PART IIL

ORATORICAL.

ΟΝ

1. ORATORY AS AN ART.

NE cause of our not excelling in oratory is our neglecting to cultivate the art of speaking-of speaking our own language. We acquire the power of expressing our ideas almost insensibly; we consider it as a thing natural to us; we do not regard it as an art; but it is an art, a difficult art, an intricate art; and our ignorance of that circumstance, or our omitting to give it due consideration, is the cause of our deficiency.

2. In the infant just beginning to articulate, you will observe every inflection that is recognized in the most accurate treatise on elocution; you will observe, further, an exact proportion in its several cadences, and a speaking expression in its tones. I say, you will observe these things in almost every infant. Select a dozen men, men of education, erudition; ask them to read a piece of animated composition. You will be fortunate if you find one in the dozen that can raise or depress his voice, inflect or modulate it, as the variety of the subject requires.

3. What has become of the inflections, the cadences, and the modulation of the infant? They have not been exercised; they have been Leglected; they have never been put into the hands of the artist, that he might apply them to his proper use; they have been laid aside, spoiled, abused; and ten to one they will never be good for any thing. If we consider the

very early period at which we begin to exercise the faculty of speech, and the frequency with which we exercise it, it must be a subject of surprise that so few excel in oratory. In any enlightened community, you will find numbers skilled in some particular science or art, to the study of which they do not apply themselves till they had almost arrived at the stage If manhood.

4. Yet with regard to the powers of speech-those powers which the very second year of our existence generally calls into action, the exercise of which goes on at our sports, our studies, our walks, our very meals, and which is never long suspended, except at the hour of refreshing sleep-with regard to those powers, how few surpass their fellow-creatures of common information and moderate attainments! how very few desire distinction! how rarely does one attain eminence! 5. In common conversation, observe the advantage which the fluent speaker enjoys over the man that hesitates and stumbles in discourse. With half his information, he has twice his importance; he commands the respect of his auditors; he instructs and gratifies them. In the general transaction of business, the same superiority attends him. He communicates his views with clearness, precision, and effect; he carries his point by his mere readiness; he concludes his treatise before another man has set about it. Does he plead the cause of friendship? how happy is his friend! Of charity? how for tunate is the distressed! Should he enter the legislature of his country, he proves himself the people's bulwark.

KNOWLES.

2. THE STUDY OF ORATORY IN GREECE AND ROME.

IN

N the ancient Republics of Greece and Rome oratory was a necessary branch of a finished education. A much smaller proportion of the citizens were educated than among us; but of these a much larger number became orators. No man

could hope for distinction or influence and yet slight this art. The commanders of their armies were orators as well as soldiers, and ruled as well by their rhetorioal as by their military skill.

2. There was no trusting with them, as with us, to a natural facility, or the acquisition of an accidental fluency by actual practice. But they served an apprenticeship to the art. They passed through a regular course of instruction in schools. They submitted to long and laborious discipline. They exercised themselves frequently both before equals and in the presence of teachers, who criticized, repined, rebuked, excited emulation, and left nothing undone which art and perseverance could accomplish. The greatest orators of antiquity, so far from being favored by natural tendencies-except, indeed, in their high intellectual endowments-had to struggle against natural obstacles; and, instead of growing up spontaneously to their unrivalled eminence, they forced themselves forward by the most discouraging artificial process.

3. Demosthenes combated an impediment in speech, an ungainliness of gesture, which at first drove him from the forum in disgrace. Cicero failed at first through weakness of lungs and an excessive vehemence of manner, which wearied his hearers and defeated his own purpose. These defects were conquered by study and discipline. He exiled himself from home, and during his absence in various lands, passed not a day without a rhetorical exercise, seeking the masters who were most severe in criticism, as the surest means of leading him to the perfection at which he aimed.

WIRT.

3. ORATION ON THE CROWN.

[This has been ever regarded by the ablest critics as the greatest speech of the greatest orator. It is virtually a justification of the orator's whole public life, and derives additional interest from being the last great speech delivered in Athens. It was occasioned by the following event: After the battle of Cheronea the Athenians appointed Demosthenes to superintend the repairs in the fortifications of their city. A portion of the expense incurred he

paid from his private fortune. In acknowledgment for this, Ctesiphon proposed that a golden crown be voted to him. Eschines maintained that the proposal was illegal, and brought suit nominally against Ctesiphon, but in reality to crush Demosthenes-his speech was a great effort. But Demosthenes' reply was overwhelming. Ctesiphon was triumphantly acquitted and Eschines went into banishment to Rhodes, where he opened a school of rhetoric. He once read Demosthenes' oration to his pupils. Upon their expressing their admiration, he said, "Ah, what would you have thought had you heard the lion himself?"]

BUT,

UT, if I am accused for what I have actually done, how would it have been if, through my hard bargaining, the States had gone off and attached themselves to Philip, and he had become master at the same time of Euboea, Thebes, and Byzantium? What think ye these impious men would have said or done? Said, doubtless, that the States were abandoned that they wished to join us and were driven away that he had got command of the Hellespont by the Byzantines, and become master of the corn trade of Greecethat a heavy neighbor-war had, by means of the Thebans, been brought into Attica-that the sea had become unnaviga ble by the excursion of pirates from Eubœa!

2. All this would they have said, sure enough, and a great deal besides. A wicked, wicked thing, O Athenians, is a calumniator always-every way spiteful and fault-finding. But this creature is a reptile by nature, that from the beginning never did any thing honest or liberal; a very ape of a tragedian, village Enomaus, counterfeit orator.

3. What advantage has your eloquence been to your country? Now do you speak to us about the past? As if a physician should visit his patient and not order or prescribe any thing for the disease, but on the death of any one, when the last ceremonies were performing, should follow him to the grave and expound how, if the poor fellow had done this and that, he never would have died! Idiot! do you speak now?

4. Even the defeat-if you exult in that which should make you groan--you accursed one !—by nothing that I have done

will it appear to have befallen us. Consider it thus, O Athenians. From no embassy, on which I was commissioned by you, did I ever come away defeated by the ambassadors of Philip neither from Thessaly nor from Ambracia, nor from the kings of Thrace, nor from Byzantium, nor from any other place, nor on the last recent occasion from Thebes; but where his ambassadors were vanquished with argument, he came with arms and carried the day.

5. And for this you call me to account; and are not ashamed to jeer the same person for cowardice, whom you require single-handed to overcome the might of Philip-and that too by words. For what else had I at command? Certainly not the spirit of each individual, nor the fortune of the army, nor the conduct of the war, for which you would make me accountable-such a blunderer are you!

6. Yet, understand me. Of what a statesman must be responsible, I deprecate it not. What are his functions? To observe things in the beginning, to foresee and foretell them to others. This I have done again, wherever he finds delays, backwardness, ignorance, jealousies, vices, inherent and unavoidable in communities, to contract them into the narrowest compass; on the other hand, to promote unanimity, friendship, and zeal in the discharge of duty.

7. All this, too, I have performed; and no one can discover the least neglect on my part. Ask any man by what means Philip achieved his successes, and he will answer, "By his army, and by bribing and corrupting men in power." Well, your forces were not under my command or control; so that I cannot be questioned by any thing done in that department.

8. But, by refusing the price of corruption, I have overcome Philip; for, as the offerer of a bribe, if it be accepted, has vanquished the taker, so the person who refuses it, and is not corrupted, has vanquished the person offering. Therefore is the commonwealth undefeated as far as I am concerned.

DEMOSTHENES.