ect; which may be full of
faults, yet masters the attention by its nature and sincerity. This is
precisely the manner of the extemporaneous speaker--in whom the
countenance reflects the emotions of the soul, and the tone of voice is
tuned to the feelings of the heart, rising and falling with the subject,
as in conversation, without the regular and harmonious modulation of the
practised reader.

In making these and similar remarks, it is true that I am thinking of
the best extemporaneous speakers, and that all cannot be such. But it
ought to be recollected at the same time, that all cannot be excellent
_readers_; that those who speak ill, would probably read still worse;
and that therefore those who can attain to no eminence as speakers, do
not on that account fail of the advantages of which I speak, since they
escape at least the unnatural monotony of bad reading; than which
nothing is more earnestly to be avoided.

Every man utters himself with greater animation and truer emphasis in
speaking, than he does, or perhaps can do, in reading. Hence it happens
that we can listen longer to a tolerable speaker, than to a good reader.
There is an indescribable something in the natural tones of him who is
expressing earnestly his present thoughts, altogether foreign from the
drowsy uniformity of the man that reads. I once heard it well observed,
that the least animated mode of communicating thoughts to others, is the
reading from a book the composition of another; the next in order is the
reading one's own composition; the next is delivering one's own
composition memoriter; and the most animated of all is the uttering
one's own thoughts as they rise fresh in his mind. Very few can give the
spirit to another's writings which they communicate to their own, or can
read their own with the spirit, with which they spontaneously express
their thoughts. We have all witnessed this in conversation; when we have
listened with interest to long harangues from persons, who tire us at
once if they begin to read. It is verified at the bar, and in the
legislature, where orators maintain the unflagging attention of hearers
for a long period, when they could not have read the same speech without
producing intolerable fatigue. It is equally verified in the history of
the pulpit; for those who are accustomed to the reading of sermons, are
for the most part impatient even of able discourses, when they extend
beyond the half hour's length; while very