pealing against established order and acknowledged tradition, his speech was necessarily a popular appeal for a strange and unwelcome cause, and the condition of its success was that it should both charm and rouse the hearer, while, under cover of the fascination, the orator unfolded his argument and urged his plea. This condition the genius of the orator instinctively perceived, and it determined the character of his discourse.

He faced his audience with a tranquil mien, and a beaming aspect that was never dimmed. He spoke, and in the measured cadence of his quiet voice there was intense feeling, but no declamation, no passionate appeal, no su perficial and feigned emotion. It was simple colloquy-a gentleman conversing. Unconsciously and surely the ear and heart were charmed. How was it done? Ah! how did Mozart do it, how Raphael? The secret of the rose's sweetness, of the bird's ecstacy, of the sunset's glory-that is the secret of genius and of eloquence. What was heard, what was seen, was the form of noble manhood, the courteous and self-possessed tone, the flow of modulated speech, sparkling with matchless richness of illustration, with apt allusion, and happy anecdote, and historic parallel, with wit and pitiless invective, with melodious pathos, with stinging satire, with crackling epigram and limpid humor, like the bright ripples that play around the sure and steady prow of the resistless ship. Like an illuminated vase of odors, he glowed with concentrated and perfumed fire. The divine energy of his conviction utterly possessed him, and his

"Pure and eloquent blood Spoke in his cheek, and so distinctly wrought, That one might almost say his body thought."

Was it Pericles swaying the Athenian multitude? Was it Apollo breathing the music of the morning from his lips?

It was an American patriot, a modern son of liberty, with a soul as firm and as true as was ever consecreted to unselfish duty, pleading with the American conscience for the chained and speechless victims of American inhumanity. -GEORGE WM. CURTIS.

THE CHARACTER OF OUR SAVIOUR.

THE character of Jesus is perfectly original. It is unlike every thing which had ever appeared in the world. There had, indeed, been eminent persons who had assumed the office of instructors of mankind in religion and virtue. But Jesus differed widely from them all in the nature of his doctrine, in his mode of instruction, in his habits of life, and manner of conversation, in the character which he assumed, in the dignity of his conduct, in the authority of his language, in the proofs which he exhibited of a divine commission, and in the manner in which he left those proofs to make their proper impression upon the mind without himself drawing the genuine conclusions.

He claimed to be the Messiah, the distinguished personage foretold by the prophets, and expected by the Jews. But the form was totally different from that in which he was expected to appear, from that which an impostor would have worn, which all impostors did actually put on, and which the writer of a fictitious narrative would naturally have represented. He was expected to appear in all the splendor of a prince and a conqueror. He actually ap peared under the form of a pauper and a servant.

The character which he thus assumed, so entirely new, so utterly unexpected, and in many respects so very offensive to his countrymen, he sustained with the most becoming propriety. The circumstances in which he was placed

were numerous, various, and dissimilar to each other; some of them were very critical and difficult; nevertheless, upon all occasions he maintains the character of a prophet of God, of a teacher of truth and righteousness, with the most perfect consistency and dignity; in no instance does he forget his situation; upon no occasion, in no emergency, however sudden or unexpected, under no provocation, however irritating, is he surprised or betrayed to do any thing unworthy of himself, or unbecoming the sublime. and sacred mission with which he was charged.

To support the consistency of a fictitious character through a considerable work, even though the character is drawn from common life, is a mark of no ordinary capacity and judgment. But to adhere from beginning to end to truth of delineation in a character perfectly original, in circumstances various and new, and especially where supernatural agency is introduced, is characteristic of genius of the highest order. Attempts to represent a perfect character have failed in the hands of the greatest masters. Defects are visible in the portraits of the philosopher and the hero, notwithstanding the masterly penciling and exquisite coloring of Plato and Xenophon. But the obscure and illiterate evangelists have succeeded to perfection. Not one writer only, but four. Not in describing different characters, in which they would not have been liable to have interfered with each other, but in the representation of the same unblemished and extraordinary character, to which each has contributed something which the rest have omitted, and yet all are perfectly consistent and harmonious. The unity of character is invariably preserved.

Admit that this character actually existed; allow that there was such a person as Jesus of Nazareth, and that the historians describe nothing but what they saw and heard, and to which they were daily witnesses, and the wonder ceases; all is natural and easy; the narrators were honest

and competent witnesses, and Jesus was a true prophet of the Most High. Deny these facts, and the history of the evangelists instantly swells into a prodigy of genius,-a sublime fiction of the imagination, which surpasses all the most celebrated productions of human wit. The illiterate Galileans eclipse all the renowned historians, philosophers, and poets of Greece and Rome. But who will affirm, or who could believe this, of these simple, artless, unaffected writers? It is incredible, it is impossible, that these plain and unlettered men should have invented so extraordinary, so highly finished a romance. Their narrative, therefore, must be true. The prophet of Nazareth is a real person, and his divine legation is undeniable. I know not how this argument may appear to others, but to me it carries the force of almost mathematical demonstration. I can not conceive a proof which can be more satisfactory to a candid, an intelligent, and well informed mind.

THE HUMAN VOICE.

I GRIEVE to say it, but our people, I think, have not generally agreeable voices. The marrowy organisms, with skins that shed water like the backs of ducks, with smooth surfaces neatly padded beneath, and velvet linings to their singing pipes, are not so common among us as that other pattern of humanity, with angular outlines and plain surfaces, arid integuments, hair like the fibrous covering of a cocoanut in gloss and suppleness as well as color, and voices at once thin and strenuous,-acidulous enough to produce effervescence with alkalis, and stridulous enough. to sing duetts with the katydids. I think our conversational soprano, as sometimes overheard in the cars, arising from a group of young persons, who may have taken the

train at one of our great industrial centers, for instance,young persons of the female sex, we will say, who have bustled in full dressed, engaged in loud, strident speech, and who, after free discussion, have fixed on two or more double seats, which having secured, they proceed to eat apples and hand round daguerreotypes,-I say, I think the conversational soprano, heard under these circumstances, would not be among the allurements the old enemy would put in requisition, were he getting up a new temptation of St. Anthony.

There are sweet voices among us, we all know, and voices not musical, it may be, to those who hear them for the first time, yet sweeter to us than any we shall hear until we listen to some warbling angel in the overture to that eternity of blissful harmonies we hope to enjoy. But why should I tell lies? If my friends love me, it is because I try to tell the truth. I never heard but two voices in my life that frightened me by their sweetness. They made me feel as if there might be constituted a creature with such a chord in her voice to some string in another's soul, that, if she but spoke, we would leave all and follow her, though it were into the jaws of Erebus. Our only chance to keep our wits is, that there are so few natural chords between others' voices and this string in our souls, and that those which at first may have jarred a little, by-and-by come into harmony with it. But I tell you this You may call the story of Ulysses and the Sirens a fable, but what will you say to Mario and the poor lady who followed him?

is no fiction.

Whose were those two voices that bewitched me so? They both belonged to German women. One was a chambermaid, not otherwise fascinating. The key of my room at a certain great hotel was missing, and this Teutonic maiden was summoned to give information respecting it. The simple soul was evidently not long from her mother