alike by all pupils. Besides, the system of musical notation is calculated to induce a style of delivery too artificial to be impressive. Feeling and expression are apt to be sacrificed to the constantly recurring solicitude about tones and semitones; so that the reader, after having executed what appeared to be a most finished specimen of elaborate modula. tion, is not unfrequently surprised to find his audience was little or none impressed by it. The performance had been more that of an instrument whose melody had charmed the ear, than of an orator whose effusions had carried conviction to the conscience or captivated the heart. Nor is any such excess of refinement necessary to success in oratory. Do the acknowledged rhetoricians of the present day exhibit any such delicacy of execution? Were Burke, Pitt, Canning, Peel, so skilled in the science of major and minor intervals? Was Dr Chalmers, the great pulpit orator of his day, so schooled into the mysteries of modulation? These all spoke from the conviction of their own minds to the conviction of others. They declaimed fluently and impassionedly, because they felt intensely. Their very earnestness supplied them with intervals of exquisite appositeness to the feeling that suggested them. Passion was their instrument, and nature the hand that touched it. The study of elocution may confer grace and even,impressiveness upon a speaker, when the steps in the process under which that study is conducted are not too symbolical and complicated to be easily understood, whereas the energy of delivery is altogether independent of the elocutionist's rules, and arises out of the all-subduing earnestness of the speaker's own mind. "Democritus negat ullum poetam esse posse magnum sine furore”—and so with the There is no genuine oratory without enthusiasm that enthusiasm which wields the eye, the arm, the entire figure, in fact, as alike symptomatic of the orator's own intensity and instrumental to his conquest over others. So scon as an audience are satisfied of the speaker's sincerity, orator. their sympathies are with him, and are generally retained, as much in accordance with his enthusiasm, as by the force of his arguments. In using the Class Book, the student is requested to make himself familiar with the Table of Modulations before proceeding to the Principles, and thoroughly to understand the application of each present Principle before entering upon the study of those subsequent. In connection with each, he will find two or more Extracts in which that Principle prevails; and it is necessary that he carefully trace the exemplification of the Principle in these before he proceeds to the general Selections. These few previous Extracts are purposely selected from books already in use, that, being already familiar to the young student, he may have no difficulty in enunciating them, and thereby be enabled to give his exclusive attention to the principles of modulation they are intended to illustrate. The general Selections will be found sufficiently varied for the farther exemplification of these; and will, it is hoped, from their peculiarly moral and intellectual character, recommend themselves to all who consider reading not the mere cultivation of the voice and ear, but the medium of information for after life. How far the general plan of the work may find acceptance with the public, depends much upon the opinion formed of it by the Educator, whose operations in teaching the Art of Reading it is intended to facilitate. CONTENTS. PRINCIPLE FOURTH-THE INTERROGATION AND EXCLAMATION Exercises.-Virtue, Man's Highest Interest |