[Illustration:  PLATE IV.]

Though school-boys, therefore, ought not to be taught the finesses of acting, they should as much as possible be accustomed to speak such speeches as require a full, open, animated pronunciation:  for which purpose, they should be confined chiefly to orations, odes, and such single speeches of plays, as are in the declamatory and vehement style.  But as there are many scenes of plays, which are justly reckoned among the finest compositions of the language, some of these may be adopted among the upper class of boys, and those more particularly who have the best deportment:  for action in scenes will be found much more difficult than in single speeches.  And here it will be necessary to give some additional instructions respecting action, as a speaker who delivers himself singly to an auditory, and one who addresses another speaker in view of an auditory, are under very different predicaments.  The first has only one object to address, the last has two:—­For if a speaker on the stage were to address the person he speaks to, without any regard to the point of view in which he stands with respect to the audience, he would be apt to turn his back on them, and to place himself in such positions as would be highly ungraceful and disgusting.  When a scene, therefore, is represented, it is necessary that the two personages who speak should form a sort of picture, and place themselves in a position agreeable to the laws of perspective.  In order to do this, it will be necessary that each of them should stand obliquely, and chiefly make use of one hand:  that is, supposing the stage or platform where they stand, to be a quadrangle, each speaker should respectively face that corner of it next to the audience, and use that hand and rest upon that leg which is next to the person he speaks to, and which is farthest from the audience.  This disposition is absolutely necessary to form any thing like a picturesque grouping of objects, and without it, that is, if both speakers use the right hand, and stand exactly fronting each other, the impropriety will be palpable, and the spectacle disgusting.

It need scarcely be noted, that the speaker in a scene uses that hand which is next the audience, he ought likewise to poize his body upon the same leg:  this is almost an invariable rule in action:  the hand should act on that side only on which the body bears.  Good actors and speakers may sometimes depart from this rule, but such only will know when to do it with propriety.

Occasion may be taken in the course of the scene to change sides.  One speaker at the end of an impassioned speech, may cross over to the place of the other, while the latter at the same moment crosses over to the place of the former.  This, however, must be done with great care, and so as to keep the back from being turned to the audience:  But if this transition be performed adroitly, it will have a very good effect in varying the position of the speakers,