The well-known school book publishers of Philadelphia, THOMAS, COWPERTHWAIT, & CO., have just published a large duodecimo of five hundred and fifty-eight pages. _The Standard Speaker, containing Exercises in Prose and Poetry, for Declamation in Schools, Academies, Lyceums, and Colleges, newly Translated or Compiled from celebrated Orators, Authors, and Popular Debaters, Ancient and Modern; a Treatise on Oratory and Elocution; and Notes Explanatory and Biographical_--by EPES SARGENT. This book bears abundant evidences of editorial research and labor. The original translations would form a volume of respectable size, and they are all strikingly adapted to the purpose of elocutionary practice. Some passages of fervid eloquence from Mirabeau, Robespierre and Victor Hugo are given. Ancient eloquence is also well represented in new and spirited translations. The department of British Parliamentary oratory, shows extracts from Pym, Chatham, Barre, Wilkes, Thurlow, Grattan, Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, Curran, Canning, Brougham, O'Connell, Sheil, Macaulay, Croker, Talfourd, Palmerston, Cobden, and many others, and in nine instances out of ten the exercises are compiled originally for this volume. The American department is quite rich, and while the old masterpieces of Patrick Henry, Ames, Randolph, Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Hayne, and others are retained, a large number of fresh and striking pieces are introduced from the eloquence of Congress and the American lecture room. In its dramatic and poetical novelties the work is of course amply supplied. Mr. Sargent's editorial experience here has enabled him to add much that other compilers have entirely overlooked. In the adaptation of the exercises, great discrimination has been shown. They are of the right length, pithy, and calculated to engage the attention of the young. A new and valuable feature of the work is the introduction of notes, biographical and explanatory. In the instances of authors not contemporary the dates of their birth and death are given. An introductory treatise, comprising much practical information on the subject of elocution, gives completeness to the volume. Such is the Standard Speaker; and while it will be found to justify its title in the retention of all the standard specimens of rhetoric suitable for its purposes, it presents in its large proportion of new exercises of a high character, fresh and enduring claims to popularity. * * * * *