*See Key to the Analysis of Gesture, p. 45. SOLEMN APPEAL. "I appeal to the Great Searcher of hearts!" WARREN P. EDGARTON, PROFESSOR OF ORATORY AND RHETORIC, HUDSON RIVER INSTITUTE, OLAVERACK, N. Y., WITH YORK INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON DECLAMATION, BY WILLIAM RUSSELL, AUTHOR OF "UNIVERSITY SPEAKER, "PULPIT ELOCUTION," 99 66 ORTHOPHONY," ETC. REVISED EDITION. NEW YORK: 1860. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by MASON BROTHERS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. PREFACE. THE selection of pieces comprised in the following pages, has been prepared with particular reference to the class of institutions in which the compiler was occupied with the duties of instruction. He has, therefore, studiously avoided all matter not applicable to the exercises in such establishments. His design has been to crit, as unsuitable for the practice of academic elocution, all pieces marked, in subject and style, by the extremes either of too juvenile a character, or those of formal, political declamation. The former always tend to cherish a feeble and puerile style of speaking: the latter produce a heavy and unnatural manner in youthful speakers. The volume now offered, will, it is hoped, prove such as academic teachers and students may take up without having to encounter the unnecessary task of wading through a mass of inappropiate matter, before reaching any thing adapted to their use, but with the certainty of finding in it the materials which their peculiar |