While no effort has been made to search for novelties, great care
has been taken to secure selections which, while of pure literary
merit, are especially adapted for drill in the several steps of
progress in reading. The power developed in the student through
carefully directed drill on these selections will enable him to
illuminate whatever other literature he may care to interpret. The
arrangement of the selections in small divisions or paragraphs has
been made for convenience in the work of the class room.

The "Evolution of Expression" does not offer art criteria by which
the work of an orator is to be measured; it presents rather a
system of education by which one may attain the plane of art in
expression. The teacher or student who desires a formulation of
laws which afford a standard of art criticism is referred to the
four volumes of "The Perfective Laws of Art," the text-book
succeeding the "Evolution of Expression."

The author wishes to express his sincere gratitude to George N.
Morang & Co., to Bobbs-Merrill Company, and to Houghton, Mifflin &
Co., for their courtesy in allowing him to reprint in this volume
selections from their publications.





THE WHOLE.

THE COLOSSAL PERIOD.