"The people, doubtless, have no right to murmur; but they have also, undoubtedly, the right to keep silence; and their silence is the lesson of kings."

SECTION XXXVIII.

OF COMMONPLACES.

SUCH strokes enliven a discourse, and leave in the mind of the auditor an indelible impression. The more they are multiplied, the higher we soar above those diffuse writers, whose productions, being destitute of genius, are a mere collection of commonplaces.

By commonplaces I mean here loose details equally applicable to all subjects; for every subject has its commonplaces, which will become apposite and peculiar in the mouth of an energetic and original orator.

Enter a church in the middle of a sermon: if, in a minute, you do not discern the drift of the discourse; if you be obliged to wait to the end of a division in order to penetrate the design of the preacher, pronounce confidently that he wanders in a labyrinth of commonplaces; that he hath not composed through inspiration; and that he labours hard to make up, by the redundancy of words, for the sterility of ideas.

What, then, will you discover in his inexhaustible loquacity? disgusting repetitions or extravagant conceptions; plagiarisms or imitations; an incurable facility of uttering expressions which always leave

the mind empty; pitiful proofs of a beggarly mediocrity, from which nothing can be expected; and discourses, of which all the contents were known before they were heard.

Hence arise those frequent enumerations, which are only a redundancy of words, sometimes as dazzling in the delivery as they are insipid in the perusal. Such puerile figures have been for a long time applauded by a great many hearers, who regarded as the noblest effort of human genius the mechanical talent of collecting into one period accumulated substantives, crowded epithets, rapid contradictions, unexpected antitheses, trivial or unnatural metaphors, repetitions re-echoed, abundance of synonymous words, symmetry of combinations, and unceasing contrasts.

But it hath been at length understood that this tiresome prating was not true eloquence, and it has now become disgustful.

Guard against tedious enumerations, which occasion you such painful efforts of memory, and are so soon forgotten.

When an orator studies his discourse, he is the best judge of it; and experience daily teaches him that the passages which he finds the greatest difficulty to commit to memory scarcely ever deserve to be learned.

SECTION XXXIX.

OF ORATORICAL PREPARATION.

CONNECTED arguments imprint themselves more easily on the memory than those collections of words which are destitute of ideas, and especially when the end of eloquence is advanced by a combination of proofs.

The difficult and necessary art of oratorical preparation is sure to be decisive of the success of a sermon.

A sudden stroke is merely a hasty sally; if it be well prepared, it becomes a sublime movement.

May I be permitted to render my idea more familiar by a comparison? You walk by yourself in the fields on a summer's day. You give scope successively to a variety of thoughts, with which the view of the country and the silence of nature inspire you. When your mind is thus wholly engaged with these pleasing reveries, all of a sudden you hear thunder which crashes at a distance. This noise at first alarms you. In the mean time, the sky is serene, the air is calm, all is tranquil about you, and this first impression of terror is soon erased from your memory. But when the horizon lowers and is covered with dark clouds; when the sun disappears; when the hurricane rolls whirlwinds of dust; when the lightning flashes; when the atmosphere is inflamed, and when the thunder after

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ward roars over your head, you will be alarmed; and your mind, prepared by gradual emotions, will then have a more lively sensation of the violence of the shock arising from such continued perturbation. It is the same with eloquence. Through a multitude of adventitious ideas, the mind must be gradually prepared to participate in all the transports of passion or terror, of joy or grief, of love or indignation, with which you yourself are agitated. The impression, too, soon wears off if the heart be not sufficiently mollified to enable it to penetrate without meeting with opposition.

Doth Bossuet intend to give you a high idea of the courage with which the Queen of England struggled against all her misfortunes? His relations, were they introduced even without art, would astonish you; but, when ushered in by this sublime image, they transport you: "Like a column, whose solid mass appears the firmest support of a ruinous temple, when that lofty edifice which it sustained has sunk without overthrowing it; thus the queen discovers herself to be the firm support of the state, when, after having for a long time borne its weight, she is not even bowed down under its fall." Your mind, struck with this spectacle, which the orator had the art of representing before you, beholds the Queen of England constantly raised above her adversities: and your imagination is continually describing to itself this column, which remains standing in the midst of the ruins with which it is surrounded.

SECTION XL.

OF ORATORICAL PRECAUTIONS.

BESIDES those preparations which tend to set off excellent ideas to advantage, there are also precautions which orators ought not to neglect. Precautions of modesty,* with a view to conciliate the good-will or confidence of their auditory; precautions of complaisance,† in order to apologize for ideas

* The following is given by Rollin as an example of this kind of precaution: “Cicero, in his pleading called Divinatio in Verrem, is obliged to show that he is fitter to plead against Verres than Cecilius. Such an undertaking was to be managed with great address, to avoid giving offence; for self-praise is always odious, especially when it turns on wit and eloquence. After Cicero had proved that Cecilius had none of the qualifications necessary for a cause of so much importance, he is far from ascribing them to himself; so gross a vanity would have set everybody against him. He says only that he had laboured all his life to acquire them; and that, if he was not able to succeed, notwithstanding his great pains and industry, it is not surprising that Cecilius, who never had any idea of this noble profession, should be absolutely incapable of it." -Am. Ed.

†Thus exemplified by Rollin: "Chrysogonus, Sylla's freedman, was in such credit with his master (who was then absolute in the commonwealth), that no lawyer durst plead against him in behalf of Roscius. Cicero only, though very young, had the courage to undertake so delicate a task. He is very careful throughout the whole speech to observe in several places that Sylla was a stran