ning his lips, great thoughts will come to them as Goethe said that his best thoughts came, "like singing birds, the free children of God, crying, 'Here we are!"

"Josh Billings," in describing his experience with a boil, said that at first he knew he had a boil, but that after two days he knew the boil had him. It is not enough that the speaker have a subject, however momentous, but the subject must have him, if he would storm the hearts of his hearers. Lord Erskine has well said that intellect alone, however exalted, without irritable sensibility, would be only like an immense magazine of powder, if there were no such element as fire in the natural world. "It is the heart which is the spring and fountain of all eloquence." Pectus est quod facit disertum. Cicero tells us, in one of his letters, that in his early career the vehemence with which his intense interest in his themes led him to express himself, shattered his constitution; and he was obliged to spend two years in Greece, exercising in the gymnasium, before he could engage again in the struggles. of the forum. Lord Chatham said that he did not dare to speak with a state secret lurking in his mind, for in the Sibylline frenzy of his oratory he knew not what he said. John Wesley once said to his brother Charles, who wished to draw him away from a mob, in which some coarse women were scolding each other in hot billingsgate: "Stop, Charles, and learn how to preach." "I go to hear Rowland Hill," said Sheridan, "because his ideas come red-hot from the heart.".

The reason why so many preachers are unsuccessful is because they do not feel what they preach. The first element of pulpit power is a face-to-face knowledge of the truths to be driven home,-a vivid inward experience

pouring itself out in living, breathing, palpitating words. Whitefield, in accounting for the feebleness of the generality of preachers, attributed it to their coldness. They were not flames, but icicles. "I am persuaded," said he, "that they talk of an unknown and unfelt Christ; many congregations are dead because dead men are preaching to them." Betterton, the actor, said that the dullness and coldness that empty the meeting-house would empty the play-house, if the players spoke like the preachers; and he told the Lord Bishop of London that the reason why the clergy, speaking of things real, affect the people. so little, while the players, speaking of things unreal, affect them so much, is because "the actors speak of things imaginary as though they were real; the preachers too often. speak of things real as though they were imaginary." Nothing can be more true. To be eloquent, a man must be himself affected. He must be not only sincere, but deeply in earnest. The fire which he would kindle in other men's bosoms, must burn in his own heart. The magnetic force must saturate his own spirit before it will flow out upon those around him. No hypocritical expressions of feeling, however passionate in appearance, no simulated fervors, however clever the imitation, will work the magical effects of reality. The arguments which do not come from personal conviction, the words which come from no deeper source than the lips, will lack a certain indefinable but potent element which is absolutely essential to their highest effectiveness. It is not enough that a speaker utters profound or weighty truths; he must show by all possible forms of expression,-by voice, looks, and gesture, that they are truths, living, vital truths, to him. Even in discourses of a logical character, where the reasoning ap

proaches almost to mathematical demonstration, the hearers will not be impressed, they will scarcely listen with patience, unless they are persuaded that the conclusions to which the speaker would force them are the deliberate, solemn convictions of his own mind.

The orator needs to remember that the communication of thought and feeling from mind to mind is not a process which depends on a proper selection of words only. Language is only one of the media through which moral convictions and impressions are conveyed from the speaker to the hearer. There is another and more spiritual conductor, a mysterious, inexplicable moral contagion, by means of which, independently of the words, the speaker's thoughts and feelings are transmitted to his auditory. This quality, call it personal magnetism, call it a divine afflatus, call it, with Dr. Bushnell, a person's atmosphere, or what you will, is the one all-potent element which, more than any other, distinguishes the true orator. It is an intangible influence, an invisible efflux of personal power which radiates from the orator's nature like heat from iron; which attracts and holds an audience as a magnet draws and holds steel-filings; and no physical gifts, no mere intellectual discipline, no intellectual culture, however exquisite. or elaborate, will enable him to do without it. A speaker who lacks this quality may tickle the ear of his auditors, and even be praised for his eloquence; but he will never take the public mind by storm, or mould and shape men to his purposes. He may copy the very manner of other orators whose lips have been touched by the divine fire,he may reproduce the very thoughts and language which on other similar occasions have thrilled men's hearts; but the words which, when spoken by the inspired orator,

stirred all souls to their depths, will be hollow, powerless, and vapid. The rod may be the rod of an enchanter, but it is not in the magician's hand, and it will not conjure. On the other hand, one who has this quality, though unlettered and rude in speech, will often, by a few simple, earnest words welling from the depths of the soul, thrill and captivate the hearts which the most labored rhetoric has left untouched.

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We are told that one day a man went to Demosthenes, and in a style, of speaking void of vehemence and energy, that was wholly unsuited to a strong accusation, asked him to be his advocate against a person from whom, he said, he had suffered an assault. "Not you, indeed," said the orator, in a cold, indifferent tone, "you have suffered no such thing." What!" cried the man passionately, raising his voice, "have I not received those blows?" "Ay, now," replied Demosthenes, "you speak like a person that has been really injured." Lord Mansfield's great lack as a speaker was a want of feeling. He had every attribute of the orator but genius and heart. The intense earnestness of Charles James Fox is well known to all. When Sheridan, after passing a night in the House of Commons, was asked what his impression was, he said that he had been chiefly struck with the difference of manner between Fox and Lord Stormont. The latter began by declaring in a slow, solemn, drawling, nasal tone, that "when he considered the enormity and the unconstitutional tendency of the measures just proposed, he was hurried away in a torrent of passion and a whirlwind of impetuosity," pausing between every word and syllable; while the first, speaking with the rapidity of lightning, and with breathless anxiety and impa

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tience, said that "such was the magnitude, such the importance, such the vital interest of this question, that he could not help imploring, he could not help adjuring the house to come to it with the utmost coolness, the utmost deliberation." There is a whole treatise on oratory condensed in Sheridan's discriminating remark, which won him Fox's friendship. "I have heard," says Emerson, experienced counsellor say that he never feared the effect upon a jury of a lawyer who does not believe in his heart that his client ought to have a verdict. If he does not believe it, his unbelief will appear to the jury, despite of all his protestations, and will become their unbelief. This is that law whereby a work of art, of whatever kind, sets us in the same state of mind wherein the artist was when he made it. That which we do not believe, we cannot adequately say, though we may repeat the words never so often. It was this conviction which Swedenborg expressed, when he described a group of persons in the spiritual world, endeavoring in vain to articulate a proposition which they did not believe; but they could not, though they twisted and folded their lips even to indignation." It is to the honor of Daniel Webster, that if a cause which he argued was bad, he saw its infirmity so distinctly that his advocacy proved an injury rather than a help to it. But if it was good, or hung evenly poised, no sophistry of counsel, no jugglery of words, could hide its merits. He held it with a grip like that of death.

It is well known that all great actors, when they have succeeded perfectly in their art, have been themselves infected by the passion the contagion of which they wished to communicate to others. For the time they felt as if