In the further pursuance of the questions heretofore under consideration, I shall now enter upon a theme of a still more subtle nature. The question of metre, rhythm, accent, etc., is one which is involved in much mystery; nor can I find that many persons entertain precisely the same ideas as being expressed by these terms. _Accepting as a fundamental principle the fact that our various spiritual conditions are based upon our ability to extract the necessary inspiration therefor from the air, which bears the same relation to our spiritual existence that the earth does to that of our body (in furnishing it with such elements as it requires for its maintenance), I contend that we breathe for speech in as many different modes as there are parts or elements in its composition._ This proposition does not necessarily conflict with the fact that we also draw elements from the air, as analytical chemistry has proven, which serve for the construction of matter; such elements, however, instead of being strictly material, as they have every appearance of being, are, in reality, the spiritual complements of the matter they help to form; matter and spirit going hand in hand in our entire composition. In reading poetry, or giving expression to the same in song (I repeat), we do so in a fourfold manner: First: as to metre or time (the "measure" of time). Second: as to the rhythm or the music pervading the voice, produced by its rise and fall, also called cadence, or the idiomatic expression of a language. Third: as to accent. Fourth: as to emphasis. The _metre_ is produced by an artistic mode of breathing (in addition to our ordinary and permanent mode), marked by regular repetitions of a given order of inspirations and expirations which can be "measured" as to the time consumed in their enunciation, and are therefore, not incorrectly, called "feet." The metre is a product or outcome of the _will_, a force which presides over material-spiritual issues. It changes with our inclinations and moods, and is expressive thereof. We can pass from one metre to another at will, as the occasion may require. It is the _material_ part of speech, as we can measure it and account for it as to time in space, supposing time to be incorporated. The metre expressive of joy, for instance, being quick, that of sorrow slow; the former, if incorporated, would take up less space than the latter, in the same proportion as it consumes less time in being uttered. The _rhythm_ is that characteristic quality which distinguishes one language from another, the basis upon which it is built and around which all its elementary words cluster; its fundamental principle, its idiomatic expression, the music pervading its every syllable; the inflection, the rise and fall, the cadence of the voice; the spirit of a language, which is permanent and unchangeable.