16 



PREFACE. 



is required to impart. He must have a familiarity with all its 

 details, such as can only be acquired by long experience in 

 teaching. The same experience can alone make him know 

 the difficulties of comprehension which his hearers will feel, 

 and render him familiar with those means of illustration and 

 exposition which will give him the easiest, surest, and most 

 expeditious avenues to their understandings. He must pos- 

 sess such command of his subject, and such fluency of lan- 

 guage, as will render him altogether independent of written 

 memoranda or notes, and enable him to speak directly from 

 his thoughts and his understanding, and not merely repeat 

 words which he has previously committed to memory. Clear- 

 ness and order must be conspicuous in his reasonings, and his 

 illustrations must not only be apposite, but adapted to the 

 character, capacity, and acquirements of his audience. He 

 must be endowed by nature with voice sufficiently powerful, 

 and articulation sufficiently distinct, to render every syllable he 

 utters easily and immediately audible to the most remote of 

 his hearers, and his manner and appearance must be exempt 

 from any peculiarities calculated to excite repugnance. Such 

 a teacher will be sure to command success with a popular 

 audience, and his labors will be beneficial to his hearers and 

 profitable to himself. 



That, in the delivery of the lectures comprised in these vol- 

 umes, I was enabled to present this combination of qualifica- 

 tions I do not pretend ; but I can state, with perfect truth, that 

 ever since I commenced my duties as a public teacher, it has 

 been my aim to acquire these qualifications to the utmost ex- 

 tent to which my natural gifts enabled me to attain them, and 

 it is to the diligence with which these endeavors were directed, 

 and the perseverance with which they were continued, that I 

 ascribe the success which has attended my efforts as a popu- 



