This would be tame indeed, should we place the unemphatic, rising slide on these terms of reproach, thus:

You blocks, you stónes, you worse than senseless things!

The strong reprehension of our Saviour, addressed to the tempter, would lose much of its meaning, if uttered with the gentle, rising slide, thus; Get thee behind me, Sátan. But it becomes very significant, with the emphatic downward inflection; Get thee behind me,-Sàtan.

3. Exclamation, when it does not express tender emotion, nor ask a question, inclines to adopt the falling slide.

Terror expresses itself in this way. Thus the appearance of the ghost in Hamlet produces the exclama

tion :

'Angels! and ministers of gràce,—defend us.

Exclamation, denoting surprise, or reverence, or distress, or a combination of these different emotions, generally adopts the falling slide, modified indeed by the degree of emotion. For this reason I suppose that Mary, weeping at the sepulchre, when she perceived that the person whom she had mistaken for the gardener, was the risen Saviour himself, exclaimed with the tone of reverence and surprise,-Rabbòni! And the same inflection probably was used by the leprous men when they cried Jésus, Màster! have mercy on us; instead of the collo

*The city watch is startled, not so much by the words of distress that echo through the stillness of midnight, as by the tones that denote the reality of that distress ;-"hèlp!--mùrder!-help!" The man whose own house is in flames, cries, "fìre !--fire !" it is only from the truant boy in the streets that we hear the careless exclamation, "fire, fire."

quial tone Jésus, Múster, which is commonly used in reading the passage, and which expresses nothing of the distress and earnestness which prompted this cry. These examples are distinguished from the vocative case, when it merely calls to attention, or denotes affection.

14] RULE IX. Emphatic succession of particulars requires the falling slide.* The reason is, that a distinctive utterance is necessary to fix the attention on each particular. The figure asyndeton, or omission of copulatives, especially when it respects clauses, and not single words, belongs to this class; as,

Go and tell John what things ye have seen and heard ;--the blind see, the lame walk, the leapers are cleansed, the deaf hèar, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached. - Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity ènvieth not; charity vaùnteth not itself; is not puffed ùp; doth not behave itself unseemly: seeketh not her òwn; is not easily provóked; thinketh no èvil.— Thrice was I beaten with ròds; once was I stòned; thrice I sufered shipwréck; a night and a day have I been in the deep.

In each of these examples, all the pauses except the last but one, (for the sake of harmony,) require the downward slide. The polysyndeton, requiring a still more deliberate pronunciation, adopts the same slide; as,

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heàrt, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.

NOTE 1. When the principle of emphatic series in

*The loose sentence, though it does not strictly belong to this rule, commonly coincides with it; because in the appended member or members, marked by the semicolon or colon, a complete sense, at each of these pauses, is so far expressed as generally to admit the falling slide.

terferes with that of the suspending slide, one or the other prevails, according to the nature of the case. When the structure is hypothetical, and yet the sense is such, and so far formed as to admit emphasis, the falling slide prevails, thus:

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not chárity, I am nothing.

But when the series begins a sentence, and each particular hangs on something still to come, for its sense, there is so little emphasis that the rising slide, denoting suspension, is required; thus,—

The pains of getting, the fear of losing, and the inability of enjóying his wealth, have made the miser a mark of satire, in all ages.

NOTE 2. The principle of emphatic series, may form an exception to Rule III. as,

We are troubled on every side, yet not distrèssed; perpléxed, but not in despair; pérsecuted, but not forsaken; cast dówn, but not destroyed.*

NOTE 3. Emphatic succession of particulars grows intensive as it goes on; that is, on each succeeding emphatic word, the slide has more stress, and a higher note, than on the preceding; thus,

*All Walker's rules of inflection as to a series of single words, when unemphatic, are in my opinion, worse than useless. No rule of harmonic inflection, that is independent of sentiment, can be established without too much risk of an artificial habit, unless it be this one, that the voice should rise at the last pause before the cadence; and even this may be superseded by emphasis.

I tell you, though

you,

though all the

world,

though an an

should declare the truth of it, I could not believe

The rising slide, on the contrary, as it occurs in an emphatic series of direct questions, rises higher on each particular, as it proceeds.

15] RULE X. Emphatic repetition requires the falling slide.

Whatever inflection is given to a word, in the first instance, when that word is repeated with stress, it demands the falling slide. Thus in Julius Cæsar, Cassius says; You wrong me every way, you wrong me, Brutus.

The word wrong is slightly emphatic, with the falling slide, in the first clause; but in the second, it requires a double or triple force of voice, with the same slide on a higher note, to express the meaning strongly. But the principle of this rule is more apparent still, when the repeated word changes its inflection. Thus I ask one at a distance, Are you going to Bóston? If he tells me that he did not hear my question, I repeat it with the other slide, Are you going to Boston ?*

* In colloquial language, the point I am illustrating is quite familiar to every ear. The teacher calls a pupil by name in the rising inflection, and not being heard, repeats the call in the falling. The answer to such a call, if it is a mere response, is " Sir;" -if it expresses doubt, it is "Sir." A question that is not understood is repeated with a louder voice and a change of slide: “Is this your book? Is this your book?" Little children with their first elements of speech, make this distinction perfectly.

I cannot forbear to say here, though the remark belongs to style more than to delivery, that while it is the province of dulness to repeat the same thoughts or words, from mere carelessness; there is scarcely a more vivid figure of rhetoric than repetition, when it springs from genius and emotion. But as the finest strains of music derive increase of spirit and effect from repetition, so in delivery, increase of emotion, demands a correspondent stress and inflection of voice. For this reason, the common method of reading our Saviour's parable of the wise. and the foolish builder, with the rising slide on both parts, is much less impressive than that which adopts the falling slide with increase of stress on the series of particulars as repeated.

Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock : and the rains descénded, and the floods cáme, and the winds bléw, and beat upon that house, and it fell nót,--for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, that built his house upon the sànd: and the ràin descended, and the floòds came, and the winds blew, and beat upon thát house, and it fèll ;--and great was the fall of it.

16] RULE XI. The final pause requires the falling slide.

That dropping of the voice which denotes the sense to be finished, is so commonly expected by the ear, that the worst readers make a cadence of some sort, at the close of a sentence. In respect to this, some general faults may be guarded against, though it is not possible to tell in absolute terms what a good cadence is; because, in different circumstances, it is modified by different prin