LONG experience of the need which it is the design of the following pages to supply, must explain the reasons for the preparation of this volume. If that design be accomplished, the book will be its own best interprater; if not, a lengthened preface would but make the failure more apparent. The whole theory of elocution, including an analysis of gesture, has been herein dis cussed, though all merely incidental opinions have been carefully avoided. Where just views have been found expressed by those who have made this a life-study, their language has frequently been quoted, in the hope that due importance may be ascribed to the ideas thus presented. Special acknowledgments are due to Dr. James Rush, to whose profound and accurate analysis of the "Philosophy of the Human Voice," all writers upon the subject have so long been indebted; and to Professor Wm. Russell, in whose able expositions of the theory of Dr. Rush may be found a more minute eluc dation of the principles of this branch of education, so much neglected and misunderstood. Elocution being less a science than an art, much will ever remain to be effected by the living teacher, though experience has proved the great advantages to be derived from the general system of instruction here proposed. The examples for practice have been classified with the view of separately illustrating each division of the work; in many instances, it may be best not to attempt |