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great variety, that is to say, in many shades of difference. It belongs to the natural endowment of the centres, that they shall act in many degrees of energy upon the respective muscles, so as to give at the very outset a large variety of sounds to be caught up, associated, and artificially reproduced. The narrow or wide compass of these primeval and chance utterances the result of the spontaneous discharge of nerve force from the centres-is the material circumstance in determining the flexibility or natural variety of the voice.

Next comes the ear, the regulator of the effects produced by the spontaneity of the voice. For music, as already noticed, the ear must be discriminatingly sensitive to pitch and the varieties of up and down, and to the harmonies and discords of different pitches. This sensitiveness rules the action of the voice, and reduces its wild utterances into regular modes productive of musical effect. The ear thus discriminative must also be adhesive to trains of sounds, so as to constitute a good memory for what it hears, and thereby to instruct the voice. The adhesiveness is in fact double; it resides partly in the vocal organs themselves, and partly in the ear. A good ear is one both discriminative and adhesive; the first circumstance doubtless favouring the second. The adhesiveness of the frame for mechanical exercises in general will probably show itself in the musical voice, when once it has been put in the proper train. But I can have little doubt that the quality of the ear is the special and ruling circumstance in the acquisitions of the singer.

The inward sense and enjoyment of musical effects causes here as elsewhere a flow of mental attention to the acts of listening and imitating. There is, however, a certain intoxication of excitement caused in some minds that does not answer the ends of acquisition, according to the important distinction already drawn between vague excitement and arrested attention.

The acquisition of instrumental music may be explained by substituting for the voice the action of the hands or the mouth, all other considerations remaining the same.

It would not be difficult to apply a test to the musical

adhesiveness of different persons by fixing upon a corresponding stage of progress, and counting the number of repetitions necessary to learn a melody. The most enormous differences in this respect may be constantly observed; two or three repetitions being as good to one person as two or three scores of repetitions to another.

66. In Articulate Speech we have likewise a case of vocal action guided by the ear, but with great differences as respects both the action and the feeling. The power of articulating brings out a new series of movements, those of the mouth; while the nice graduation of the force of the chest and of the tension of the vocal chords required in singing is here dispensed with. The sensitiveness of the ear to articulate sounds has already been noticed as quite distinct from the musical sense. Hence, on both grounds, speaking and singing are exercises so different that the greatest excellence in the one is compatible with the lowest attainments in the other, as experience testifies.

The first stage of speaking is the utterance of simple vowels or of simple consonants with vowels attached, as wa, ma, pa, hum. The sound 'ah' is the easiest exertion of the mouth; the other vowels, e, i, o, u, are more difficult positions. The labial consonants, m, p, b, usually, but not always, precede the dental and guttural; the closing of the lips being a very easy effort. I am not aware that the dental letters, d, l, t, n, are more easy than the gutturals, k, g, but the aspirates are perhaps more difficult than either. Of the vibrating sounds, the hissing action of the s is readier got at than the r. For this last letter and w are used, as lun, wun,

for run.

A new class of difficulties appears in the attempts to combine two consonants into one utterance; as in syllables that begin and end with a consonant. Some of these are found easier than others; mam is easier than man, and this than mug; for the reason that it is less difficult to combine two labials, than a labial with a dental, or a guttural.

There are two stages in the acquirement of articulate sounds; the first is the stage of spontaneous utterances, and

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the second the stage of imitation. In both, the natural flexibility or variety of the organs must be coupled with delicacy of the ear for articulate effects in order to make rapid progress.

The joining of syllables and words into continuous speech brings into play a further exercise of the associating principle; but there is also added the element of intonation, or cadence. This is a totally distinct effect at every stage of verbal acquisition. The sense for it is a peculiar feeling in the ear of the musical species, and the action of the voice to produce it is noways the same as the articulate action. The effect of cadence agrees with all the accessories of musical effect, having little regard to what are the principal circumstances in the other, namely, pitch, with its harmonies and time. In cadence the voice rises and falls in pitch, but not with any nice or measured gradation; the degree of stress or emphasis, the change from the abrupt to the long-drawn utterance, the alternate rise and fall of the voice, the descent and gradual subsidence at the close, are among the characteristics of cadence, or the music of speech. It appeals more to the muscular sensibility of the ear than to the auditory sense proper; it is like the effect of curves and beautiful forms on the eye. A great susceptibility to intonation marks some constitutions, and probably goes along with that other sensibility to curve lines, and to muscular effects in general. If the voice be naturally favourable to the changes of intonation, the concurrence of a good ear for it will inevitably render the acquisition easy; and by a reasonable amount of study the highest effects of oratory may be successfully achieved.

The earliest acquisitions of the purely verbal kind, such as prayers, rhymes, and stories, bring to the test the natural force of the verbal memory. The less the appreciation of meaning, the better the criterion afforded of pure verbal adhesiveness. This quality, when strongly manifested, is the basis of lingual scholarship, and of what is called memory by rote. It manifests the presence of a good articulate ear, and probably a high degree of the adhesive association by contiguity. The memory of the ancient bards, which had to retain to the letter long

compositions, and the kind of erudition ascribed to the Druids, would exemplify it, although in these cases, natural deficiency could be made up by iteration.

67. In the acquisition of the Mother Tongue, the process is partly a verbal one, and partly an association of names with objects. Here there is a complex effect. For in associating two things of a different nature, as a sound on the ear, with an appearance to the eye,-the name 'sun,' for example, with the visible effect, the adhesiveness depends on the degree of impression produced by each. In fact we remember much sooner the names of things that impress us, than the names of indifferent things. Hence the progress in the use of names depends on the tenacity of the mind for the corresponding things. The acquisition of our mother tongue is something exceedingly vast, seeing that it implies the conception of all the objects named therein; and the use of names proceeds with the experience of things. Doubtless in this case too the force of mere contiguity counts as the prevailing circumstance; for in order that all objects indiscriminately may yield tenacious impressions, this power must be naturally great, and the same circumstance would serve to foster the growth of the adhesive link between name and thing. In the natural history intellect there is much in common with the verbal scholar.

When we come to the case of Written Language, the resemblance just hinted at is still closer; for there the object is not an articulation but a visible sign, and the tenacity of its adherence will depend on the eye and its connexions in the brain. In acquiring language through the medium of writing or print, we may either keep a hold of the visible symbols as pictures in the eye, just as we remember maps and diagrams, or we may pass from these to the vocal pronunciation, and retain it by articulate adhesiveness. It is not necessary to read aloud in order to transfer the work from the eye to the voice, a mere whispered or muttered articulation, a mere ideal rehearsal, will take, and become coherent. In fact, I believe we retain written language by the help of both methods, or by a combination of trains of symbols, as seen by the eye, with trains of articulations rehearsed by the voice. This is an

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example of Compound Associations, to which I shall devote a chapter apart. Notwithstanding this division of the labour of retaining written speech between sight and vocalisation, it is obvious that a good retentive eye for alphabetic forms is an element in the intellect of the scholar. In the adhesion of forms generally, I have classified three different kinds retained by different modes of cerebral force, namely, the artistic, the mathematical, and the arbitrary. These last are the most numerous, and individually the least important; all that needs to be retained in them is some characteristic point wherein each is distinguished from the rest. The recollection of a vast multitude of trains of alphabets and names and compositions demands a strong natural cohesiveness of Contiguity; for they will not afford an intense concentration of the brain, as in the case of the few and important forms of Geometry and the other sciences. On the whole, therefore, as above remarked, there is a common character in the Scholarly and the Natural History intellect.

68. In acquiring Foreign Languages by the usual methods, we have more of the purely verbal than in the mother tongue. We do not usually connect the names of a foreign language with the objects, but with the names already learnt. We may connect sound with sound, as when we are taught orally, articulation with articulation, or mark with mark in the eye. Thus domus' and 'house' may be associated as two sounds, two articulations, or two sights; usually we have the help of all three ways of linking. Including the act of writing down words there are no less than four lines of adhesion, involving two senses and two modes of mechanical exertion. What the hand has shaped persists as an idea in the moving circles of the arm, which idea tends to remain coherent, and afterwards to recover itself in full; it may thus act as a help along with the other links in the recollection of names and compositions.

In the absence of a good contiguous cohesiveness for indifferent things, such as arbitrary sounds and symbols, lingual acquisitions are necessarily laborious and difficult, and an unprofitable waste of mind.

69. Oratorical Acquisition introduces the element of

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