those of her great dramatists; and fertile as Great Britain has been in oratorical genius during upward of a century, she has never, amid all her epochs of revolution and senatorial contest, from the days of Bacon to those of Bright, produced a single public speaker worthy to rank with Milton or Shakspeare.

No doubt many persons have enjoyed, for a time, great fame and influence without some of the qualities which we have named as essential to the perfect orator. A brilliant imagination and a sparkling wit may blind us for a while to the lack of a solid judgment; and vehement action or cogent reasoning may make us for the moment. forget a squeaking voice, an ugly face, or a diminutive figure. John Randolph had a short, small body, perched upon high crane legs, so that, when he stood up, you did not know when he was to end; yet he commanded the attention of the House of Representatives, in spite of his gaunt figure and his ear-splitting scream; and Wilberforce was a power in Parliament, though he had but a pigmy body and a voice weak and painfully shrill. Boswell, who heard him in 1784 at York, wrote to a friend I saw what seemed a mere shrimp mount upon the table; but, as I listened, he grew and grew until the shrimp became a whale." Richard Lalor Sheil thrilled the Irish people, notwithstanding his dwarfish frame, his ungraceful action, and a voice so harsh and violent as often to rise to a positive shriek. The most magical of American preachers, Summerfield, the stories of whose oratorical feats read like a page from the "Arabian Nights," was "femininely feeble, an invalid all his days." Biography abounds with these examples of the mind triumphing over matter; and indeed, there is on record hardly any positive proof that

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physical defects, whether of voice or person, have ever completely neutralized the effect of eloquent thoughts and sentiments, when the spirit that kindles them was really in the man, when the elements of oratory were deepseated in his soul. Nevertheless it is certain that few men even aspire to eminence as public speakers to whom Nature has been niggard of the proper physical gifts; and, though one may sway the hearts of his fellow-men without a harmonious or sonorous voice, an expressive countenance, an imposing person, and the other bodily attributes which are essential to the full charm of eloquence, yet there is scarcely an instance of a man's rising to the loftiest heights of oratory without them.

Again, it is evident that, for temporary success, even vulgar qualities may be the most efficient, and the orator may owe his triumphs to the use of arts which he secretly despises. As immediate influence, not lasting fame, is usually the object for which the speaker is striving, he must, of course, conform, in a certain degree, to the tastes of those he addresses and to the ruling passions of the hour, and hence the quality of his appeals must depend, in a great degree, upon the intelligence or ignorance, the nobleness or vulgarity, of his hearers. The exigences of modern society, and especially of modern political warfare, have called into being a class of public speakers whose efforts fall as far below those of the ideal orator in grandeur and beauty as they excel them, occasionally, in immediate utility. It is not merely in the degree, but also in the nature of their excellence, that the speeches of these two classes differ. While with the one class oratory is a severe and exacting art, demanding the closest application, and aiming not. merely to excite the passions or sway the judgment for the

time being, but also to produce a deep and permanent impression,- perhaps to produce models for the delight and admiration of mankind,- the aim of the other class is simply a temporary effect, an immediate result, to which all other considerations are sacrificed. While the former speak rarely, and at long intervals, during which they saturate their minds with their themes, casting their thoughts into such moulds as are best fitted to enhance their intrinsic worth or beauty, the latter are always ready with facts, arguments, and real or simulated enthusiasm, to champion any cause or measure that party interests may require. While the speeches of the one class, at once charming by their intrinsic beauty and compelling conviction by their power, are a study for the intellect and a pleasure to the imagination, and are read and studied for ages as models of the oratorical art, as men study the poems of Milton or Tennyson, or the paintings of Raphael or Titian, the effusions of the other, deriving their interest from extraneous causes that cease with the excitement of the hour, produce an immediate effect, which is testified by applause or votes, but, after a few days, or months, or years, are forever forgotten. It is still true, therefore, that while great influence, and even temporary fame, may be acquired without the coöperation of all the qualities we have enumerated, yet eloquence of the highest order,- the divine art which "harmonizes language till it becomes a music, and shapes thought into a talisman,"- demands the rare union of gifts we have named.

It is a noteworthy fact that while every civilized country and every age of civilization has had its eloquent men, the great speakers have generally appeared in clusters, not singly, and at long intervals of time. By some mysterious,

inexplicable law, the divine afflatus of genius comes rushing on a particular generation, and a brilliant galaxy of orators appears in some country, perhaps in several countries at once. As the great painters and sculptors appeared together in the Middle Ages, as the great musical composers came in one age,-as the great dramatists of English literature belong to one reign,- and as the great poets of this century sang together immediately after the French Revolution,- so the most illustrious orators have blazed out in the intellectual heavens, not at long intervals or as "bright, particular stars," but suddenly and in brilliant constellations. Of these, the most splendid in modern times have been those which distinguished the age of Lewis XIV and the period of the Revolution in France, the age of George III in England, and in America the years of the Revolution and the second quarter of the present century.

Having thus enumerated the qualities which constitute the orator, let us proceed to notice some of the principal ones more in detail. Of course, it is assumed that he has the necessary stock of knowledge, a proper fund of information to draw from, both general and particular,— and that with the special information touching his theme. his mind is saturated. There is no art that can teach a man to be eloquent without knowledge, though some declaimers, who appear, in speaking, to have followed Rousseau's receipt for a love-letter,-namely to begin without knowing what you are going to say, and to leave off without knowing what you have said,— evidently think otherwise. Cultivation of the voice, memory, and imagination,attention to style, gesture, and all the arts of speech,— can only render pleasing or impressive the ideas the speaker wishes to communicate; but the materials of his speech,—

the facts and ideas themselves,-must be supplied from other sources than rhetoric. There is no man who may not learn to express, simply and naturally, what is in him; but ten thousand teachers cannot qualify him to express any more, for "oratory, like painting and sculpture, is only a language; it is painting and sculpture made vocal and visible."*

It is hardly necessary to say that among the physical gifts of the orator, no one is more important than a good VOICE. There is something at once mysterious and marvellous in the power of that complex structure which we call the vocal organs, to move and mould the hearts of men. The waves of sound, those vibrating molecules which strikin the sensitive membrane of the ear, travel thence to the brain, the seat of thought and passion, have a power to awaken and compel deep hidden sympathies, which, in its magical effects, surpasses any other granted to man. It is true that persons skilled in pantomime can communicate many ideas, and even complicated trains of thought, by gestures alone. Among the Romans in the days of Augustus, both tragedies and comedies, which excited tears and laughter, were acted by pantomime only; and Cicero tells us that there was a dispute between himself and the actor Roscius whether a sentiment could be expressed in a greater va

* Theodore Parker, in reply to a gentleman who, in 1851, asked by letter how he could acquire an impressive delivery, replied as follows: "That will depend on qualities that lie a good deal deeper than the surface. It seems to me to depend on vigorous feeling and vigorous thinking, in the first place; on clearness of statement, in the next place; and finally, on a vigorous and natural mode of speech. Vigorous feeling and thinking depend on the original talent a man is born with, and on the education he acquires, or his daily habits. No man can ever be permanently an impressive speaker, without being first a man of superior sentiments or superior ideas. Sometimes mere emotion (feeling) impresses, but it soon wearies. Superiority of ideas always commands attention and respect."