ity without regard to clime, color, or condition; and that wherever the moan of the oppressed was heard, there, too, was heard the trumpet-voice of O'Connell, rousing the sympathies of mankind, rebuking the tyrant, and cheering the victim.

Lack of space forbids us from attempting to portray the oratory of RICHARD LALOR SHEIL, SO utterly unlike that of O'Connell, with whom he was so often associated. A Southern writer, about thirty years ago, thus vividly contrasted the artificial styles of Sheil and Macaulay with the spontaneous eloquence of Grattan and Burke: "Macaulay's genius is the genius of scholasticism. He is a living library; and the old vulgarism, 'He talks like a book,' is a literal truth in his case. We look upon him as the last of the rhetoricians who considered style of more importance than facts, and paid more attention to the manner than to the matter of their discourse. Nor is he even the greatest of that school. He was excelled by Richard Lalor Sheil, who had always laid by a stock of good things, pickled and preserved for use. The Irishman was more rapid and agile than his Scotch rival, and sent up rockets while the other was spinning catherinewheels. A shrewd wit called Sheil a fly in amber,' and the title was appropriate enough; but Macaulay is a fossil of far greater solidity and size, and of less immediate radiance. Both belong to the artificial school, which is rapidly passing away. The palmy days of parliamentary oratory in England must be over, when the House is filled to hear Macaulay. The slipshod, conversational style, which has succeeded the dignified declamation of the last generation, must be wearisome and worthless indeed, when his

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cold correctness and passionless pomp are hailed as a pleasurable relief. Oh! for an hour of Henry Grattan, with his fierce and flashing style,- his withering sarcasm,his lofty imagery, which flew with the wing of an eagle, and opened its eyes at the sun,-to rouse these prosy cits and yawning squires into something like energy and life! Oh! for the words of Burke, so rich, so rotund, so manyhued, which passed before the gaze like a flight of purple birds, to recall to the jaded Commons a sense of true imagination, of genuine eloquence! It is true Burke was called 'The Dinner Bell' by his contemporaries, for his speeches were a little voluminous sometimes; but the nickname was given in a time when there were giants upon the earth'; now his voice would be considered a tocsin; such is the degeneracy of British orators!"

CHAPTER XI.

POLITICAL ORATORS: AMERICAN.

AMERICA

MERICA has produced several great orators, to whom it has been permitted "to open the trumpet-stop on the grand organ of human passion"; and among them there is no greater name than that of PATRICK HENRY. Unfortunately we have only a few imperfect fragments of his speeches, and his fame rests, therefore, not on authenticated specimens of his oratory, but on the tradition of the electrical shocks he produced on great occasions by the glow, the lightning flash, the volcanic fire of genius. Doubtless there is much exaggeration in the traditional reports of his voice, his manner, and the necromantic effects he wrought; but, after making every reasonable deduction for this, we cannot doubt that he was one of the greatest orators that ever lived. Like the bones of an antediluvian giant, the portions of his speeches that have come down to us are proof of his mental and moral stature. Mr. Henry was of Scotch descent, and was born in Virginia in 1736. His father, who emigrated to this country in 1730, was nephew to the great Scotch historian, Dr. William Robertson, and cousin-german, it is said, to the mother of Lord Brougham. Probably no man who rose to eminence, ever gave in his youth so little promise of distinction as did "the forest-born Demosthenes" of America. He picked up a little Latin and Greek, with a

smattering of mathematics; but was naturally indolent, and manifested a decided aversion to study which he never fully overcame. When the hour came for application to his books, he was generally to be found by the river-side with his fishing-rod, or in the woods with his gun. Often he would wander for days together through the fields and woods, sometimes listlessly, with no apparent aim, sometimes in the pursuit of game; or he would lie stretched on the green bank of some sunny stream, watching the ripples and eddies as they whirled along, or angling in its sparkling waters. The same distaste for labor followed him into the pursuits of business, where he only exchanged the pleasures of hunting and angling, and the luxury of day-dreaming, for the melodies of the flute and violin, and tales of love and war. Becoming a shop-keeper at sixteen, he was bankrupt within a year; a two years' trial of farming sufficed to prove his unfitness for that pursuit; and another experiment in "keeping store," which lasted but for a year, ended by making him penniless. Meanwhile he had acquired a taste for reading, and had turned to account his intercourse with his customers in a way that enabled him, when he came upon the public stage, to touch the springs of human passion with a master-hand. When these persons met in his store, he seized the opportunity to study human nature as exhibited in their peculiarities of character; and it was afterward remembered that as long as they were gay and talkative, he generally was silent, but whenever the conversation flagged, he adroitly re-began it so as to bring those peculiarities into play. One book seems to have been a favorite with him. Whilst his farm was going to ruin, or his customers were waiting to be served, he was absorbed in

a translation of Livy, whose harangues had a peculiar fascination for him.

At length the thought struck him that he might make a living by becoming a lawyer. To the jealous science which, according to Lord Coke, allows of no other mistress, he paid his attentions, which were not apt to be undivided, for six weeks, a high authority says, one month; yet during that time he read Coke upon Littleton and the Virginia laws. It was with some difficulty that he obtained a license to practice, and it was only upon the ground that he was evidently a man of genius, and would be likely soon to fill up the gaps in his knowledge. For the next four years he was plunged into the deepest poverty. During most of this time he lived with his father-in-law, and assisted him in tavern-keeping. At last an occasion arose for the display of his latent powers, and he sprang by one bound into celebrity. This was the "tobacco case," in which the clergy of the English church brought a suit to recover their annual stipend, as fixed by law, of sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco. The crop having failed, an Act had been passed by the Legislature allowing the planters to pay the tax in money, at the rate of 16s 8d per hundredweight, although the actual value was 50s or 60s. This Act was decided by the Court to be invalid, and nothing remained but to assess the damages by a writ of inquiry. Mr. Lewis, the planters' counsel, threw up the cause as hopeless, and they therefore applied to Henry, as none of the veteran practitioners was willing to risk his reputation upon it. When on the appointed day, in 1763, the cause came on for trial before the jury, a great crowd had assembled in the courtroom, both of the common people and the clergy. As this was Henry's first appearance at the bar, curiosity was on