my following discourse; THE TONGUE TO PERSUADE--as judicious,
preachers recommend those virtues, which they think their several
audiences want the most; such as truth and continence, at court;
disinterestedness, in the city; and sobriety, in the country.

You must certainly, in the course of your little experience, have felt
the different effects of elegant and inelegant speaking. Do you not
suffer, when people accost you in a stammering or hesitating manner, in
an untuneful voice, with false accents and cadences; puzzling and
blundering through solecisms, barbarisms, and vulgarisms; misplacing even
their bad words, and inverting all method? Does not this prejudice you
against their matter, be it what it will; nay, even against their
persons? I am sure it does me. On the other hand, do you not feel
yourself inclined, prepossessed, nay, even engaged in favor of those who
address you in the direct contrary manner? The effects of a correct and
adorned style of method and perspicuity, are incredible toward
persuasion; they often supply the want of reason and argument, but, when
used in the support of reason and argument, they are irresistible. The
French attend very much to the purity and elegance of their style, even
in common conversation; insomuch that it is a character to say of a man
'qu'il narre bien'. Their conversations frequently turn upon the
delicacies of their language, and an academy is employed in fixing it.
The 'Crusca', in Italy, has the same object; and I have met with very few
Italians, who did not speak their own language correctly and elegantly.
How much more necessary is it for an Englishman to do so, who is to speak
it in a public assembly, where the laws and liberties of his country are
the subjects of his deliberation? The tongue that would persuade there,
must not content itself with mere articulation. You know what pains
Demosthenes took to correct his naturally bad elocution; you know that he
declaimed by the seaside in storms, to prepare himself for the noise of
the tumultuous assemblies he was to speak to; and you can now judge of
the correctness and elegance of his style. He thought all these things of
consequence, and he thought right; pray do you think so too? It is of the
utmost consequence to you to be of that opinion. If you have the least
defect in your elocution, take the utmost care and pains to correct it.
Do not neglect your style, whatever language you speak in, or whoever you
speak t