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gress, or even on the bench, to a similar qualification. But shall we, therefore, conclude that the study of oratory as an art should be discouraged? The very reverse, we think, is the just conclusion.

It is an unpleasant conviction, which we wish the facts did not force upon us, that while there is plenty of "spouting," of speaking, if one pleases,-in this country, there is little oratory, and less eloquence. It is for the very reason that the American people are deluged by their public speakers with words, it is because so many of those who assume to address them from the tribune and the platform remind us so unpleasantly of that bird of the parrot tribe whose tongue is longer than its whole. body, that we would call attention to, and most earnestly emphasize, the value of oratorical studies. It is because our young men do not realize that oratory is the weapon of an athlete, and can never be wielded effectually by an intellectual and moral weakling,- because our colleges unintentionally give currency to this idea by devoting so insignificant a portion of time to exercises in elocution, that so many persons are ready to afflict the public with "mouthfuls of spoken wind." It is because they consciously or unconsciously hold the pestilent notion that the finest productions of the mind are the fruits of sudden inspiration, the chance visitations of a fortunate moment, the flashings of intuition, that they are ready to mount the rostrum at the slightest provocation and without any serious preparation. Let them once learn and deeply feel that the most infallible sign of genius is a prodigious capacity for hard work, and an intense conviction of its necessity; that no man ever has, or ever can be, a true orator without a long and severe apprenticeship to the art; that it not only demands constant, patient, daily practice in speaking and reading, but

a sedulous culture of the memory, the judgment and the fancy, a ceaseless storing of the cells of the brain with the treasures of literature, history, and science, for its use, that one might as well expect literally to command the lightnings of the tempest without philosophy, as without philosophy to wield the lightnings of eloquence, and they will shrink from haranguing their fellow-men, except after a careful training and the most conscientious preparation. So far is it from being true that, if elocution and style were cultivated more, a torrent of empty declamation would be let loose upon the world, that we are confident the very opposite would be the result. Study and high appreciation of an art, by improving the taste, increase fastidiousness; and hence they are calculated to check, rather than to increase, loquacity.

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Owing to the vast abundance of the materials, the preparation of this work, whatever its shortcomings, has been no easy task. Several chapters written for it, including one on Military Eloquence, and sketches of a number of orators (Curran, Sheil, Macaulay, Fisher Ames, and William Wirt), have been excluded, to avoid making the volume too bulky. For the same and other reasons, only incidental notices have been given of living orators. was the author's intention to give a list of the works he had consulted; but they are so numerous that he must content himself with a general acknowledgment of his indebtedness to nearly all the writers on oratory, for there are few good ones, he believes, whom he has neglected to examine. Especially, would he acknowledge his obligations to various articles on the subject in the leading English reviews and the "North American Review," and to several anonymous writers in magazines, by whose suggestions he has profited. For some interesting facts

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concerning American orators, he is indebted to Mr. E. G. Parker's work on the "Golden Age of American Oratory." That it will be easy for a logician to point out apparent contradictions in these pages the author is aware; but he believes it will be found that, as was said of another writer, the latchet of whose shoes he is not worthy to unloose, that these seeming contradictions are, in fact, only successive presentations of single sides of a truth, which, by their union, manifest completely to us its existence, and guide us to a perception of its nature. "No good writer," says Dr. Bushnell, "who is occupied in simply expressing truth, is ever afraid of contradictions or inconsistencies in his language. It is nothing to him that a quirk of logic can bring him into an absurdity. There is no book that contains so many repugnances, or antagonistic forms, as the Bible." *

Finally, to all persons interested in the subject here discussed, and who do not believe with the author of "Lacon" that "oratory is the puffing and blustering spoilt child of a semi-barbarous age," or with General Grant, that the art of speech-making is one of little use, but agree with Luther that "he who can speak well is a man," and with Cicero that it is most glorious to excel men in that in which men excel all other animals, this work is inscribed.

"God in Christ," pp. 57, 69.

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