particular from that of Greece. It was not in the days. of the Scipios, of Cincinnatus, and of the Gracchi, that Cicero thundered and Hortensius flashed. It was when "the Eternal City" was convulsed by dissensions, and torn by faction; when the plebeians were arrayed against the patricians, and the patricians against the plebeians; when demagogues and assassins overawed the courts, and the magistrates despaired of the public safety,-that were heard the accents of that oratory which has linked the name of Cicero with that of the conqueror of Eschines. It was out of the crimes of Catiline, and the outrages of Verres and Mark Antony, that sprang the loftiest eloquence that shook the Roman Senate, as it was the galling tyranny of Philip that set on fire the genius of Demosthenes.

Again, besides the revolutionary atmosphere, there was another circumstance which in the ancient states stimulated the growth of eloquence,- namely, the simplicity of public business, as compared with its vast extent, complexity, and fullness of details, in modern times. Living, in the days of their luxury, by the spoliation of foreign states, instead of by the labor of their own hands, the citizens had leisure for the consideration of public questions, which were generally of the simplest kind. Peace or war, vengeance for public wrongs, or mercy to prostrate submission, national honor and national gratitude, -topics appealing to the primal sensibilities of man,were, as De Quincey has observed, the themes of Greek and Roman oratory. The speeches of Demosthenes and the other great orators of antiquity were the expressions of intense minds on subjects of the deepest moment, and therefore the distinguishing feature of their oratory was vehemence. Speaking on questions upon whose decision

hung the very existence of his country, the orator could not be expected to speak temperately; he could not believe that there were two sides to the question, and that conflicting views were equally reconcilable with patriotism in those who held them. To-day the circumstances in which the parliamentary orator is placed are entirely different. The legislative assemblies are deliberative bodies, that have grave and weighty business interests to deal with, and hard practical knots to untie. Nineteen-twentieths of the business that comes before them is of a kind that affords no scope for eloquence. The multiplicity and detail of modern affairs, abounding in particulars and petty items, tend to stifle and suffocate it.

Go into the British Parliament or the American Congress, and the theme of debate will be,-what? In all probability a road or a bridge bill, a bill to demonetize or to remonetize silver, a bill to subsidize a steamship or railway corporation, or to establish a new post-route. A man who should discuss these questions as if they were questions of life and death, would only make himself a laughing-stock. Even in Queen Caroline's case the House of Lords barely refrained from laughing, when Brougham knelt to beseech the peers. The great majority of the questions that now come up for decision by our political assemblies turn on masses of fact, antecedents in blue-books, tabulated statistics, which all necessitate not only elaborate inquiries, but differences of opinion after the inquiries. The Demosthenic vehemence is, therefore, out of place. Ingenuity and skill, a happy facility of dealing with tangled and complicated facts, judgment, quickness, tact,—and, along with these, the calm, didactic exposition, the clear, luminous statement, a treatment

nearly like that of the lecturer,― are

more efficacious than the "sound and fury" of the ancient orator. The modern speaker feels that on points of detail it would be ridiculous to be in a passion,- that on matters of business it would be absurd to be enthusiastic; and hence, except on rare occasions, he deals in facts rather than in fancies, in figures of arithmetic rather than in figures of speech, in pounds, shillings, and pence, rather than in poetry. It was the opinion of Rufus Choate that even Clay and Webster, as they did not live in a revolutionary age, missed the greatest agony of eloquence. As ancient conversation was more or less oratorical, so modern oratory is more or less conversational in its tone. The cold, calculating, commercial spirit of the age jeers at fine speaking, and the shrewd speaker, therefore, suggests rather than elaborates, talks rather than declaims. The light touch of Peel, Palmerston, or Wendell Phillips, is more effective than the rounded periods of the formal rhetorician.

The same difference extends to forensic eloquence. Mr. Forsyth, the author of "Hortensius," has justly ascribed its decay in England to the excessive technicality which pervades the law. Nothing can be more fatal to eloquence than attention to the fine and hair-splitting distinctions which subtle pleaders delight to raise and pettifoggers to maintain, and to which the courts of justice, both in Great Britain and the United States, are too prone to lend a ready ear. The overgrown mass, the huge, unwieldy body of the law at the present day, is another impediment to oratory, hardly less formidable. How can a man be eloquent whose best days and hours are spent in learning and digesting the enormous mass

of statutes, with the myriad decisions upon them, which now fill the thousand volumes upon his shelves? Talents of a popular kind, the power of giving effect to large and comprehensive views, wither under such a treatment as this. The modern lawyer has no time to gather the flowers of Parnassus. All the fire, energy, and enthusiasm of a young man with noble impulses,-all his native genius and acquired abilities, die within him, overlaid and smothered by the forms and technicalities of a narrow, crabbed, and barbarous legal system.

On the other hand, Greek and Roman pleadings, instead of relating to technicalities, to the construction. of a statute, or to facts of an intricate and perplexing nature, were occupied with questions of elementary justice, large and diffusive, which even the uninstructed could understand, and which connected themselves at every step with powerful and tempestuous feelings. The judges, instead of being the mere interpreters of the law, were also legislators. Instead of being thwarted by the cold vigilance of justice or the restraining formalities of practice, instead of being hampered by codes, or obstructed by precedents,- the pleader appealed boldly to the passions and prejudices of his hearers. To obtain a verdict of guilt or innocence, by invective or by exaggeration, by appeals to public expediency or by appeals to private hate, was the only end which he proposed to himself. It was the universal right of accusation, that species of magistracy with which each citizen was clothed for the protection of the common liberty, that produced under the Cæsars those infamous denunciations, that lucrative and sanguinary eloquence, lucrosam et sanguinolentam eloquentiam, of which Tacitus speaks.

In all the precepts given by the ancient orators there is supposed a violent, partial, unjust, and corrupt magistrate who is to be won. A thousand scenes of tumult intermingled incessantly with the solemnities of justice. The forms and the place in which justice was administered; the character of the accusations, so often of a political nature; the presence of the opposed parties; the throng of people present,-all excited and inspired the orator. A modern court-room has little resemblance to that public place in which were pronounced the decrees that abolished the royalties of Asia, where the honors of Rome were conferred, where laws were proposed and abrogated, and which was also the theatre of the great judicial debates. The objective genius of antiquity, it has been well said, is nowhere more vividly illustrated than in its legal proceedings. "The contrast between the formalities of the Old Bailey or Westminster Hall and those of the Areopagus or the Forum, could, if mutually witnessed, have produced in their respective audiences nothing but mutual repulsion. An Englishman can have but little sympathy with that sentimental justice that yields to the exposure of a beautiful bosom, and melts into tears at the sight of a bloody cloak or a gaping wound. A Roman or a Grecian, on the other hand, would have regarded with supreme disgust the impartial majesty of that stern judicature which saw unpitied the weeping children of Strafford, looked unmoved at the bleeding loins of Lilburne, and laughed aloud at the impassioned dagger of Burke."

Again, not only was the stormy atmosphere of ancient states favorable to the development of eloquence, but the system of national education was adapted to the same