ts at our intelligence
without reaching our heart? M. Delsarte has had recourse to the same
method which guided him in the study of gesture. He did not study
declamation on the stage, but in real life, where unpremeditated
inflections spring directly from feeling; then, fortified by innumerable
observations, he rearranged grammar and rhetoric from this special point
of view, and has obtained results as simple in their principles as they
are fertile in their application.

"If I wished to classify the nature and value of M. Delsarte's labors in
relation to what has been spoken or written up to this time on the art
of singing or acting, I should say that the numerous precepts which have
been formulated on dramatic art have had hardly any object other than
the manner in which each character ought to be conceived. Ingenious and
multiplied observations have been employed to bring forth the delicacies
of the part and its unpcrceived features. The intellectual strength of
the actor or vocalist has been directed to the author's conception. He
has been told to be pathetic here, menacing there; here to assume a
slight tinge of irony transpiercing apparent politeness, or, again, to
make his gesture a seeming contradiction of his words. Such an analysis
of the poet's work is certainly imperative, but how far from adequate!
And what an immense distance there is from the intelligence which
comprehends to the gesture which translates, from the song which moves
to the inflection which interprets! It is with the new purpose which M.
Delsarte has embraced that, without neglecting an understanding of the
author, he says to the actor: 'This is what you must express. Now, how
will you do it? What will you do with your arms, with your head, with
your voice? Do you know the laws of your organization? Do you know how
to go to work to be pathetic, dignified, comic, or familiar, to
represent the clemency of Augustus or the drunkenness of a coachman?' In
a word, he teaches the vocalist or actor the laws of this language, of
this eloquence which nature places in our eyes, in our gestures, in the
suppressed or expansive tones of our voice, in the accent of speech. He
teaches the actor, or, to speak more properly, the man, to know himself,
to manage artistically that inimitable instrument which is man himself,
all of whose parts contribute to a harmonious unity. Hence, aware of the
gravity of such an assertion, I do not hesitate to proclaim here that