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THE

RHETORICAL READER;

CONSISTING OF

INSTRUCTIONS FOR REGULATING THE VOICE

WITH A

RHETORICAL NOTATION,

ILLUSTRATING INFLECTION, EMPHASIS, AND MODULATION ;

AND A COURSE OF

RHETORICAL EXERCISES.

DESIGNED FOR THE USE OF ACADEMIES AND HIGH-SCHOOLS.

BY EBENEZER PORTER, D. D.
Late President of the Theological Seminary, Andover.

Fifty-third Edition, with an Appendix.

ANDOVER:

GOULD AND NEW MAN.

NEW-YORK: LEAVITT, Lord and co.

Edue T 758, 39.713

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Inter of Sand & Green, of the Senia Class, from Greten

Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1832, by
FLAGG & GOULD,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

STEREOTYPED BY LYMAN THURSTON & CO.
BOSTON.

PREFACE.

THOUGH for many years after I began to investigate the principles of rhetorical delivery, I had no intention of writing any thing on the subject for publication, I was at last drawn into this measure, gradually and almost unavoidably. The bad habits in elocution, acquired by many educated young men, and confirmed, with little regard to consequences, as they passed from one stage of education to another, it was easy to see must become at once equally conspicuous and injurious, so soon as they should pass from academical life into a public profession in which good speaking is a prime instrument of usefulness. The last Seminary too which had them in charge, would, by a misapprehension not very unnatural, be made responsible, not merely for its own proportion, but for the whole of these defects. The only remedy for habits thus firmly established, obviously must lie in a patient, elementary process, adapted to form new habits. After a sufficient experiment to satisfy me that Walker's elements, as a text book, could not answer this purpose, I prepared a course of Lectures on the subject. One of these,

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on Vocal Inflections," I consented to print, at the request and for the use of the Theological Students, to whom it had been read; but without any intention that it should be published. The pamphlet, however, went abroad, and led to applications from respectable gentlemen, connected with colleges and other literary institutions, that I would prepare a book of the same description, to be used in this department of a liberal education. Accordingly I did prepare the "ANALYSIS OF RHETORICAL DELIVERY."

The preparation of that work, my own use of it as a Teacher, and the testimony of others, who had used it, con

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