LECTURE VIII.

STRENGTH OF VOICE.

INCONVENIENCES OF A FEEBLE VOICE.

ON WHAT STRENGTH OF VOICE DEPENDS.

Among the prime requisites of a good delivery, it is essential that the speaker be heard with ease and pleasure. To accomplish this, he must employ a proper strength of enunciation. When I speak of a strong voice, however, I must not be understood to confound vociferation with eloquence. This absurd mistake, though often made by speakers and hearers of a certain class, is seldom made by men of discernment.

That voice is loud enough, in any given case, which perfectly reaches a whole assembly, with a reserve of strength to enforce an energetic passage, in a manner corresponding with the emotions of the speaker. We will now enquire in the

FIRST place, what are some of the inconveniences to which a feeble voice subjects a public speaker?

When he labors under this difficulty to a considerable extent, either he will not be heard at all, and so his discourse will be absolutely lost, or what is more common, he will be heard partially and with difficulty.

Now laborious listening excites impatience in a hearer, that often amounts to vexation. It gives pain by sympathy; as he who listens shares in the fatigues which is apparently endured by the speaker. It gives pain too as a mental labor, in which the invention and industry of the hearer, are kept on the stretch to make out by construction, the sense of that which was uttered so imperfectly, as to reach his ear only in disjointed parts.

When this difficulty is perceived to result from the want of vital strength, it awakens pity. When it is supposed, as it commonly is, and often with too much reason, to result from a sluggish soul, it awakens feelings of another sort, differing in degree from uneasiness to indignation. I have known more than one instance, where a young man, in his first public performance as a speaker, perhaps in a commencement oration, failed so utterly in powers of voice, as to produce not only sneers at the time, but a permanent disgust, which the hearers afterwards associated with the recollection of his name. The rule of the Roman critic as to perspicuity of style, common sense applies to the voice of a speaker; it should not only be possible to hear him, (excepting indeed those who are deaf,) but impossible not to hear him.

Besides the pleasure which a powerful voice gives to an assembly, for reasons implied in the above remarks, it is associated with impressions of dignity and weight. Its grave and manly tones seem better adapted to the character of an orator, than those which are shrill and feeble.

But there are several circumstances, from which the inconvenience of a weak voice is liable more especially to be felt.

One is the injudicious structure of churches, and other edifices, the primary design of which is to accommodate an assembly in listening to one speaker. On a thorough examination of this subject, to which I was called many years ago, I was surprised to find that edifices of this sort, have generally been erected with very little intelligent regard to the principles of acoustics; so that no architect with whom I conversed, even pretended to know why one edifice designed for public speaking, is more favorable to the sound of the voice, than another; except that size was generally regarded as having an important influence in the case. Doubtless this is important, for the immoderate compass to which these buildings are sometimes extended, through ostentation or bad judgment, renders it impossible that their remotest parts should be reached, by a voice of any ordinary power. But this is not the whole ground of difficulty;

for we find, as a matter of fact, that a room of moderate extent is sometimes very unfavorable, while a large one is sometimes very favorable to the voice of a speaker. In the structure of churches, particularly, other things are of more consequence than size. Vogue in dress may vary with every change of the moon, and the inconvenience be comparatively trifling; but the freaks of fashion should hardly be permitted to regulate the principles of architecture, especially in the structure of buildings that are to last for ages; and the main purpose of which cannot properly be sacrificed to the claims of a capricious taste.

By far the most serious mistake in the structure of churches, is the excessive height to which the ceiling is carried, by reason of which the impulse of the voice escapes upward, so as to fall with very diminished effect upon the body of an assembly below. In other cases, arches are so unskilfully formed, as to return a strong but broken echo, confounding all distinctness of sound. In other cases, the same mischief arises from the structure of galleries, and the appendage of a sounding board, placed immediately over the speaker's head, so as to return a strong, instant echo to his own ear, without any imaginable benefit to the audience. Any or all these disadvantages, I may add, it is not unusual to see aggravated by an elevation of the pulpit so extreme, as to direct the range of the speaker's voice quite above the assembly he is addressing. It is indeed surprising, that a fault in architecture so obvious as this, should yet be so common.

On the other hand, the preacher is exposed to difficulties, which rarely await any other public speaker. In new countries especially he may be called to speak in the open air; or in private dwellings, where the noise is impeded by partitions, and the elasticity of the air is destroyed by a crowd of hearers.— The great inconvenience which always attends a feeble voice is liable to be much increased, in individual cases, by circumstances like the foregoing.

There is one other disadvantage to which such a voice almost infallibly subjects a speaker, the adoption of a key so high,

as not only to destroy all interesting variety of modulation, but to exhaust and endanger the lungs. But on this topic I only touch here, as I must soon introduce it in another connexion.

Our SECOND inquiry is, on what does strength of voice depend? It depends,

1. On perfect organs of speech.

These my limits do not allow me to describe at length. But while the vagrant musician must tune his instrument, before he can use it, and must understand its principles before he can tune it; it is indeed surprising that those wonderful organs on which the faculty of speech depends, should be so little understood, even by public speakers. The study which led David to exclaim, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made ;" and even Galen, a heathen anatomist, to write a hymn in praise of the Creator, surely must deserve attention from the Christian philosopher, especially the preacher, with whose chief duties it is so intimately connected. Every young minister ought, at an early period of his professional life, to read some able treatise on the anatomy and physiology of the vocal organs.

Among these in order of importance, the Lungs hold the first place.

Speakers are too apt to forget, what a very small acquaintance with the human structure is sufficient to teach, that the lungs have other functions to discharge, essential to the animal economy, besides that of vocal sound. They are the instrument of respiration, by which a current of air passes into and out of the chest ; and also the laboratory where the blood is refined and prepared for a healthy distribution to the extremities. The doctrine of many respectable chymists, assigning to the lungs the office of generating animal caloric, by admitting the oxygen, inhaled with the atmospheric air, to mingle with the blood, is questioned by others of so high authority, that it must be regarded as doubtful. As I would not anticipate the remarks which I have to make on the care of the vocal organs, it is enough to say here, that the most important of these organs, so delicate in its structure, so complex in its operations, and so

thoroughly protected from violence, by the casement of bones in which the Creator has enclosed it, ought not to be trifled with, by the ignorance or carelessness of its possessor.

Though a strong voice does not always result from vigor of lungs, it cannot exist without this. The bellows of an organ may be good, while its sound may be spoiled by the imperfection of its pipes. Other things being equal, he who has the most roomy chest, whose lungs admit the greatest quantity of air, and expel it with the greatest ease and force, has the strongest voice. Animals that have no lungs, as fish and certain insects, have no voice.

The Trachea is that cartilaginous tube, by which the air passes to and from the lungs. The length of this tube, and the firmness of its texture, have an important influence on the voice. A singer, in passing through the scale of musical notes, from the higher to the lower, shortens this tube by inclining the head forward; and ascending the scale, lengthens it by a contrary motion. To this tube chiefly, is owing the powerful voice of certain birds, their trachea or windpipe being very long in proportion to their size.

The Larynx is situated at the upper end of the foregoing tube; or rather is that part of the windpipe, which is next the mouth. It is a kind of cartilaginous box, very delicate and elastic, and so suspended by muscles as to be easily elevated or depressed. At the bottom of this box, is that projection or knot on the throat, which is very perceptible, especially in the neck of males, and which has been called pomum Adami, with some fanciful allusion to our first progenitor's having eaten the forbidden fruit. In the formation of musical notes, this box rises and falls nearly half an inch in the octave; and it is this larynx, with its curious organization, that is the seat of the voice. Its cartilages are the most firm and elastic in animals that utter the loudest cries or the deepest roarings, as the peacock, the elephant, and the lion. And the dissection of human subjects after death, shows that there is unusual firmness of