THE SELECT ACADEMIC SPEAKER; CONTAINING A Large Number of New and Appropriate Pieces, FOR PROSE DECLAMATION, POETICAL RECITATION, CAREFULLY SELECTED FROM THE BEST AUTHORS, AMERICAN, ARRANGED IN A RHETORICAL ORDER, AND ADAPTED TO THE SCHOOLS, ACADEMIES, AND COLLEGES. BY HENRY COPPÉE, A. M., PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA, AUTHOR OF "ELEMENTS PHILADELPHIA: PUBLISHED BY E. H. BUTLER & CO. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by E. H. BUTLER & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, in and for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. PREFAC E. THE great extent and variety of English and American literature, is a sufficient warrant for publishing a new book of extracts from their valuable stores. Add to this the importance which literature has attained in this age; the new authors of merit and genius who are almost daily appearing, and the correspondent increase in our standard literature, and what was before simply warrantable, becomes almost a necessity. Without disparagement of many excellent books already published, it must be said that we have delayed too long upon the hackneyed though beautiful periods of a few favorite orators or authors; and that those acquainted with the wants of academies and colleges, know how difficult it is, in any such work, to find what young speakers, and their hearers, alike crave,—something new. Such is the experience of the compiler of this volume, an experience of years in the suggestion and selection of pieces for declamation by students: and this has prompted the publication of the present volume. To meet these wants, he offers the following as among the claims of "The Select Academic Speaker":— The selections are with few exceptions new: they have not |