Intimately connected with the subject of delivery is that of Action. Oratorical action has been defined to be the just and elegant adapta tion of every part of the body to the nature and import of the subject on which we are speaking. As every man who feels his subject will necessarily have some action, it is of consequence that it should be graceful and significant. The first point to be attained is to avoid awkward habits, such as resting the chief weight of the body first on one foot and then on the other, swinging to and fro, jerking forward the upper part of the body on every emphatic word, keeping the elbows, pinioned to the sides, and sawing the air with one hand with one unvaried and ungraceful motion. As for the attainment of excel lences, snore specific rules must be sought for in professed treatises on the subject, but the following general directious will be found to embrace much that is useful : " Keep the trunk of the body erect ; let your hands be at liberty ; feel your subject, and the action will come ; recollecting at the same time that the right hand is essentially the instrument of action, and that the left should be used only as subordinate to it."
As gesture is used for the illustration and enforcement of language, so it should be limited in its application to such words and passages as admit of or require it. A judicious speaker will not only adapt the general style and manner of his action to the subject, the place, and the occasion, but even when he allows himself the greatest latitude, he will reserve his gesture, or at least the force and ornament of it, for those parts of his discourse for which he also reserves his boldest thoughts and his most brilliant expressions.
(On the subject of action very minute directions will be found in Austin's Chironomia ; Chapman's Music of the English. Language, Walker's Elements of Elocution ; Richard Cull's .Acoustics and Logic in their Application to Reading aloud, 1355; and James Hunt's Manual of the Philosophy of Voice and Speech, especially in Relation to the English Language and the Art of Public Speaking, 1859.)