Page [unnumbered]
PRACTICAL PIECES FOR SPEAKING; CONSISTING OF ORATIONS, ADDRESSES, EXHORTATIONS FROM THE PULPIT, PLEADINGS AT THE BAR, SUBLIME DESCRIPTIONS, DEBATES, DECLAMATIONS, GRAVE AND HUMOR|OUS DIALOGUES, POETRY, &c. VARIOUSLY INTERSPERSED.
EXTRACT FROM AN ORATION ON ELO|QUENCE, PRONOUNCED AT HARVARD UNIVER|SITY, ON COMMENCEMENT DAY, 1794.
THE excellence, utility, and importance of ELO|QUENCE; its origin, progress, and present state; and its superior claim to the particular attention of Columbia's free-born sons, will exercise for a few mo|ments the patience of this learned, polite, and respected assembly.
Speech and reason are the characteristics, the glory, and the happiness of man. These are the pillars which support the fair fabric of eloquence; the foundation, up|on which is erected the most magnificent edifice, that genius could design, or art construct. To cultivate elo|quence, then, is to improve the noblest faculties of our nature, the richest talents with which we are intrusted. A more convincing proof of the dignity and importance of our subject need not, cannot be advanced.
The benevolent design and the beneficial effects of eloquence, evince its great superiority over every other art, which ever exercised the ingenuity of man. To instruct, to persuade, to please; these are its objects.