Pulpit Elocution 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: ELOCUTION, DEPARTMENT OF PREPARATORY STUDY IN THEOLOGY. [By the Author of the present volume.] The preceding observations will, no doubt, be received with ... more »that full weight of effect, which justly belongs to the sources from which they come. Nor would the author feel disposed to present his own thoughts on the subject, were it not for the necessity of meeting objections such. as he hears frequently offered to the systematic study of elocution, as-either unnecessary or injurious. A teacher in the department of elocution, lias to communicate with minds under every variety of impression on the subject of culture. He meets, occasionally, with students whose lack of self-confidence, and even of a just self-reliance, leads them to despair of effecting anything in the way of successful cultivation, even after the most resolute and persevering exertions, He finds, sometimes, on the other hand, those whose self-esteem induces a perfect satisfaction with their habitual manner, be it what it may, and who are confident that they need little aid from from any source but what is within themselves. He sees, perhaps, one individual who has formed an undue estimation of mere tuition and preparatory training, and who evidently expects too much from such aids, and sub jects himself too passively to mere processes; and another who, from superficial attention to the merits of the ques tion, or from prejudice or whim, contemns cultivation, as a thing wholly supererogatory, or necessarily artificial and false, or, at best, but mechanical and external, An instructor has therefore to urge, on some minds, the value and importance of the processes of culture in this department of education, and to dwell on things familiar or self-evident to other minds. The objections to systematic training i...« less