ding man of business, who crams down the throat of his audience a heap of statistical facts, and then wonders to find his hearers yawning or asleep, rather than the brilliant speech of the trained orator, who enlivens his theme with the sallies of wit, and adorns it with the graces of imagery. So great a change has taken place, even within the last half century, that the House is now little more than a place where five or six hundred gentlemen meet to do business, very much after the fashion of a board of bank directors. Disraeli, Bright, and Palmer, indulge in no such bursts of oratory as shook the senate in the latter half of the eighteenth century. They state their views plainly, tersely, with little preambling and little embellishment; and having delivered themselves of what they had to say, they conclude as abruptly as they began. Occasionally speeches of a more ambitious kind are heard in the House; but they are so few that their contrast to the ordinary tone of the debates is only the more glaring. From all these considerations it is evident that oratory no longer occupies the place which it once did, before the discovery of "the art preservative of arts," and the general diffusion of knowledge. It is no longer the only effective weapon of the statesman and the reformer. There are no potentates now that, like Philip of Macedon, would offer a town of ten thousand inhabitants for an orator. But shall we therefore hastily conclude that eloquence is a useless art, that time and labor spent in its study is wasted? Is it, indeed, true that the orator's occupation. has gone, that the newspaper has killed him, that his speech is forestalled by the daily editorial, which, flying on the wings of steam, addresses fifty thousand men, while he speaks to five hundred? By no means. Eloquence is not, -- and never will be, a useless art. In one form or another, it is immortal, and, so long as there are human hearts beating with hope and fear, love and passionate hatred, can never perish. It may no longer enjoy a monopoly of influence, as before the days of Gutenberg and Fust; the form and tone of society may change, demanding different styles of oratory in different ages; but wherever human beings exist who have souls to be thrilled, the public speaker will find scope for the exertion of his powers. 'Wherever," as Emerson says, "the polarities meet, wherever the fresh moral sentiment, the instinct of freedom and duty, comes in direct opposition to fossil conservatism and the thirst of gain, the spark will pass." 66 Man, in short, so long as he is a social being, will never cease, in public as well as in private, to talk. Extend the empire of the press to whatever point you will,—double, treble, and quadruple its power, and yet the day will never come when this "fourth estate of the nation" can do the entire work of the orator. In every civilized community, at least, in every free country,-it will still be necessary to cite precedents and analyze testimony and enforce great principles in the courts, to explain measures in the halls of legislation, to rouse and move men from the platform and the hustings, and, above all, to plead with men in the house of God. Not a day passes in which it is not in the power of a persuasive tongue to exert some influence, for good or evil, over the will, judgments, and actions of men; and so far is it from being true that oratorical gifts in this age are comparatively useless, that there is probably no other accomplishment which, when possessed even in a moderate degree, raises its possessor to consideration with equal rapidity, none for which there is a more constant demand in the senate, at the bar, on the hustings, and in almost every sphere of professional labor. Even should we admit all that has been claimed regarding the impoverished condition to which civil eloquence has been reduced in modern times by the complexity of business, it must still be remembered that, as De Quincey has observed, oratory has received a new dowry of power, and that of the highest order, in the sanctities of our religion, a field unknown to antiquity, since the Pagan religions produced no oratory whatever. Again, it should be remembered that the political platform offers a field of oratory not inferior to any it has enjoyed during the world's history. Chained or muzzled in the courts, and scorned in the legislature, it may here spurn the earth with its broadest pinions, and wing its flight, without let or hindrance, to the "highest heaven of invention." The Platform, the occasional stage of the Fourth-of-July panegyrist and the Commencement orator, is the great theatre of the agitator, the stage on which reformers and enthusiasts of every kind, civil, political, moral, and financial, come to present their respective theories to the people, and to organize those movements, that "pressure from without," those manufactures of public opinion, which are now relied upon as the great means of revolutionizing legislatures and changing the laws. At the "monster meetings" which are there addressed, the orator is restricted by no Robert's Manual" or five-minute rule, but can expatiate at will, convincing his hearers by facts and logic, convulsing them with wit and humor, or rousing them by his fiery appeals, like another Antony "moving the very stones of Rome to rise and mutiny." Besides this, the lecture-room affords still 66 another field for almost every species of eloquence,-a field which is more and more occupied at each succeeding year, and which was altogether unknown to the orators of antiquity. It is true there are no schools of rhetoric now, in which the entire education of a young man is directed to make him an orator. It is true, also, that the style of speaking which was irresistible in an ancient assembly,—an assembly made up of men "educated exactly to that point at which men are most susceptible of strong and sudden impressions, acute, but not sound reasoners, warm in their feelings, unfixed in their principles, and passionate admirers of fine composition,"—is not the most influential now. The exclamations and tropes which produced the mightiest effects upon the sensitive populace of Athens or Rome, would now, with whatever modulation or gesture they might be declaimed, make but little impression upon a legislative assembly. The oratorical device by which Scipio Africanus. shook off a charge of peculation, would hardly avail a modern Chancellor of the Exchequer or Secretary of the Treasury. If President Grant had been impeached before the United States Senate, it would hardly have helped his case to say, "This day last year I won the battle of Chattanooga; therefore why debate?" The day has gone by, too, when the mere objective features of oratory, the statuary and the millinery, were as potent almost as the sentiments uttered; and why? Nobody can doubt that, as another has said, if the ancient oratory were in demand now, it would wake from the sleep of two thousand years without the aid of the rhetorician. But the truth is, it is to the very superiority of our civilization to that of the ancients, that the revolution in oratory, and the apparent diminution of its influence, are owing. Instead of lamenting, we should rejoice that we no longer live on that volcanic soil which in former ages produced fiery orators in such abundance. It is because society is no longer under the sway of a few leading men,- because revolutions, tumults, and popular commotions, have ceased to be the chief business of life,- because knowledge has been generally diffused, men have learned to think for themselves, and the free nations of the earth are disposed to rest the security of the state and of individuals on the broad foundations of laws and institutions, and not on popular caprice or the power of any one man, however wise or able,- that modern eloquence has assumed a character so different from the ancient, and is regarded by many as comparatively cold and tame. It is one of the proudest distinctions of modern society that the ancient power of individuals is lessened; that it is no longer possible for a great man, by violence or artful contrivance, to overthrow a state; that he is continually taught that the world can do without him, and that, if he would do the greatest good, he must combine with other men, rather than be their master or dictator. It is not by absorbing all power into himself, and becoming at once the brain, the tongue, and the hand of a whole people, that the man of genius to-day is to promote the happiness or the glory of the state to which he belongs, but by an open. influence on public opinion and a wise coöperation with others, who are jealous of their rights, and will not place them at the mercy of one man, however wise or great. The orator, therefore, however rare or dazzling his gifts, can no longer be the despot that he once was, either for good or for evil. It is no longer by his agency chiefly that |