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APPENDIX:

CONTAINING

A COMPLETE COURSE OF PRACTICE

IN

PROSE-READING,

AND IN

ORATORICAL, POETICAL, AND DRAMATIC

DECLAMATION.

APPENDIX, &c.

PROSE-READING.

DELICACY OF TASTE.-HUME.

NOTHING is so improving to the temper as the study of the beauties either of poetry, eloquence, music, or painting. They give a certain elegance of sentiment, to which the rest of mankind are strangers. The emotions which they excite are soft and tender. They draw off the mind from the hurry of business and interest; cherish reflection; dispose to tranquillity; and produce an agreeable melancholy, which, of all dispositions of the mind, is the best suited to love and friendship. In the second place, a delicacy of taste is favorable to love and friendship, by confining our choice to few people, and making us indifferent to the company and conversation of the greater part of men. You will seldom find that mere men of the world, whatever strong sense they may be endowed with, are very nice in distinguishing characters, or in marking those insensible differences and gradations

which make one man preferable to another. Any one that has competent sense, is sufficient for their entertainment: they talk to him of their pleasures and affairs with the same frankness that they would to another; and finding many who are fit to supply his place, they never feel any vacancy or want in his

absence.

But, to make use of the allusion of a celebrated French author, the judgment may be compared to a clock or watch, where the most ordinary machine is sufficient to tell the hours, but the most elaborate alone can point at the minutes and seconds, and distinguish the smallest differences of time. One that has well digested his knowledge, both of books and men, has little enjoyment but in the company of a few select companions. He feels too sensibly how much all the rest of mankind fall short of the notions which he has entertained; and his affections being thus confined within a narrow circle, no wonder he carries them further than if they were more general and undistinguished. The gaiety and frolic of a bottle companion improve, with him, into a solid friendship; and the ardors of a youthful appetite become an elegant passion,

DESCRIPTION OF THE COLISEUM.-FORSYTH.

A COLOSSAL taste gave rise to the Coliseum. Here, indeed, gigantic dimensions were necessary; for though hundreds could enter at once, and fifty thousand find seats, the space was still insufficient for Rome, and the crowd for the morning games began at

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