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PREFACE

TO THE FOURTH EDITION.

IN presenting the teaching public with a new and enlarged Edition of the "Rhetorical Reader," the Editor begs briefly to state that he has carefully marked with Emphases, Inflections, and Rhetorical Pauses, seventy consecutive Selections, comprehending 130 pages, and necessarily containing a considerable variety of composition; an advantage which, to this extent, he believes no other similar publication to possess.

Besides having thus inflected so large a body of Reading, which can hardly fail to prove acceptable to the English Teacher as well as to the Elocutionary Student, he has taken occasion to intersperse among those 130 pages not fewer than three dozen original, and, he trusts, not unimportant, foot-notes -all generally bearing, directly or indirectly, on the great object of his solicitude—the communicating of a pure, unartificial style of graceful, effective Reading-but especially referring to "Rhetorical Punctuation," a matter of essential importance in the theory and practice of Elocution; and upon which, in no slight measure, the student's success in Reading and Speaking depends! He has only to add, that the former impressions of "The Reader" having been considered as deficient in Selections of a light and humorous character, he has endeavoured to remove this defect in the present Edition by introducing a few popular Extracts of a lighter and gayer description, which, in

connection with the prefixed copious outline of GESTURE—a desideratum in a class-book-he confidently hopes will render his "Collection," as a WHOLE, more generally acceptable; and, along with any other humble attractions it may possess, secure for it a tolerable share of public patronage

LONDON, SEPTEMBER, 1845.

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