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who, feeding upon the lotos, murmur, in luxuriant sleepi

ness:

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,

With half-shut eyes ever to seem

Falling asleep in a half dream.

It is never the nature of this species of composition, considered in itself, but the faulty manner of its make-up, that exposes it, as a rule, to reprobation. Pass by, we should say, mere love-and-marriage stories. Put far from you a thoroughly bad book bad either for coarseness of

style or for laxity of morals. Perhaps such as put forward licentiousness as licentiousness are less harmful than those in which poison is distilled so subtly that the evil is wrought almost before suspicion is awakened-in which right and wrong are muddled up together into a sort of neutral tint, in which characters are made attractive by their faults, and sin is quite forgotten in sympathy for the sinner so piteous, so interesting, so beautiful!

CHAPTER XXI.

DEPARTMENTS OF EXPRESSION - ORATORY.

Eloquence is vehement simplicity.-CECIL.

He has oratory who ravishes his hearers while he forgets himself.LAVATER.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you overstep not the modesty of nature.--SHAKESPEARE.

IT

T has been said that an audience leaving the theatre in which a drama of Sophocles was performed, felt themselves inspired with the thoughts and conceptions of the poet, so were raised to the dignified standard of his nature and intellect; and that this beneficial effect manifested itself, not by issuance in visible acts, but rather by diffusion over the general tenor of their lives. On the other hand, an audience quitting the theatre in which Demosthenes thundered against Philip, associate, unite, arm, and march against the invader. In the one case, individuals are purified, elevated; in the other, they are rendered unanimous for purposes whose end is action.

The comparison suggests the prevailing and highest aim of the orator to make himself master of our will. Hence the current definition of oratory-the art of persuading, impelling. But acts may be internal, results may be invisible. More specifically, more comprehensively, therefore, oratory is discourse delivered to an assembly with the view of inculcating certain ideas, impressing with certain sentiments, inducing certain resolves, or of doing these three at once.

The fuller statement is in accordance with the accepted

division of oratory into secular and sacred, and the subdivision of the former into demonstrative, whose proper business is the praise or dispraise of persons and things, as in panegyrics, invectives, gratulatory, funeral, and Fourth-of-July addresses; deliberative (sometimes called political), employed on questions affecting the public welfare, agitated in the halls of legislation or before mass meetings consulting on the adoption or rejection of measures; judicial, or forensic, employed in courts of law, seeking to determine the relation of the law to the fact, and to influence the decision of judges and juries, who have power to absolve or to condemn. Where men are convened for debate or consultation, the orator is one of the assembly, every member of which has equal right with himself to the expression of opinion. He, at least theoretically, is to think less of bringing a majority to his side than of ascertaining which side is the true one for all. He has also the excitement of responsibility, is aided by the animation and topical suggestiveness of controversy. In occasional addresses-not excluding the performances of my young friends on school and college commencement days the speaker has to do essentially with spectators, who are at peace, who hear him on a subject not felt to be of pressing importance, who yet are to be interested. As a rule, he has wide range can fetch his topics from a great variety of quarters. Before the bench, he is, or should be, a logician, showing what is just and true; he is in the presence of acknowledged superiors, who are to decide upon the strength of his reasoning; he is watched severely by those who have made such questions as he is discussing the serious study of their lives. Composed and compact, earnest but subdued, before the judge, he may be freer, even passionate; before the jury, he may steal away 'from the legal evidence and character of the act to its social effects and dramatic bearings.' His problem is to

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escape the dulness of logic without falling into the impropriety of harangue. Before a congregation of worshippers, he is a preacher, endeavoring to influence man in his strictly personal life, not superficially and transiently, but profoundly and permanently. His appeal is not to carry a point connected with his own ambition or gains, but to advance their spiritual good. He regards his hearers in every relation and condition of life as members of the family and subjects of the state, as laboring and professional, as poor and rich, as ignorant and enlightened. His themes are noble, important, sublime; he chooses them at leisure, and can premeditate carefully: but they are familiar, trite, abstract, forever recurring. Yet must he fix the attention. His difficult task is to overcome listlessness, indifference, inertia, and bestow on what is common the charm of novelty.

With these distinctions, we proceed to speak of the principles of eloquence in general. The chief stress is to be put upon matter and argument. Ideas must form the ground-work. A fine style,' says Buffon, 'is such only by the infinite number of truths which it presents.' 'In your arguments at the bar,' says Wirt to 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.' 'In any knot of men conversing on any subject,' says Emerson, 'the person who knows most about it will have the ear of the company, if he wishes it, and lead the conversation — no matter what genius or distinction other men there present may have; and in any public assembly, him who has the facts, and can and will state them, people will listen to, though he is otherwise ignorant, though he is hoarse and ungraceful, though he stutters and screams.' 'The orator,' again, is thereby an orator,

that he keeps his feet ever on a fact. Thus only is he invincible. No gifts, no graces, no power of wit or learning or illustration will make any amends for want of this. All audiences are just to this point. Fame of voice or of rhetoric will carry people a few times to hear a speaker, but they soon begin to ask, "What is he driving at?" and if this man does not stand for anything, he will be deserted.' We do not walk with a sense of security in utter darkness. Without mastery of the subject, there can be no ease of movement, and movement in style should be of conquest, not of struggle.

'Every

The genius of all remarkable men is method. one who speaks will find it of the greatest advantage to himself to have previously arranged his thoughts, and classed under proper heads, in his own mind, what he is to deliver. This will assist his memory, and carry him through his discourse without that confusion to which one is every moment subject who has fixed no distinct plan of what he is to say. And with respect to the hearers, order in discourse is absolutely necessary for making any proper impression. It adds both force and light to what is said. It makes them accompany the speaker easily and readily, as he goes along; and makes them feel the full effect of every argument which he employs.' Discourse has its possible power only when the parts, intimately united, exactly adjusted, mutually aid and sustain one another, like the stones of an arch. As writers or speakers, without a strongly conceived plan you will be without inspiration; you grope, by turns advance and recede, hesitating, uncertain, mistaking gradations, confounding relations, throwing off sentences and paragraphs that follow one another but are not connected. How as to your audience? 'Decision,' says Vinet, 'cannot be conveyed to the soul of anyone by that which bears the tremulous impress of

1 Blair.

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