Lessons in Enunciation Author:William Russell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PREFACE. No branch of elementary education is so generally neglected as that of reading. It is not necessary, in proof of this assertion, to appeal to the pre... more »vailing want of appropriate elocution at the bar or in the pnlpit. The worst defects in reading and speaking are by no means confined to professional life, and occasions which call for eloquent address: they extend through all classes of society, and are strikingly apparent in the public exercises of colleges, the daily lessons of schools, in private reading, and in common conversation. The faults now alluded to, are all owing to the want of a distinct and correct enunciation, which, whatever may become of higher accomplishments, would aeem to be alike indispensable to a proper cultivation of the human faculties, and to the useful purposes of life. It is unnecessary here to enlarge on the intellectual injuries arising to the young, from the want of early discipline in this department of education ; or to speak of the habits of inattention and inaccuracy, which are thus cherished ; or of the degradation of the English language from its native force and dignity of utterance to a low and slovenly negligence of style, by which it is rendered unfit for the best offices of speech. The following pages are respectfully submitted to parents and teachers, as a means of remedying such evils, and of devoting a seasonable attention to the formation of correct habits of enunciation, in the elementary instruction of children. It is hoped, also, that the work may be found serviceable to pupils in whose early lessons in reading the subjects of articulation and pronunciation may have been passed over too slightly. i The appendix is designed for the use of students still more advanced, who may be disposed to devote their attention t...« less