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.