Less than archangel ruined, and the excess Sublimity and Splendor. ("Orotund quality:" "Moderate" force: "Median stress:" "Low pitch.") [SUMMER.]-Thomson. "But yonder comes the powerful King of Day, And sheds the shining day, that burnished plays On rocks, and hills, and towers, and wandering streams, Vastness, Sublimity, and Solemnity. ("Orotund quality :" "Impassioned" force: "Median stress:" "Low pitch.") [THE OCEAN.]-Byron. "Thou glorious mirror! where the Almighty's form Glasses itself in tempests; in all time, Calm or convulsed, — in breeze, or gāle, or stōrm, Dark heaving;-boundless, endless, and sublime, The image of Eternity, - the throne Of the Invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obeys thee, thou go'st forth, dread, fathomless, alone!" "Poetic Monotone." [The "poetic monotone " is properly, the distinctive "second" which gives to the language of verse or of poetic prose, when not marked by emphatic or impassioned force, its peculiar melody, as contrasted with the "partial cadence" of "complete sense in clauses." The two faults commonly exemplified in passages such as the following, are, 1st, that of terminating a clause which forms complete sense, with a "partial cadence,” — 2d, that of terminating it with the upward "slide" of the "third." Both these errors turn verse into prose, or render poetic language in prose, dry and inexpressive; as both these modes of voice are the appropriate language of fact, and not of feeling or melody.] ("Pure tone :" "Subdued" force: "Median stress:" "High pitch.”) 1.-[MUSIC.]-Moore. "For mine is the lay that lightly floats, And mine are the murmuring dying notes, And melt in the heart as instantly." ("Pure tone:" "Subdued" force: "Median stress :" "Low pitch.") 2.-[AUTUMN SCENE.]-Mellen. The winds of autumn came over the woods, Were the tree's withered leaves round it shèd.” ("Pure tone:" "Moderate" force: "Median stress :" "Low pitch.”) 3.[THE OCEAN DEPTHS.]-Percival. "Deep in the wave is a coral grōve, Where the purple mullet and gōld-fish rove, But in bright and changeful beauty shine Far down in the green and glassy brine." ("Quality," force, "stress," and pitch, as before.) "Still shall sweet summer, smiling, linger here, The mountains clasp thee lovingly within "Poetic Monotone," in Descriptive Prose. ("Quality," &c., as before.) 1.[SPRING.]—Anonymous. "In the calm spring evenings, what delightful hours the cottager spends in his little garden! He is not without a feeling - unut tered though it be of the sweetness of spring, and the delights of the passing hour; for, as the shades of night fall darkly on the scene, he leans upon his spāde, and lingers to breathe the odorous air, to hear the faint murmur of his wearied bees, now settling peaceably in their hive for the night, and the glad notes of birds, dying melodiously away in the inner woods.” ("Quality," &c., as before.) 2.- [THE CHOSEN GRAVE.]-Anonymous. "The thought is sweet to lay our bones within the bosom of our native soil. The verdure and the flowers I love, will brighten around my grave; the same trees whose pleasant murmurs cheered my living ears, will hang their cool shadows over my dūst; and the eyes that met mine in the light of affection, will shed tears over the sod that covers me, keeping my memory green within their spirits." 66 SEMITONIC OR CHROMATIC MELODY." The uses of the musical scale, which occur, either in the natural and accustomed forms of speech, or the exercise of reading, have been, thus far in our analysis, of the character termed "diatonic." That is to say, the intervals, or the transitions, of voice, hitherto discussed in this volume, have all been such as extend to at least the interval of a full tone, or occupy the entire space necessarily traversed, in passing from one note to another, at the relative distance of a whole tone. The term “diatonic " may therefore be applied to all the melodial functions of voice to which we have been attending; and the "diatonic melody" of a sentence may be briefly thus reviewed. - In the simple statement of fact or of thought, in unimpassioned narration, and in plain definition or description, the " current melody" of a sentence will consist of, 1st, the usual upward concrete" produced by the "radical" and "vanish" of the elements of speech, traversing a tone, or occupying the interval of a second;" 2d, an occasional downward "concrete of the "second;" 3d, the differential "radical pitch," in the forms of upward and downward 66 66 66 "ditone," "tritone," and "alternate phrase;" 4th, the termination of the "sentential melody" by the "triad of the cadence." In impassioned narration, description, or statement, expression" may demand, instead of the sedate and reserved effect of such "melody," the vivid style of the upward and downward "slides" of the "third," the "fifth," the "octave ;" and, in extreme emotion, even a wider interval. In a still higher stage of excitement, the " wave," or double slide, of the same intervals, may be requisite; and, in extremely deep and solemn feeling, the prolonged "second," called "monotone." This enumeration would exhaust the chief forms of " diatonic melody;" as the intervals of the "fourth,” “sixth," and "seventh," are rarely found in the regulated functions of speech or in reading. Conscious guilt, shame, and cowardice, will be found, in consequence of their agitated, suppressed, and unhinged utterance, to substitute, sometimes, the imperfect effect of the downward "second" for the downward "third," a struggling and choking upward "second" for an upward "third," the " fourth," in the same style, when the voice seems aiming at a fifth," and a "" seventh for an 66 OCtave." The ungovernable voice of inebriety sometimes shoots over the "third" into the "fourth," and so of the other intervals, or falls a tone short of its aim, through untuned ear, and organic paralysis, so as to give the peculiarly dissonant and inharmonious effect of its characteristic utterance. Boyhood, in its wild freaks of ungoverned feeling, sometimes delights to execute these anomalies of voice, for sportive effect. 66 But the next practically important stage of voice, connected with the study of melody as a branch of elocution, is that which is exhibited in the use of the "semitone," or half tone. To persons to whom the technical nomenclature of music is familiar, it would be sufficient to say that we have now to do with the "chromatic" scale, or that which ascends and descends by half instead of whole tones. Students of elocution who have not paid attention to musical terms, may be directed to the interval under consideration by the general statement that it is that which gives to any sound, vocal, or instrumental, or accidental, (as in the occasional tones of the wind, or of the Æolian harp,) the effect which is universally termed "plaintive." An exact idea of the "semitone," would be formed by thinking of it as occupying precisely half the interval of the usual “concrete of the "radical" and "vanish" of the "second" upward or downward. The student may be able to give it correct exemplification by attempting to utter a common" concrete," with a whining or plaintive tone. He will find that, in this case, his voice glides upward or downward in a style barely perceptible, and falling obviously short of that of the "diatonic concrete." The voice of the mother condoling with her grieving child, is a vivid natural exemplification of the effect of "semitone;" as is, also, the tone of sorrow or regret, in the utterance of childhood. Even the manly expression of grief, takes this mode of utterance, especially in the language of dramatic poetry, in passages in which grief is not violent, but subdued, in its tone. The excess and caricature of this mode of voice, occurs in the whine of the dispirited child, of the exhausted invalid, of the languishing hypochondriac, or of the pathetic sentimentalist. It is thrown out still more perceptibly on the ear, in the child's whimpering approach to crying, when he is overcome by pain or apprehension. The extensive range of circumstances which require or produce the “semitone," may be distinctly apprehended, if we pass, at once, to the example afforded in the deep and peculiar tones of penitence or contrition, and of supplication, feelings in the true and just utterance of which, it always predominates, and which cannot be expressed to the ear without it. The "semitone," or "chromatic" interval, is the appropriate expressive note of all pathetic and tender emotion. It gives utterance to affectionate sympathy, commiseration, compassion, pity, and tenderness. It is, also, the characteristic of grief and sorrow in their subdued forms, of regret, penitence, contrition, complaint, condolence, supplication, and entreaty. "Chromatic" is a term borrowed from the art of painting, and transferred to that of music, by one of those customary licenses of speech, by which the terms of one art, addressed to one sense, are transferred to another art, addressed to a different sense. This proceeding in language is owing, in most instances, to comparative paucity of appropriate terms, in the art which borrows the use of words. But it sometimes, though not always, produces a happy effect, in the form of figurative illustration, and facilitates a vivid apprehension of the idea to which a borrowed term is applied. Thus, the word "chromatic was originally applied to the painter's scale of gradation in colors, when these are arranged not for contrast but gradual approximation to each other. Suppose, for example, a colored scale of degrees, in which one degree should be yellow; the next, red; the next, black. The colors would, in this case, stand forth perfectly distinct from each other; as the tones of the "diatonic" scale exist to the ear. Suppose, again, a scale of colors divided into successive half degrees, thus; passing gradually from the bright to the dark tint, through intervening hues, yellow, orange, red, brown, black. We should now have a softened or mitigated transition of approximated, or half-blended, tints; the effect corresponding, as regards the eye, to that of "chromatic or "semitonic" progression of notes to the ear. The effect of the "semitone" extends over all the intervals, "concrete "and" discrete," from the mere "radical" and "vanish" up to the "octave," and so downward, as designated in the "diatonic" scale. But the "octave is comparatively seldom used in the semitonic form. The principal applications of the "semitone" are found in the “monotone," the “semitone" proper, the "third," and the "fifth." The "chromatic melody," takes effect, likewise, in all the "phrases of sentential melody," both in the current and the closing strains, with this peculiar exception, that the change by "radical pitch" in the "chromatic current," although it is by |