 1 or of 3 to 1] to each other, there is not an equal exactness with instrumental music, but about the same latitude which exists in solo singing. Syllables have considerable elasticity, for they may be prolonged, or compressed within certain limits, to suit the measure of rhythmic movements, and also for the purposes of expression.

In order to maintain a proportionate duration of the speech sounds in reading verse, it is scored by

dividing it into equal portions, called measures; which are shewn by perpendicular lines, called bars, drawn across the verse in certain places, just as music is divided*. And according to the number of syllables in the measure, the time of the verse is named thus when there are two syllables in the measure the verse is in Common time, when three, the verse is in Triple time. These two species of time admit of a great variety of style and rapidity of movement, as may be heard in the light trip of Milton's L'Allegro, the sober step of Dryden's Virgil, and the stately march of Paradise Lost, all three of which are in common time.

In a succession of syllables, as in discourse, some are accented, while others are without accent. In versification the term accent does not mean a greater loudness, but a peculiar stress of voice, which periodically returns and marks the measure of the verse, to the ear even of those who are unacquainted with rhythmical science. The vocal organ can

* In music the measures are often called bars, which is incorrect. A bar is only a line which indicates the limits of a measure. Instead therefore of speaking of 5 bars rest, the musician should say 5 measures rest. If it be said the distinction is of little consequence, I answer, it is well to adhere to the correct nomenclature of a science.

produce one, two, three, or even four unaccented impulses of voice for the purposes of speech, between two accented impulses of voice; but it cannot produce two accented impulses in immediate succession, without either an intervening unaccented impulse, or a silent interval in which an unaccented impulse might have been produced. It must, unless there are pauses, produce at least one accented to every four unaccented impulses; so that, according to the vocal organs, fixed laws of action, the periodic occurrence of accented impulses, (or of pauses where they would occur), is an organic condition under which a succession of vocal sounds is produced.

The English poet composes so that an accent shall periodically recur, in a word, he writes verse. Now the rhythmist, like the musician, adjusts his bars in such a way, that while they divide the verse into equal measures, they also indicate the accented syllables, by being placed immediately before them; and the accent and the measure together constitute

the rhythmus of the verse. The twofold purpose of the bars occasions most verse to begin and end with imperfect measures, the former with the unaccented and the latter with the accented parts of the measure.

Thus, in scanning, we cut off the

imperfect foot at the beginning, which makes the verse headless, aкepaλov, as the metricians term it in Greek prosody.

It has been already stated that by drawing a line to precede the accented syllables of a verse, we divide it into measures of equal times, as

Immortal | nature | lifts her | changeful | form |

which is a verse in common time: and

The small birds rejoice in the | green leaves returning |

is a verse in triple time. These specimens may serve to give a notion of the simple rhythmus of verse produced by periodic recurrence of an accented syllable. It will be observed in reading these verses as mechanical as the ti tum ti style of a school-boy, that the rhythmus is a metrical or measured arrangement of syllables, embracing syllabic accent and syllabic quantity. Now if it be doubted whether syllabic quantity is a constituent of English rhythmus, it may be asked, how is it that an accent recurs at equal periods of time? But to describe the constituents of rhythmus.