read, seem full of concentrated thought and vigorous expression, have fallen almost powerless from the lips of their authors, while a single verse of Scripture, or a line from an old and familiar hymn, coming from the lips of another man, has acted like an electric shock, “tearing and shattering the heart," to use De Quincey's figure, "with volleying discharges, peal after peal."*

Of all the qualifications of the orator which we have named, none is more essential than energy,-physical and intellectual FORCE. Cicero sums up the whole art of speaking in four words,-aptè, distinctè, ornatè dicere; to speak to the purpose, to speak clearly and distinctly, to speak gracefully. To-day it is important also to speak with force. This is especially requisite to-day, because the age itself is full of force, and therefore impatient of feebleness. By force we mean the energy (etymologically, the inwardworkingness,) with which the speaker employs his various abilities to make us see and feel that which he would impress upon our minds. It is not a single faculty, but the whole strength of his soul bearing upon ours. It was this quality to which Demosthenes must have referred in

* It is a common error to suppose that special attention to elocution leads to affectation and mannerism. The very reverse is the fact. Affectation is the result of untaught efforts at a late age to rid one's self of the vulgarisms, provincialisms, slovenliness, indistinctness, and other faults of school-boy days. The reason why so many persons who study elocution fail to profit by it, is that they begin too late. The rustic who late in life apes the gentleman, is sure to be affected; not so with him who is "to the manner born." Let all persons who are to be public speakers be trained early and scientifically in the management of their voices, as an essential part of their education,- let them be drilled and practised for years, till they have acquired the last great art, that of concealing art, and we shall no longer listen to discourses which, like Milton's infernal gates, grate on our ears harsh thunder," or which, like Shelley's waves on the sea-shore, breathe over the slumbering brain a dull monotony, but to a pleasing, forcible, and effective delivery, "musical as is Apollo's lute"; and sore throats," the result of unnatural tones and straining, will disappear from the catalogue of clerical ills.

his reiterated zots, the "action, action, action," on which he laid such stress. A speech may be packed full of thought, tersely and felicitously expressed; its facts may be apt, its style elegant, and its logic without a flaw; and yet if it lack fire and spirit, or if it be tamely delivered, it will make but a weak impression. On the other hand, a production which is intellectually far inferior to it,—which is full of bad rhetoric and worse logic,—which is one-sided in its views, and made up of the most hackneyed material,— will make a powerful impression for the hour (which is commonly the end of speaking), if the orator be energetic, and infuse that energy into his performance. As in political administration errors and even gross blunders are pardoned, if the main end is attained, so a speech may be full of faults, and yet be successful, if it be full of energy.

Force is partly a physical product, and partly mental; it is the life of oratory, which gives it breath, and fire, and power. It is the electrical element, that which smites, penetrates, and thrills. While listening to a speaker who has this property of eloquence, "our minds seem to be pricked as with needles, and pierced as with javelins." It does not necessarily imply vehemence. There may be energy, as we shall presently show, in suppressed feeling, in deep pathos, in simple description, nay, even in silence itself. There is often an appearance of energy where there is no reality, a tug and strain to be forcible, without calm inward power. "The aspiration is infinite, but the performance is infinitesimal." In the highest examples of energy, there is no appearance of exertion; we see only power "half-leaning on its own right arm," the Athlete conquering without a visible strain or contortion. Guido's picture of St. Michael piercing the dragon, while

In

the gnarled muscles of the arm and hand attest the utmost strain of the strength, the countenance remains placid and

serene.

Demosthenes, if we may judge by an oft-quoted saying of an enemy, must have had an almost superhuman force. 'What," exclaimed Eschines to the Rhodians, when they applauded the recital of the speech which caused his banishment," what if you had heard the monster himself?" Lord Chatham's oratory was strikingly characterized by force. A large part of his success was due to his imperial positiveness of character. Possessing a vigorous, acute, and comprehensive intellect, he saw at a glance what most men discover by laborious processes of reasoning, and flashed his thoughts upon other minds with the vividness, rapidity, and abruptness with which they arose in his own. Scorning the slow, formal methods of the logician, he crushed together proof and statement in the same sentence, and reached his conclusions at a single bound. As John Foster said, "he struck on the results of reasoning as a cannon-shot strikes the mark, without your seeing its course through the air." Lord Brougham is a yet more signal example of this quality in oratory, because he owes his victories almost to it alone. Possessing little personal magnetism, at least, of the kind that fascinates and charms; careless in his statements, inaccurate in his quotations, lame in his logic, and intensely partisan in his views; displaying little literary skill in the composition of his speeches, which are often involved and sometimes lumbering in style, and almost always devoid of elegance or polish; addicted to exaggeration and a kind of hyperbolical iteration in which there is sometimes

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more potter than power"; he is yet, in spite of these faults, one of the most

potent and successful orators of the century, simply because of his intense, gladiator-like energy. All his discourses throb and palpitate with a robust life.

Even Chatham and Brougham were, if possible, surpassed in force, at least, in the union of physical and intellectual energy,-by the master-spirit of the French Revolution. The orator of all the ages most remarkable for force was Mirabeau. It seemed, at times, as if the iron chain of his argument were fastened to an electric battery, every link of which gave you a shock. William Wirt tells us that President Jefferson, who heard Mirabeau while minister to France, spoke of him as uniting two distinct and perfect characters in himself, whenever he pleased, the mere logician, with a mind apparently as desolate and sterile as the sands of Arabia, but reasoning at such times with an Herculean force which nothing could resist; and, at other times, bursting forth with a flood of eloquence more sublime than Milton ever imputed to the seraphim and cherubim, and bearing all before him. The same force characterized the speaking of Chief Justice Marshall, when at the bar. No matter what the question; though ten times more knotty than "the gnarled oak," he penetrated at once to its core,- to the point on which the controversy depended; and seizing the attention with irresistible energy, he never permitted it to elude his grasp, until he had forced his convictions on his hearers.

It is to his energy that the so-called natural orator owes his power over his fellow-men. It is in his strength and intensity of character,-in his determined will, his triumphant self-assertion, his positiveness and overbearingness,— that lurks his magic. By the sheer force of enthusiasm and animal passion,- by his glowing periods and "sen

man.

tences of a venturous edge," he rouses audiences to a pitch of excitement to which the polished and dainty rhetorician seeks to uplift them in vain. Some one has said that eloquence is a sort of majesty, a species of kingly power; and men acknowledge the mastery of those only who have in their natures a strong element of selfassertion. The very authority, and even audacity with which they affirm a thing, makes half the world believe. it true. In like manner, the principal, if not the sole cause of the success of the radical orator of the present day, is his force. "He is a man of one lone idea, and if this happens to be a great and fundamental one, as it sometimes does, it is apprehended upon one of its sides. only. As a consequence, he is an intense man, a forcible His utterances penetrate. It is true that there are among this class some of less earnest spirit, and less energetic temper; amateur reformers, who wish to make an impression upon the public mind from motives of mere vanity. Such men are exceedingly feeble, and soon desist from their undertaking. For while the common mind is ever ready, too ready, to listen to a really earnest and forcible man, even though his force proceeds from a wrong source, and sets in an altogether wrong direction, it yet loathes a lukewarm earnestness, a counterfeited enthusiasm. One of the most telling characters, in one of the most brilliant English comedies, is Forcible Feeble. Take away from the man who goes now by the name of reformer,- the half-educated man who sees the truth but not the whole truth,- take away from him his force, and you take away his muscular system. He instantaneously collapses into a flabby pulp."

It was well observed some years ago, by an American