6.  Musical tones should be given to things that are pleasing.  Courtiers give musical inflections to the words they address to royalty.

7.  Every manifestation of life is a song; every sound is a song.  But inflections must not be multiplied, lest delivery degenerate into a perpetual sing-song.  The effect lies entirely in reproducing the same inflection.  A drop of water falling constantly, hollows a rock.  A mediocre man will employ twenty or thirty tones.  Mediocrity is not the too little, but the too much.  The art of making a profound impression is to condense; the highest art would be to condense a whole scene into one inflection.  Mediocre speakers are always seeking to enrich their inflections; they touch at every range, and lose themselves in a multitude of intangible effects.

8.  In real art it is not always necessary to fall back upon logic.  The reason needs illumination from nature, as the eye, in order to see, needs light.  Reason may be in contradiction to nature.  For instance, a half-famished hunter, in sight of a good dinner, would say:  “I am hungry” emphasizing hungry, while reason would say that am must be emphasized.  A hungry pauper would say:  “I am hungry,” dwelling upon am and gliding over hungry.  If he were not hungry, or wished to deceive, he would dwell upon hungry.

Special Inflections.

Among the special inflections we may reckon:—­

1. Exclamations.—­Abrupt, loud, impassioned sounds, and improvisations.

2. Cries.—­These are prolonged exclamations called forth by a lively sentiment of some duration, as acute suffering, joy or terror.  They are formed by the sound a.  In violent pain arising from a physical cause, the cries assume three different tones:  one grave, another acute, the last being the lowest, and we pass from one to the other in a chromatic order.

There are appealing cries which ask aid in peril.  These cries are formed by the sounds e and o.  They are slower than the preceding, but more acute and of greater intensity.

3. Groans.—­Here the voice is plaintive, pitiful, and formed by two successive tones, the one sharp, the final one deep.  Its monotony, the constant recurrence of the same inflection, give it a remarkable expression.

4. Lamentation is produced by a voice loud, plaintive, despairing and obstinate, indicating a heart which can neither contain nor restrain itself.

5. The sob is an uninterrupted succession of sounds produced by slight, continuous inspirations, in some sort convulsive, and ending in a long, violent inspiration.

6. The sigh is a weak low tone produced by a quick expiration followed by a slow and deep inspiration.

7. The laugh is composed of a succession of loud, quick, monotonous sounds formed by an uninterrupted series of slight expirations, rapid and somewhat convulsive, of a tone more or less acute and prolonged, and produced by a deep inspiration.