arguments and illustrations; the peroration should be the concentrated sum of all you have sought to urge, clad in glowing colours, appealing to the moral sentiments, the human feelings, and even, where the occasion permits, to the passions, of your hearers. Its object is to excite them to a reception of your argument, by exalting their conceptions of the importance of your theme, or to move them to action in accordance with the purposes for which you are addressing them. Whatever you say should have one of these definite designs. Mere fine words are impertinences.

Then, a Peroration should grow in power and brilliancy as it advances, until it culminates in a climax at the close. Having once soared in it, you must not sink again to the level of plain prose, but maintain the stream of poetry or passion, with a gradual swell, if you can, but evenly at the least, reserving your most striking thought and powerful language for the conclusion, as your last words will be likely to live longest in the memory.

In this, as in all the parts of a speech, employ the simplest language, for not only is it usually the grandest, but, being intelligible to all, it best attains your purpose with all, and wins many supporters who would have been insensible to the language of scholarship. There is no emotion that cannot be more forcibly expressed, no narrative that cannot be more vividly painted, in our Saxon vernacular, than in the best classical dialect of the library. Avoid also long and involved sentences; they are perplexing to a reader, but to a listener they are unintelligible. The speech that is most effective with an audience is that spoken in short sentences, constructed in the form of uttered, not in that of written,

thoughts each sentence complete in itself, and containing a single proposition.

A formal peroration is not necessary even to a formal oration, although it is so great an ornament that, if you have time to prepare it, you should on no account omit to do so. But, better far to have none than an imperfect one. Do it thoroughly or not at all, and I repeat, do not trust it to the impulse of the moment. If you have not come prepared with it, dispense with it altogether, and avoid anything like a pretence of it in speeches that are not orations-but the utterance of the thoughts of the moment on a subject suddenly presented.

For such cases you must acquire another art, much more difficult than you would think it to be-the Art of Sitting Down.

How few speakers have mastered this! How few know when to stop, or how to stop! How often do we see those who have spoken well mar the effect of all that has gone before by an unhappy ending. They wind up feebly, or, which is worse, they do not wind up at all. They appear to be coming to a close, and just when we expect them to sit down, they start off again upon some new path, and wander about drearily, and, indeed, repeat this process many times, to the sore trial of the patience of the audience, and withal are further than ever from the end they seek. Strive to avoid such a calamity. Better any defect at the close, than a protracted ending. If you have not got up a formal climax, content yourself with stopping when you have said what you have to say, even although it may not be with the flourish you desire. If you do not win a burst of applause, you will give no offence. You will obtain credit for good sense, at least, if not for eloquence; and certainly the former is the

more useful faculty for the vast majority of purposes for which the Art of Speaking is required to be exercised in the business of life. Even with professional orators, such as statesmen and lawyers, for once that a formal oration is demanded, a sensible speech is required twenty times.

LETTER XXXVII.

THE ORATORY OF THE PULPIT.

HAVING described to you the general form of a speech, how it should be spoken, and what faults you should endeavour to avoid in framing and speaking it, I turn now to the special features of special kinds of oratory; for each one has characteristics of its own which demand the special study of those who will be required to practise it, in addition to the studies of oratory as an art, to which I have endeavoured, in the preceding letters, to direct your attention.

The principal forms of oratory, whose special characteristics I propose to describe, are the oratory of the Pulpit, of the Bar, of the Senate, of the Platform, and of the Table. Of these only three are of immediate interest to you; another may, I hope, some day be required; the first will be a not uninteresting or uninstructive study, if only as assisting your actual judgment of the merits of popular preachers. But these letters would have been incomplete had the oratory of the Pulpit found no place here.

The Pulpit orator differs from all other orators in

this, that he is not open to answer, and therefore has it all his own way, and that he speaks, not merely as a man offering his own opinions to other men, but as one who bears a message from a higher authority than his

own.

Moreover he may assume that his congregation are in substantial agreement with him, or they would not be gathered there; consequently he has no need to prove his title to them. He is before them of his own right, they acknowledge his mission to be their teacher, they must hear him out, or at least sit him out; neither dissent nor disapprobation can be expressed; the most transparent fallacies will pass unchallenged, the feeblest arguments provoke no reply.

At the first survey of this unique position, nothing would seem to be more favourable for oratory. More than this, the subjects of which he treats are of the mightiest moment to all his hearers; the highest and the humblest have an equal interest in the world against whose temptations he warns, and the heaven to whose joys he invites them. There is not a human weakness nor virtue, not a passion nor a sentiment, that does not come legitimately within the sphere of his discourse; whatever is nearest and dearest to us, whatever we most desire or most dread, all that is known and all that is unknown, the busy present and the great dark future, are his to wield at his will, for winning, for deterring, for attracting, or for terrifying. He can persuade, or excite, or awe, his hearers at his pleasure; his theme prompts to poetry; he may resort to all wonders of Nature and Art for illustrations, and, if he comprehends the grandeur of his mission, he has the stimulus of consciousness that, with God's blessing, the words he utters will save souls.