the oration and the poem are, that while the first style of composition is pervaded with sublimity, the last is filled with beauty. Poetry and poetic art rather represent grace and beauty than grandeur and sublimity. So we say that poetry is the beautiful, while oratory or eloquence is the sublime in composition and expression. To so great an extent does the beautiful enter into the form, structure, and spirit of a poem, that if it be devoid of this perpetual presence, it can no longer be said to be a poem, whatever else it may claim to be.

An oration is not necessarily characterized by beauty. Indeed, it may, in form, structure, tone, and spirit, be undistinguished by the beautiful or the graceful; but if it represent power, force, or whatever enters into and makes up the idea of sublimity of thought or diction, then it completely answers its purpose and attains its end. Not so a poem. That must appeal to the sense of the beautiful; that must respond to the demands of taste; that must breathe a subdued strain of unmistakable harmony and song. Painting may best represent poetry or the poetic art; whilst sculpture, with its bold outline and rugged front, with its coldly classic face and form, may stand the embodied ideal of the orator's art. Each is admirable in its sphere; each fulfils its mission in hehalf of humanity; each stands sentinel to guard and defend the race from barbarism and corruption. It is true that a like perfection of genius, of the faculty of the orator's and of the poet's art, is seldom found in one and the same person. Orators and poets stand forth to the world as distinct classes among men; and yet there have been those who have strangely united these gifts. We instance the names of Cicero, Sheridan, Curran, and Burke. Even the grave and philosophic Webster, though laying no claim to the honors of the poetic muse, amused his lonesome hours with verse. The capacity to enjoy, however, does not confer the capacity to produce. But whatever may be the decision upon this point, we conceive that no truly cloquent man can be indifferent to those graceful and beauteous images which float before the vision in the form of harmonious and rhythmic numbers. Such persons must intensely enjoy those celestial fruits which hang in ripened clusters from the prolific tree of human genius. Fluent and ready speakers may not always enjoy poetry, nor perceive the beauties and charms of poetic art; but fluency and readiness of utterance constitute no claim to the position of the orator. For eloquence is an art which cannot be acquired in the schools. All mere human institutes are powerless to teach it -to confer this divine degree. They are without the genius and inspiration that give it soaring force and lend it wings.

If it come at all, it

It will not obey the behest of rules. must come as the lightning that flashes along the southern sky, making a track for the hoarse notes of the muffled thunder.*

Eloquence is not mechanical nor artificial, but spontaneous and natural. Of course we are speaking of that highest and sublimest form of speech which fills the heart with emotion and impassioned feeling, and which trembles on the tongue as the thrilling notes of inspiring and uplifting song. In the orator and in the great oration, we have the composite order of architecture; in himself and his productions are united the granite basis with the Doric form; yea, the Doric with its sturdy strength stands as a pillared symbol of his power; its base is the solid rock; its capital the graceful Corinthian; and about this wind the Ionic and the Gothic, lending the charms of beauty and grace to all primitive forms. Eloquence thus is found alone and apart from all other modes of human speech. Eloquence is not elocution. The professed elocutionist may do something towards it; he may impart the graces of manner and the accomplishments of speech; he may make the utterance finished and complete so far as rules and institutes may go; but the shape which comes from his hand is, after all, cold, dead marble; no heart beats beneath the ribs, no light sparkles in the eye, no color glows upon the cheek. The elocutionist cannot inspire the soul with that impassioned feeling and consummate fervor which impress and sway the multitude. and without which all declamation is vain-a show, an empty dream! The masses bow to no energy not greater than their own, and when the power of a speaker is less than theirs, he not only fails to move them, and to excite any deeper emotion

"When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech, further than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. Truc eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it-they cannot reach it. It comes, if it comes at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments, and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked, and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent; then, self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object-this, this is cloquence; or, rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence-it is action-noble, sublime, god-like action."-Beauties of Webster, p. 56.

than his own, but sinks himself to the low level of an exhibitor of practised attitudes and premeditated graces. To be a great orator, a man must be possessed by his subject, as well as possess it. He must find his inspiration in his theme. His passion must be real, and not simulated; and his feelings must burn with an intense and quenchless flame. Nature, not art, must be the school in which he is trained, and his education must result from severe intuitions. His, too, must be a natu

ral grandeur of soul.

Eloquence is the gift of nature, and not the endowment of art; so that in the last analysis of orators, as of poets, it may' be said that the orator, like the poet, "is born, not made." The eloquent orator is a creation, not a manufacture. He must be a child of nature, not a son of art. There must be the first requisite, the indispensable endowment-the oratoric soul, or the nameless and mystic grace and power of expres sion will be wanting. By this, of course, we do not mean to affirm that the natural gifts may not be improved and perfected. Art must supplement nature. She must take the rough materials which lie in the quarry of genius, and by her magic touch, and with her plastic hand, cause them to assume shapes of grandeur and forms of beauty; and thus the orator shall stand forth arrayed in royal apparel and crowned with kingly crown-in speech and action a god, in temper and passion, yet a man! The natural capacity can be fostered and cultivated, but the capacity or faculty must exist. Demosthenes is an illustrious example of what may be achieved by labor and perseverance; but the great Athenian had the gift and faculty divine; his was authoritative speech; the presence dwelt within him; the fire lay kindled on the altar; the spirit needed but to be evoked, and the forms of utterance were made " "fleshcolor," and throbbed with life and animation. His defects were chiefly physical; and he was an orator, and a great orator, too, in spite of them; for he was pre-eminently the orator of Nature. It was a consciousness of his wonderful powers which gave him the assurance of final success.

Again, we remark that eloquence is the voice of the heart, and is an outburst of emotion. It springs from deep feeling, and the occasion must bring it forth; as Webster says, "It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion." It is the sum-total of all the faculties and powers; the whole man is needed to give it force and expression. It is something born of the energy, which the looks, tones, gestures, eye, hand, arm -all supply. Earnestness is the indispensable condition of eloquence. To be eloquent, a man must be in earnest. True, he may not be eloquent, though he be in earnest; but he VOL VI -No. 12.

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cannot be an orator in any true sense of the term unless he is in earnest. All eloquence, therefore, is the fruit of earnestness. The orator's soul must be in his accents, must modulate his tones, control his speech, and inspire his utterance. It must speak with all its tongues and voices-as Cæsar's wounds were orators neither dumb nor mute in the senate-house of Rome. It must be read in the eye, heard on the tongue, and legible in every feature. In deep and earnest feeling alone is the magic that shall touch the heart. The intellect alone in vain essays this strange power; she may, indeed, strike the chords of the mystic lyre, but no music will respond; no song be sung; no anthem of grandeur roll its rich measures along; no choral strains bring down an answering gift from heaven. The heart must speak; and then not even Memnon's lips shall murmur such sweet music, though more than an earthly sun send his royal beams of light and warmth upon him.

Simulated feeling will not do; the tears must be real; they must not only fill the eyes, but flow from the heart. Curran, intellectually, was quite inferior to Burke, but he was the greater orator, for he sooner reached the sympathies of the masses; swayed them as forest trees are swayed by resistless tempests and storms; and that power which he in so remarkable a degree possessed and exercised, gave him a decided advantage over that wonderful statesman, philosopher, and orator --that man whose name is but another for genius and learning.

The main thing in oratoric power is the impression made by a speech at the time of its delivery. Not how it reads, but how it sounds, is the test of its worth as an eloquent effort. Indeed, many of the most eminent orators fail to leave a distinct impression on the minds of their hearers. While they speak, we are all eye and ear, and have neither time nor inclination to criticise beauties or defects. We are carried away as by a whirlwind of emotion and feeling, nor do we recover ourselves till the orator's voice and words are perished. Great orators are magicians; we cannot resist their incantations; we are controlled by their power; we are under their magic spell. They are neither to be resisted nor overcome. Patrick Henry was one of these great masters of the human heart. He fascinated by his glance all who were brought within the circle of its charmed influence. The gravest and most thoughtful minds went down before his presence and submitted to his power. Yet his mental operations were too transient and evanescent to be caught and detained. Men of this class may announce no new and striking truths, but they are masters of deep emotion and strong feeling; they are men of large and active sym

pathies; and when they speak, their words are winged with the fire and flame of an inspired enthusiasm.

The first style or highest type of an orator is one who is such by nature the natural orator possessing gifts that cannot be attained by the mere artist, or rather by the orator who is a manufacture instead of a creation. William Wirt, the accomplished jurist, and one of the most eloquent of the forensic orators of America, gives an account of an old colored preacher out in the backwoods, who, holding forth in his rude way in a log-cabin, and preaching upon the death of Christ, thrilled and stirred Wirt as he had never been before. Wirt pronounced him one of the most eloquent men he had ever heard a most accomplished orator-for his eloquence was heartfelt, and exceedingly effective. We can readily see how this may be; since an ignorant as well as a lettered man may be of such a temperament that he may easily catch fire, and flame into impassioned speech. The noblest and most sublime kind of eloquence burns from below, and not from above; setting the heart aflame, and that, in turn, makes the brain sparkle and glow.

As to the manner of an orator: here we wish to do away with erroneous views and conceptions; but it is still more dif ficult to give hints upon a correct and successful mode of delivery. The master of Grecian eloquence, when asked for the first requirement of an orator, pronounced "delivery" or "action" as the first and the last. And here unfortunate mistakes may be made, especially by beginners and aspirants of the art. Demosthenes did not mean by delivery mere perfection in the knowledge of gesticulation-of the use of the organs of the body. He was not thinking of a rigid adherence to forms; but of that assured and palpable evidence in every word, tone, accent, look and gesture-the whole man, indeedthe soul of the orator being wholly absorbed in his part, entirely intent on what he is doing, intensely conscious of the force and meaning of each word. The orator, therefore, must enter thoroughly into the spirit of what he says, to deliver an oration well; and no mere declamation or grace of speech or action will be sufficient. Artificial action is not what is wanted; art here must be supplemented by nature; an actor is by

no means an orator.

There are some speakers who possess a gracefulness and expressiveness of manner which add an indescribable charm to their utterances, and which go far to make their very conceptions speak; but this is not so much an acquisition as a natural endowment. Individuality is a concomitant of oratorical power and success. The orator is to be himself, and not to →