advantage. The aspiring rhetorical student will select one or more celebrated orations in the style, which he wishes to adopt; these he will carefully subject to all the rules of notation; he will study and commit them to memory; he will exercise on them the whole powers of his voice, his countenance, and gesture; and like Demosthenes, consult his glass, and take the opinion of a judicious friend on his performances. The knowledge and facility, which, by repeated exercises of this kind he will acquire in rhetorical delivery, may be transferred with advantage to his own compositions, which are to be delivered in public; and without hazarding the inconveniences of particular notation, he will find himself possessed of such a rich store of various, forcible, and expressive action, that whatever his *feelings shall suggest on the moment, he will be able to execute in perfection. ADDITIONS. It has been said at the end of Chap. XIII. p. 345, that many other gestures may be named and marked, besides those there described. The following having been found necessary in the illustrations, it will be convenient to suppose them to be added. Add page 345 after pressing. Retracting (rt) is when the arm is withdrawn preparatory to projecting or pushing: as may be imagined in fig. 39, if supposed to prepare to push towards the star, and as in the dotted hand and arm of fig. 90, or in the right arm of fig. 100,—or in order to avoid an object either hateful or horrible, as in fig. 99 and 102. Rejecting (rj) is the action of pushing the hand vertically towards the object, and at the same time averting the head, as in fig. 101, for which the former fig. 100 is preparatory. Bending (bn) is the gesture preparatory to striking. It is represented by the uppermost dotted hand and arm of fig. 94, and by the strongly marked and elevated right arm of fig. 95. Additions to the Synoptical Table, p. 364. Add to the symbolic letters for the 4 and 5 small letters, rt. retracting. rj. rejecting. b. bending. |