ACTOR

It must not be confounded with motion, which relates to thfe mobility of a single figure. Action must be true, simple, natural, and connected; and its unity must be preserved, or the action is weakened. Action. In the Military Art, an engagement oi battle between opposing forces; hence partial actions, general actions, . Action. In Oratory, the accommodating or suiting of the countenance, voice, and gesture of the speaker to the matter to be spoken or delivered. This serr no corp or is, as Cicero calls it, has always been regarded as a most important part of oratory. The ancient masters laid the greatest stre upon it. Demosthenes said that action was " the beginning, the middle, and the end of the orator's office; " and Cicero admits, that " what an orator says is not of so much importance as how he s.ays it." Hamlet's advice to the players should be kept in mind by those who desire to excel in this art. Action. In Poetry, an event either real or imaginary, forming the subject of an epic poem or play, . Thus the wrath oi Achilles forms the action or subject of the Iliad, the wanderings of JEneas the action or subject of the ^neid, . Action. In the Stock Market in Paris, and other places in France, action is the name given to a share of the capital stock of a joint stock company. Action. In Mechanics, denotes sometimes the effort which a body or power exerts against another body, sometimes the effect or motion resulting from such effort. Mechanical action is exerted either by percu ion or by pre ure; in the former case the effect is instantaneous, in the latter it is continued. In all cases of mechanical action, the effect of the acting body is resisted in an equal degree by the inertia of the body acted upon, which resistance is termed reaction; and it is an axiom in mechanics, that action and reaction are always equal, and exerted in opposite directions. Thus, in driving a nail with a hammer, tlie stroke acts against the face of the hammer exactly with the same energy as against the head of the nail; and in pre ing the hand against a stone, the pre ure on the hand and on the stone is precisely the same. ACTlONS, in Law, are real, personal, or mixed. Actions, real or mixed, for the recovery of real property, are very numerous, but so prolix and difficult that they are almost wholly abandoned as a means of obtaining justice, and questions relating to title to land are now tried by the simple form of ejectment. The only case in which they have been resorted to, of late years, has been when, from the shorter period to which the action of ejectment was limited {see Limitations), a right survived for the purpose of the former, which was barred as to the latter. But the recent acts on this subject have much reduced the distinction. Actions in common use, i. e. personal actions, are also divided into actions of contract and actions of tort, and into local and transitory, in the former of which the place or county where the cause of the action arose must be accurately alleged, for the purpose of the trial taking place there. This allegation is termed the Venue of the action, from the Norman-French visne, vicinetum, neighbourhood, because the jury impanelled to try an action came originally from the neighbourhood. In the latter it is immaterial. Actions of tort to the person, and all actions of contract, are generally transitory, but under certain circmnstances the latter may be local. [s. 25]