We must not judge so unfavourably of eloquence as to reckon it only
a frivolous art that a declaimer uses to impose upon the weak imagina.
tion of the multitude and to serve his own ends. It is a very serious art,
designed to instruct people; to suppress their passions and reform their
manners; to support the laws; to direct public councils, and to make
men good and happy.-FENELON

LI

NEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS, CLIFF-STREET.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1841, by

HARPER & BROTHERS,

In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-York.

35401

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE Abbé (afterward Cardinal) Maury was one of the most distinguished members of the National Assembly of France at the period of the Revolution. His "courage, fortitude, magnanimity, and forbearance," as well as his eloquence, are celebrated in terms of the warmest praise by Mr. Burke, in his celebrated letter to a member of the National Assembly. The reflections of such a writer on an art which he had studied and practised with signal success, must be interesting and instructive. They are thus characterized by an able and judicious critic: "The work in question is decidedly the best which has yet appeared upon the subject, and is, as it were, an excellent emblem of the oratory on which it chiefly dwells: admirable in its arrangement, full of good sense in much of its detail, with a felicitous and judicious application of the principles of Cicero and Quintilian to his subject, but at times flashy in style."*

The edition now given to the public is from a * Quar. Review, vol. xxix.. p 288.