lision with persons. What would Danton have been without his cannon voice. When Mirabeau spoke, his voice was like the voice of destiny. He seemed as if moulded to be the orator of nature. The wise orator will as much attend to the exercise which gives him health, as to the exercise which gives him skill. We go to the oratorio to hear sublime sentiments set to the music of art; we go to the orator to hear them enforced by the music of nature. Oratory is the personal ascendancy of opinion. Without physical fascination it descends to mere eloquence of words. Intellect moves the scholar only. Oratory moves

the illiterate to noble deeds.

When traveling expenses were the only payment I received for my lectures, I used to walk to the place of their delivery. On my walk from Birmingham to Worcester, a distance of twenty-six miles, it was my custom to recite on the way portions of my intended address. In the early part of my walk my voice was clear, and thoughts ready; but toward the end I could scarcely articulate, or retain the thread of my discourse. If I lectured the same evening, as sometimes happened, I spoke without connection or force. The reason was that I had exhausted my strength on the way. One Saturday I walked from Sheffield to Huddersfield to deliver on the Sunday two anniversary lectures. It was my first appearance there, and I was ambitious to acquit myself well. But in the morning I was utterly unable to do more than talk half inaudibly and quite incoherently. In the evening I was tolerable, but my voice was weak. My annoyance was excessive. I was a paradox to myself. My power seemed to come and go by some eccentric law of its own. I did not find out till years

after that the utter exhaustion of my strength had exhausted the powers of speech and thought, and that entire repose instead of entire fatigue should have been the preparation for public speaking.

CHAPTER XIV.

ELOQUENCE.

"THE histories of old times, and even of not very distant ones, acquaint us with the wondrous effects of eloquence upon whole multitudes, carried away to far crusades by the oratory of a hermit; and even upon grave political assemblies and parliaments, which an able speaker could twist, turn, and persuade according to fantasy, so that majorities hung upon his words. There is no such things now-a-days. Audiences are neither so pliable nor so soft; and eloquence, however mighty, fails in carrying convictions by storm. Perhaps this is the reason why so few public men of the present day fall into the mistake of striving or affecting to be eloquent.

"Persuasion, in fact, is now a long-winded and tedious task. The winning of an audience, of a party; the inculcating an idea, the disseminating it; the winning conviction first, and getting up the enthusiasm after, is now a slow work, almost like the dropping of a seed, and patiently waiting till it grows, in order to foster it, water it, protect its growth, and enjoy its expansion into the stem and the flower; such is the political eloquence of modern times. He who

discovered it, and who practices it, is Richard Cobden."*

This is a fair history of modern eloquence; but it is hardly true that Mr. Cobden "discovered" it. He has been its greatest illustrator, but it has grown with the growth and commercial character of the nation. Long before Cobden's time, the magic fancy of Burke, the glittering sophistries of Pitt, the thundering declamation of Fox, were all alike founded upon the general and lasting truth of things-upon profound views-upon the inexhaustible resources of the understanding. The king of transcendentalists has said that "Eloquence must first be plainest narrative or statement; afterward it may warm itself until it exhales symbols of every kind, and speaks only through the most poetic forms; but at first and last it must still be, at bottom, a statement of facts. All audiences soon ask, 'What is he driving at?' and if this man does not stand for anything, he will be deserted." This writer has given us the most eloquent version of eloquence extant. The substance of his views is as follows: "First, then, the orator must be a substantial person; then the first of his special weapons is, doubtless, power of statement; to have the fact and to know how to tell it. Next, is that method or power of arrangement which constitutes the genius and efficacy of all remarkable men. Next to this is the power of imagery. Nothing so works on the human mind, barbarous or civilized, as a new symbol. The power of dealing with facts, of illuminating them, of sinking them by ridicule or diversion of mind, rapid generalization, humor, wit, and pathos, all these are keys which the orator holds; yet these * "Daily News," No. 522. + Emerson.

foreign gifts are not eloquence, and do often hinder a man from the attainment of it. To come to the heart of the mystery, the truly eloquent is an excited man with power to communicate his excitement. Arm a man with all the talents just enumerated, so potent and so charming, and he has equal power to ensnare and mislead, as to instruct and guide you. A spectacle we may go round the world to see, is a man who, in the prosecution of great designs, has absolute command of the means of representing his ideas, keeps the grasp of a lion on his materials, and the eye of a king to dispose them right, never for an instant light minded or insane. But, in the great triumph of the orator, we must have something more; we must have a certain reinforcing of the man from the events, so as to have the double force of reason and destiny. The eloquent man is not he who has beautiful speech, but he who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief, agitating and tearing him, perhaps almost bereaving him of the power of articulation. Then it rushes from him, in short abrupt screams, in torrents of meaning. The possession of his mind by the subject is so entire, that it insures an ardor of expressions which is the ardor of nature itself; and so is the ardor of the greatest force, and inimitable by any art. Add to this a certain regnant calmness, which in all the tumult never utters a premature syllable, and keeps the secret of his means and method, and the orator stands before the people as a demoniacal power, to whose miracles they have no key. Youth should lay the foundation of eloquence, not on popular arts, but on character and honesty. Let the sun look on nothing nobler than he, let him speak of the right, let him not borrow the language

of idle gentlemen or scholars, much less that of sensualists, absorbed in money or appetite; but let him communicate every secret of strength and good-will communicated to his own heart, to animate men to better hopes; let him speak for the absent, defend the friendless and defamed, the poor,. the slave, the prisoner, and the lost. Let him look upon opposition as opportunity; he is one who cannot be defeated or put down. Let him feel that it is not the people who are in fault for not being convinced, but he who cannot convince them. He has not only to neutralize their opposition-that were a small thing-but to convert them into apostles and publishers of the same wisdom."

The only alteration I would make in this account is this: Instead of making eloquence a thing of degree, which confounds eloquence with oratory, I would mark the distinction. Eloquence belongs merely to words, oratory to the passion which fires. them. The eloquence of intellect is that of speech, and sense, and symbol; but the oratory which so seldom greets the ears of men is the eloquence of the man. The philosopher only reaches the scholar, the orator reaches the mob. The philosopher talks the rhetoric of the schools, the orator the language of nature; he speaks heart words-that language which is wide as the world, which reaches humanity, which all nations understand, which the deaf and dumb. can feel the language of gratitude, of gesture-that which moves us on canvas, breathes on marble. It is the burning word of passion. It knows no high, no low, no rich, no poor, no citizen, no alien, no foreigner, no crime, no color. Savage and civilized, learned and illiterate, (the accidents of condition,)