THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.

599

A name that attracts as much undeserved ridicule as elocution itself is Delsarte- ism. People seem to regard it as a series of gymnastic exercises. This, of course, is not its definition. The system which Francois Delsarte tried to formulate and left unfinished was the expression of the emotions through the body. What Lindley Murray w T as to English grammar, such was Delsarte to the art of expression. The great Frenchman has revealed to us much about the body, the wonderful complex organism through which the Ego or the spirit manifests itself; but on the side of the soul so infinite is the speculation that Francois Delsarte, even if he had lived to carry out his system, would have been incapable, I think, of formulating anything approach­ing an exact scientific system. The reader or the actor who is educated on Delsartean principles is necessarily no more self-conscious than a writer in the process of com­position is handicapped by knowing the rules of syntax. Thousands of good actors will live and do without bothering about Delsarte, just as Robert Burns sang without troubling himself about grammarians, but this reasoning is no argument either against Lindley Murray or Francois Delsarte.

In nothing was the naturalism of Signora Duse so apparent as in her economical use of gestures, which one would imagine would be voluminous in one of the Latin temperament. It seems paradoxical to say it, but it is a fact that this actress was even true to nature in a certain awkwardness in moments of grief. The unimpeachable truth of the attitude was their vindication. The modern tendencies in the art of expression are to the closest naturalness attainable without flatness, to suggestiveness rather than to literal expressiveness, and to hold to the exact truth in preference to any scheme of decorative beauty. This is equivalent to saying that these tendencies are, first, naturalness; second, naturalness; and third, naturalness. In the beginning of dramatic art in Greece men walked on stilts, spoke through instruments that magnified the voice, and wore masks that exaggerated the human features. The history of the art from that day to this has been the gradual approach to nature, until now the art of conceal­ing art seems almost to be identical with nature.

Declamation—old-fashioned declamation—has no longer any place in the artistic economy. It is out of harmony with our time and our institutions. Though declaim­ing has gone out of fashion the charm of the sweet voice of the accomplished reader will never become obsolete. More may be left nowadays to the imagination of the auditor than in former years. It is now especially important to suggest the subtle beauties of a poem or a chapter of prose—those beauties which wrould escape the cas­ual reader, who voraciously devours the sense.

But it will not be impertinent, I hope, to commend to teachers, who deal largely with the poets, to take a course in prosody. To anyone with a taste for rhythm it is a knowledge which is easily and even pleasantly acquired. Many of us neglect the rhythm and the rhyme of poetry. In reading verse strictly in accordance with sense and punctuation many reciters, destitute of poetical sympathy, commit a sacrilege the enormity of which they can not appreciate. Pity is that the reading-desk, which has done so much to refine public taste and to minister to the intellect more directly and more exclusively than did the stage, should now be obsolete. Let us hope that it is only in temporary eclipse of public favor, and that when this day of follies and trivial­ities has passed the reading-desk will once more emerge to shed on the world its mild and beneficent influence.