orator who had closely studied his art, that the florid and Asiatic style of eloquence is not the taste of the age. The strong, and even the rugged and the abrupt, he asserted, are far more successful. "Bold propositions, boldly and briefly expressed,- pithy sentences,- nervous common sense,-strong phrases, the felicitè audax, both in language and conception,-well compacted periods,— sudden and strong masses of light, an apt adage in English or Latin,— a keen sarcasm,- —a merciless personality, a mortal thrust,- these are the beauties and deformities that now make a speaker the most interesting." "In your arguments at the bar," he says again, addressing a young friend, "let argument strongly predominate. Sacrifice your flowers, and let your columns be Doric, rather than Composite, the better medium is Ionic. Avoid, as you would the gates of death, the reputation of floridity. Small though your body, let the march of your mind be the stride of a seven-leagued giant."

*

Energy is greatly increased by interrogation. A hearer who is listless while assertions only are made, will often prick up his ears when he is appealed to by a question. Cicero begins his first oration against Catiline in this way, and Demosthenes employs this figure with great effect in his Philippies, and in the speech on the Crown: "Will you continue to go about to each other and ask, What's the news? Can anything be more new than that a man from Macedonia should subjugate Greece? Is Philip dead? No, indeed; but he is ill. What matters it to you?-to you, who, if he were to come to grief, would quickly get yourselves another Philip?" Chat

*William Wirt,-" Memoirs" by J. P. Kennedy, 1849.

ham, in one of his superb outbursts, demands, "Who is the man that . . . has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage?" Cicero tells us that the very enemies of Gracchus could not help weeping, when he delivered this passage: "Whither shall such a miserable wretch as I betake myself? Whither shall I turn? To the Capitol? But that swims with my brother's blood. Shall I go to my own house? Would I not there see my mother, miserable, wailing, and degraded?"

Exclamation and apostrophe, which suppose great intensity of emotion, add very much to energy. To be effective, the apostrophe should be brief, and, apparently, from the impulse of the moment; else, in the one case, there will be no illusion, or, in the other, it will quickly vanish. There is hardly any other figure which requires so much skill to manage it, or in which failure makes a speaker so ridiculous. Among the most celebrated oratorical apostrophes may be mentioned that of Demosthenes to the manes of the heroes who fell at Marathon, that of Eschines to Thebes, and that of Cicero in his oration against Verres, in which he describes the crucifixion of a Roman citizen. There are also striking examples of apostrophe raised to vision in the peroration of Robert Hall's Sermon on the Threatened Invasion of 1803, and in the famous passage in Erskine's defense of Stockdale, in which he introduces the Indian Chief.

Gesture is almost essential to energetic speaking; we say almost, for we remember that some speakers have made hardly a gesture, and yet have delivered themselves with the greatest excitement and passion, and produced a deep and abiding impression. The history of

eloquence shows that gesticulation is a most powerful exponent of emotion, and may add almost incredible force to the utterance of the tongue. Who that has seen a Kean or a Siddons, a Clay, a Choate, or a Gough, can be ignorant of the increased significance which may be given to words by a glance of the eye, a motion, or a wave of the hand? Gavazzi moved English audiences by his looks and gestures alone. Some fifty years ago there was an eloquent Lutheran clergyman in Baltimore whose action was so impressive, that a highly cultivated Massachusetts clergyman who heard him preach, but who was wholly ignorant of the German language in which he spoke, was moved to tears. The hearer felt confident that the discourse was upon the Prodigal Son, and, upon leaving the church, was told that such was the fact. Daniel Webster was usually parsimonious of gestures, but those which he chose to make were often signally apt and telling. In speaking of the Buffalo platform in 1848, he said: "It is so rickety that it will hardly bear the fox-like tread of Mr. Van Buren." As he said "fox-like tread," he held out the palm of his left hand, and with the other played his fingers. along his extended arm down to the hand, with a soft running motion, as if to represent the kitten-like advance of the foxy advocate upon his rickety platform. A shout of laughter testified to the aptness of this sign-teaching.

The speaker who feels his subject deeply will feel it in his very finger-tips. Even the foot, in giving expression to violent emotion, or in giving attitude and dignity to the figure, is no mean auxiliary to the other organs. Among the ancients the supplosio pedis, or stamping of the foot, was one of the commonest and most moderate gestures. Quintilian even asserts that gesture is com

monly more expressive than the voice. He adds that, without the hands, delivery would be maimed and feeble. Other parts of the body aid the speaker, but the bands themselves speak: "Do we not with them ask, promise, call, threaten, detest, fear, interrogate, deny? Do we not with them express joy, sorrow, doubt, penitence, moderation, abundance, number, time? And, amidst the great diversity of tongues, in all races and nations, is not this language common to all men?”*

Profound feeling or violent passion is rarely satisfied with any expression of itself that is possible in mere words; it feels itself to be "cribbed and confined" till it can find an outlet in some apt bodily act or emotion. Such acts are even more truly than words the language of nature, though they may not be as significant. It is for this reason that oratory, in its power of expression, is so superior to all the other arts. Addressing themselves as they do exclusively to one or the other of "the two artsenses,"― poetry and music to the ear, painting and sculpture to the eye, only, they must yield the palm to oratory, which addresses itself at once both to the ear and to the eye, and has thus a twofold means of impression. Not only is gesture more expressive, in many cases, than words, but it is also more rapid and sudden in its effects than the aptest language can be. It has been truly said that the sidelong glance, the drooping lid, the expanded nostril, the curving lip, are more instantaneously eloquent. than any mere expression of disdain; and the starting eye-ball and open mouth tell more of terror than the most abject words. M. Charma, in his Essai sur le Lan

*For a full treatment of this subject, see the excellent " Manual of Gesture," by Albert M. Bacon, A.M., published by S. C. Griggs & Co., Chicago.

gage, tells an anecdote of the actor Talma, that, disgusted at the disproportion of praise which was attributed to the words of the poets, by which he produced in the theatre such thrilling effects, he one day, in the midst of a gay circle of friends, suddenly retreated a step, passed his hand over his forehead, and gave to his voice and figure the expression of the profoundest despair. The assembly grew silent, pale, and shuddering, as though Edipus had appeared among them, when, as by a lightning-flash, his parricide was revealed to him, or as though the avenging Furies had suddenly startled them with their gleaming torches. Yet the words which the actor spoke with that aspect of consternation and voice of anguish formed but the fragment of a nursery song, and the effects of action triumphed over those produced by words.*

Of course, gesticulation may be overdone, like emphasis, in which case it only enfeebles the thought. To be effective, it should be prompt and instinctive, now easy and quiet, now strong and animated, but always graceful and natural. A single gesture in a passage, if it be apt and telling, will often produce more effect than a dozen equally significant. Too little gesture is as unnatural as too much. It is strange that the happy medium is so rarely observed, considering that every child is an illustration of its proper use, and that we may see examples of it in almost every man that talks to his neighbor on the street. There are few speakers who do not impair the effect of their gesticulation by some excess or mannerism. One orator gesticulates with his left hand chiefly; another keeps his elbows pinioned to his sides; another enforces his arguments by pommelling the desk or

"Chapters on Language," by Rev. F. W. Farrar, D.D., F.R.S., p. 67-8.