inharmonious with the appearance of the speaker. For instance, there is that thin treble squeak which we sometimes hear from the mouth of a well-grown portly man, when we expected the fine rolling utterance which would have been in unison with his outward seeming. And, on the other side of the scale, where we looked for a shrill head-voice or a tender musical cadence, we get that hoarse chest-voice with which young and pretty girls sometimes startle us. This voice is in fact one of the characteristics of the modern girl of a certain type; just as the habitual use of slang is characteristic of her, or that peculiar rounding of the elbows and turning out of the wrists—which gestures, like the chest-voice, instinctively belong to men only and have to be learned before they can be practised by women.

Nothing betrays feeling so much as the voice, save perhaps the eyes; and these can be lowered, and so far their expression hidden. In moments of emotion no skill can hide the fact of disturbed feeling by the voice; though a strong will and the habit of self-control can steady it when else it would be failing and tremulous. But not the strongest will, nor the largest amount of self-control, can keep it natural as well as steady. It is deadened, veiled, compressed, like a wild creature tightly bound and unnaturally still. One feels that it is done by an effort, and that if the strain were relaxed for a moment the wild creature would burst loose in rage or despair—and that the voice would break into the scream of passion or quiver down into the falter of pathos. And this very effort is as eloquent as if there had been no holding down at all, and the voice had been left to its own impulse unchecked.

Again, in fun and humour, is it not the voice even more than the face that is expressive? The twinkle of the eye, the hollow in the under lip, the dimples about the mouth, the play of the eyebrow, are all aids certainly; but the voice! The mellow tone that comes into the utterance of one man; the surprised accents of another; the fatuous simplicity of a third; the philosophical acquiescence of a fourth when relating the most outrageous impossibilities—a voice and manner peculiarly Transatlantic, and indeed one of the American forms of fun—do we not know all these varieties by heart? have we not veteran actors whose main point lies in one or other of these varieties? and what would be the drollest anecdote if told in a voice which had neither play nor significance? Pathos too—who feels it, however beautifully expressed so far as words may go, if uttered in a dead and wooden voice without sympathy? But the poorest attempts at pathos will strike home to the heart if given tenderly and harmoniously. And just as certain popular airs of mean association can be made into church music by slow time and stately modulation, so can dead-level literature be lifted into passion or softened into sentiment by the voice alone.

We all know the effect, irritating or soothing, which certain voices have over us; and we have all experienced that strange impulse of attraction or repulsion which comes from the sound of the voice alone. And generally, if not absolutely always, the impulse is a true one, and any modification which increased knowledge may produce is never quite satisfactory. Certain voices grate on our nerves and set our teeth on edge; and others are just as calming as these are irritating, quieting us like a composing draught, and setting vague images of beauty and pleasantness afloat in our brains.

A good voice, calm in tone and musical in quality, is one of the essentials for a physician—the 'bedside voice' which is nothing if not sympathetic by constitution. Not false, not made up, not sickly, but tender in itself, of a rather low pitch, well modulated and distinctly harmonious in its notes, it is the very opposite of the orator's voice, which is artificial in its management and a made voice. Whatever its original quality may be, the orator's voice bears the unmistakeable stamp of art and is artificial. It may be admirable; telling in a crowd; impressive in an address; but it is overwhelming and chilling at home, partly because it is always conscious and never self-forgetting.

An orator's voice, with its careful intonation and accurate accent, would be as much out of place by a sick-bed as Court trains and brocaded silk for the nurse. There are certain men who do a good deal by a hearty, jovial, fox-hunting kind of voice—a voice a little thrown up for all that it is a chest-voice—a voice with a certain undefined rollick and devil-may-care sound in it, and eloquent of a large volume of vitality and physical health. That, too, is a good property for a medical man. It gives the sick a certain fillip, and reminds them pleasantly of health and vigour. It may have a mesmeric kind of effect upon them—who knows?—so that it induces in them something of its own state, provided it be not overpowering. But a voice of this kind has a tendency to become insolent in its assertion of vigour, swaggering and boisterous; and then it is too much for invalided nerves, just as mountain-winds or sea-breezes would be too much, and the scent of flowers or of a hayfield oppressive.

The clerical voice again, is a class-voice—that neat, careful, precise voice, neither wholly made nor yet natural—that voice which never strikes one as hearty nor as having a really genuine utterance, but which is not entirely unpleasant if one does not require too much spontaneity. The clerical voice, with its mixture of familiarity and oratory as that of one used to talk to old women in private and to hold forth to a congregation in public, is as distinct in its own way as the mathematician's handwriting; and any one can pick out blindfold his man from a knot of talkers, without waiting to see the square-cut collar and close white tie. The legal voice is different again; but this is rather a variety of the orator's than a distinct species—a variety standing midway between that and the clerical, and affording more scope than either.

The voice is much more indicative of the state of the mind than many people know of or allow. One of the first symptoms of failing brain power is in the indistinct or confused utterance; no idiot has a clear nor melodious voice; the harsh scream of mania is proverbial; and no person of prompt and decisive thought was ever known to hesitate nor to stutter. A thick, loose, fluffy voice too, does not belong to the crisp character of mind which does the best active work; and when we meet with a keen-witted man who drawls, and lets his words drip instead of bringing them out in the sharp incisive way that should be natural to him, we may be sure there is a flaw somewhere, and that he is not 'clear grit' all through.

We all have our company voices, as we all have our company manners; and, after a time, we get to know the company voices of our friends, and to understand them as we understand their best dresses and state service. The person whose voice absolutely refuses to put itself into company tone startles us as much as if he came to a state dinner in a shooting-jacket. This is a different thing from the insincere and flattering voice, which is never laid aside while it has its object to gain, and which affects to be one thing when it means another. The company voice is only a little bit of finery, quite in its place if not carried into the home, where however, silly men and women think they can impose on their house-mates by assumptions which cannot stand the test of domestic ease. The lover's voice is of course sui generis; but there is another kind of voice which one sometimes hears that is quite as enchanting—the rich, full, melodious voice which irresistibly suggests sunshine and flowers, and heavy bunches