The annual prize speaking for the Boylston prizes is one of the most interesting public exercises during the academic year. This year the speaking promises to be of the highest order of merit. Although some of the Boston papers last year criticised quite severely the "lifeless action and more lifeless diction" of the speakers as they were pleased to express it, this criticism arose from a mistaken idea of the true art of elocution, gained, perhaps, from a too great familiarity with the old style back country college oration. Mr. Jones's method in teaching is now beginning to bear up its fruits. His intention to inculcate naturalness both in voice and gesture, has led him to introduce reforms into the modes of declamation which have hitherto shown themselves to be productive of the highest success. This evening will again see those methods brought before the public. The exercises will, if we can judge from the preliminary selection of speakers, and the selections for declamation, prove equal to those of past years. Greater interest in elocution has never flourished in the college than to-day, and such a contest as the prize-speaking promises to be is a fit close of the labors of both students and instructor.