Chapter XII (2)

"I well know, fellow-soldiers, that words add nothing to the
valour of the brave; and that an army will not be made from
slothful, strenuous--from timid, courageous, by any speech from
its commander. Whatever boldness nature or training has implanted
in any one, that appears in war. It is vain to exhort those whom
neither dangers nor glory excite. Terror shuts their ears. But I
have called you together to mention a few things, and to make you
sharers of my councils. You know, soldiers, what a calamity has
been brought upon us by the cowardice of Lentulus; and how, when I
awaited succours from the city, I was unable to set out for Gaul.
Now, however, I will candidly tell you how our affairs stand. Two
armies, one issuing from Rome, one from Gaul, beset us: want of
provisions obliges us quickly to change our quarters, even if we
inclined to remain where we are. Wherever we determine to go, we
must open a way with our swords. Therefore it is that I admonish
you that you have now need of stern and determined minds: and
when you engage in battle, recollect that riches, honour, glory,
in addition to liberty, are to be won by your own right hands. If
we conquer, everything awaits us: provisions will be abundant,
colonies ready, cities open. If we yield from fear, circumstances
are equally adverse: neither solitude nor friend shields him whom
his arms cannot protect. Besides, soldiers, the same necessity
does not impel them as us. We fight for our country, our liberty,
our lives; they for the domination of a few. On that account,
mindful of your pristine valour, advance to the attack. You might
have, with disgrace, lingered out a miserable life in exile:
a few, bereft of their possessions, might have remained, fed
by charity, at Rome: but as such a fate seemed intolerable to
freemen, you have attended me here. If you would shun these evils,
now is the moment to do so. None ever exchanged war for peace,
save by victory. To hope for safety in flight, and, at the same
time, rescue from the enemy the arms by which the body is covered,
is the height of madness. Ever in battle they run the greatest
danger who are most timid: boldness is the only real rampart. When
I reflect on you and your deeds, O soldiers, I have great hopes
of victory. Your spirit, your age, your bravery, encourage me:
besides necessity, which makes heroes even of cowards. The straits
of the ground secure you from being outflanked by the enemy.
Should Fortune fail to second your valour, beware lest you perish
unavenged. Rather fall, fighting like men, and leave a mournful
and bloody triumph to your enemies, than be butchered like sheep
when captured by their arms."[11]

With what exquisite judgment and taste is the stern and mournful style of this speech suited to the circumstances, all but desperate, in which Catiline's army was then placed!

No one supposes that these were the identical words delivered by Catiline on this occasion. Unquestionably, Sallust shines through in every line. But they were probably his ideas; and, unquestionably, they were in the true style of ancient oratory. And that what was spoken fully equalled what has come down to us written, is proved by innumerable passages in speeches which undoubtedly were spoken; among which, we select the graphic picture of Antony in his revels--spoken by Coelius, and preserved by Quintilian:--

"They found him (Antony) oppressed with a half-drunken sleep,
snoring aloud, lying across the most beautiful concubines, while
others were reposing around. The latter, when they perceived the
approach of an enemy, strove to awaken Antony, but in vain. They
called on him by name, they raised him by the neck: one whispered
softly in his ear, one struck him sharply; but to no purpose. When
he was so far roused as to recognise the voice or touch of the
nearest, he put his arms round her neck, unable alike to sleep and
to rise up; but, half in a stupor, he was tossed about between the
hands of the centurions and the harlots."[12]

What a picture of the triumvir and rival of Brutus, as well as of the corrupted manners of Rome!

Demosthenes, in his celebrated speech against Æschines, burst into the following strain of indignant invective:--

"You taught writing, I learned it: you were an instructor, I was
the instructed: you danced at the games, I presided over them:
you wrote as a clerk, I pleaded as an advocate: you were an actor
in the theatres, I a spectator: you broke down, I hissed: you
ever took counsel for our enemies, I for our country. In fine,
now on this day the point at issue is--Am I, yet unstained in
character, worthy of a crown? while to you is reserved the lot
of a calumniator, and you are in danger of being silenced by not
having obtained the fifth part of the votes.

"I have not fortified the city with stone, nor adorned it with
tiles, neither do I take any credit for such things. But if you
would behold my works aright, you will find arms, and cities, and
stations, and harbours, and ships, and horses, and those who are
to make use of them in our defence. This is the rampart I have
raised for Attica, as much as human wisdom could effect: with
these I fortified the whole country, not the Piræus only and the
city. I never sank before the arms or cunning of Philip. No! it
was by the supineness of your own generals and allies that he
triumphed."[13]

We add only an extract from the noble speech of Pericles, on those who had died in the service of their country, which is the more valuable that Thucydides, who has recorded it in his history, says that the version he has given of that masterpiece of oratory is nearly the same as he heard from Pericles himself.

"Wherefore I will congratulate rather than bewail the parents of
those who have fallen that are present. They know that they were
born to suffering. But the lot of those is most to be envied who
have come to such an end, that it is hard to say whether their
life or their death is most honourable. I know it is difficult to
persuade you of this, who had often rejoiced in the good fortune
of others; and it is not when we are deprived of goods not yet
attained that we feel grief, but when we are bereaved of what
we have already enjoyed. To some the hope of other children,
who may emulate those who have gone before, may be a source of
consolation. Future offspring may awaken fresh interests in place
of the dead; and will doubly benefit the city by peopling its
desert places, and providing for its defence. We cannot expect
that those who have no children whom they may place in peril for
their country, can be considered on a level with such as have
made the sacrifices which those have made. To such of you as time
has denied this hope, I would say, 'Rejoice in the honour which
your children have won, and let that console the few years that
still remain to you--for the love of glory alone knows no age;
and in the decline of life it is not the acquisition of gain, as
some say, which confers pleasure, but the consciousness of being
honoured.

"To the children and brothers of those we mourn, who are here
present, I foresee a noble contest. Every one praises the dead.
You should endeavour, I will not say to equal those we have lost,
but to be only a little inferior to them. Envy often divides the
living; but the grave extinguishes jealousy, for it terminates
rivalry. I must speak of the virtue of the women who have shared
in our bereavement; but I shall do so in a few words. Great will
be your renown, if you do not yield to the weakness of your sex;
and place as little difference as possible between yourselves
and the virtue of men. I propose that the children of those who
have fallen should be maintained, till puberty, at the public
expense--a reward at once to the virtue of the dead, and an
incitement to the emulation of the living: for among those to whom
the highest rewards of virtue are opened, the most worthy citizens
are found. And now, having honoured the dead by your mourning,
depart every one to his home."[14]

Enough--and some may, perhaps, think more than enough--has been done to convey an idea of that far-famed oratory, of which Milton has said--

"Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancients, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democracy,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece,
To Macedon, and Artaxerxes' throne."[15]

For comparison with these splendid passages, we gladly lay before our readers the famous peroration of Mr Burke's oration against Mr Hastings, long esteemed the masterpiece of British eloquence.

"My Lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons, and
surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the advancing
generations, between which, as a link in the great chain of
eternal order, we stand. We call this nation, we call the world to
witness, that the Commons have shrunk from no labour; that we have
been guilty of no prevarication; that we have made no compromise
with crime; that we have not feared any odium whatsoever, in
the long warfare which we have carried on with the crimes--with
the vices--with the exorbitant wealth--with the enormous and
overpowering influence of Eastern corruption. This war, my Lords,
we have waged for twenty-two years, and the conflict has been
fought, at your Lordships' bar, for the last seven years. My
Lords, twenty-two years is a great space in the scale of the life
of man; it is no inconsiderable space in the history of a great
nation. A business which has so long occupied the councils and
the tribunals of Great Britain cannot possibly be huddled over in
the course of vulgar, trite, and transitory events. Nothing but
some of those great revolutions, that break the traditionary chain
of human memory, and alter the very face of nature itself, can
possibly obscure it. My Lords, we are all elevated to a degree of
importance by it; the meanest of us will, by means of it, more or
less, become the concern of posterity--if we are yet to hope for
such a thing, in the present state of the world, as a recording,
retrospective, civilised posterity: but this is in the hand of the
great Disposer of events; it is not ours to settle how it shall
be. My Lords, your House yet stands; it stands as a great edifice;
but let me say, that it stands in the midst of ruins--in the midst
of the ruins that have been made by the greatest moral earthquake
that ever convulsed and shattered this globe of ours. My Lords, it
has pleased Providence to place us in such a state, that we appear
every moment to be upon the verge of some great mutations. There
is one thing, and one thing only, which defies all mutation, that
which existed before the world, and will survive the fabric of
the world itself--I mean justice; that justice which, emanating
from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us,
given us for our guide with regard to ourselves and with regard to
others, and which will stand, after this globe is burned to ashes,
our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when He comes
to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life.

"My Lords, the Commons will share in every fate with your
Lordships; there is nothing sinister which can happen to you, in
which we shall not all be involved; and if it should so happen
that we shall be subjected to some of those frightful changes
which we have seen--if it should happen that your Lordships,
stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human society,
should, by hands at once base and cruel, be led to those scaffolds
and machines of murder upon which great kings and glorious queens
have shed their blood, amidst the prelates, amidst the nobles,
amidst the magistrates, who supported their thrones, may you in
those moments feel that consolation which I am persuaded they
felt in the critical moments of their dreadful agony!... My
Lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! but, if you stand--and
stand I trust you will--together with the fortune of this ancient
monarchy--together with the ancient laws and liberties of this
great and illustrious kingdom--may you stand as unimpeached in
honour as in power; may you stand, not as a substitute for virtue,
but as an ornament of virtue, as a security for virtue; may you
stand long, and long stand the terror of tyrants; may you stand
the refuge of afflicted nations; may you stand a sacred temple,
for the perpetual residence of an inviolable justice."[16]

The peroration of Lord Brougham's speech in favour of Queen Caroline, which was carefully studied, and, it is said, written over several times, is not unworthy to be placed beside this splendid burst.

"Such, my Lords, is the case before you! such is the evidence in
support of this measure--evidence inadequate to prove a debt,
impotent to deprive of a civil right, ridiculous to convict of
the lowest offence, scandalous, if brought forward to support a
charge of the highest nature which the law knows, monstrous to
ruin the honour and blast the name of an English Queen! What shall
I say, then, if this is the proof by which an act of judicial
legislation, a parliamentary sentence, an _ex post facto_ law,
is sought to be passed against a defenceless woman? My Lords, I
pray you to pause: I do earnestly beseech you to take heed. You
are standing upon the brink of a precipice--then beware! It will
go forth as your judgment, if sentence shall pass against the
Queen. But it will be the only judgment you ever pronounced which,
instead of reaching its object, will return and bound back upon
those who give it. Save the country, my Lords, from the horrors
of this catastrophe--save yourselves from this peril. Revere that
country of which you are the ornaments, but in which you can
flourish no longer, when severed from the people, than the blossom
when cut off from the roots and stem of the tree. Save that
country, that you may continue to adorn it; save the crown, which
is in jeopardy, the aristocracy, which is shaken; save the altar,
which must stagger with the blow that rends its kindred throne!
You have said, my Lords, you have willed, the church to the Queen
have willed that she should be deprived of its solemn service.
She has instead of that solemnity the heartfelt prayers of the
people. She wants no prayers of mine. But I do here pour forth my
humble supplication to the Throne of mercy, that that mercy may be
poured down upon the people, in a larger measure than the merits
of its rulers may deserve, and that your hearts may be turned to
justice."[17]

On the trial of Mr John Stockdale, Lord Erskine thus spoke:--

"I have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human
dominion, from what I have seen of them myself among nations
reluctant of our authority. I know what they feel, and how such
feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them in my youth
from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince,
surrounded by his subjects, addressing the governor of a British
colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of
his unlettered eloquence. 'Who is it,' said the jealous ruler
of the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English
adventure--'who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of
winter, and that calms them again in summer? Who is it that causes
this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself
into the ocean? Who is it that rears up the shade of these lofty
forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure?
The same Being who gave to you a country on the other side of the
waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend
it,' said the warrior, throwing his tomahawk upon the ground, and
raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of
subjugated man all round the globe; and, depend upon it, nothing
but fear will control where it is vain to look for affection."[18]

Some of Mr Grattan's speeches are said to have been the most eloquent ever delivered in the House of Commons. The following burst of indignant patriotism, on the supposed wrongs of Ireland, affords a favourable specimen of his style of oratory:--

"Hereafter, when these things shall be history, your age of
thraldom and poverty, your sudden resurrection, commercial
redress, and miraculous armament, shall the historian stop to
declare, that here the principal men amongst us fell into mimic
traces of gratitude: they were awed by a weak ministry, and bribed
by an empty treasury; and when liberty was within their grasp, and
the temple opened her folding-doors, and the arms of the people
clanged, and the zeal of the nation urged and encouraged them on,
that they fell down, and were prostituted at the threshold.

"I will not be answered by a public lie in the shape of an
amendment: neither, speaking for the subjects' freedom, am I to
hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe in this our
island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I
have no ambition, unless it be the ambition to break your chains,
and contemplate your glory. I never will be satisfied as long as
the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain
clanking in his rags: he may be naked, he shall not be in irons.
And I do see the time is at hand, the spirit is gone forth, the
declaration is planted: and though great men should apostatise,
yet the cause will live: and though the public speaker should die,
yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ which conveyed it,
and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, shall
not die with the prophet, but survive him."[19]

We shall add only to these copious and interesting quotations two passages from the greatest masters of French eloquence.

Bossuet, in his funeral oration on Henrietta, daughter of France and Queen of England, the consort of Charles I., thus expresses himself:--

"Christians!" says he, in the exordium of his discourse, "it is
not surprising that the memory of a great queen--the daughter,
the wife, the mother of monarchs--should attract you from all
quarters to this melancholy ceremony; it will bring forcibly
before your eyes one of those awful examples which demonstrate
to the world the vanity of which it is composed. You will see in
her single life the extremes of human things: felicity without
bounds, miseries without parallel; a long and peaceable enjoyment
of one of the most noble crowns in the universe--all that birth
and grandeur could confer that was glorious--all that adversity
and suffering could accumulate that was disastrous; the good
cause attended at first with some success, then involved in
the most dreadful disasters. Revolutions unheard of, rebellion
long restrained, at length reigning triumphant; no curb there
to license, no laws in force. Majesty itself violated by bloody
hands--usurpation and tyranny, under the name of liberty--a
fugitive queen, who can find no retreat in her three kingdoms, and
was forced to seek in her native country a melancholy exile. Nine
sea voyages undertaken against her will by a queen, in spite of
wintry tempests--a throne unworthily overturned, and miraculously
re-established. Behold the lessons which God has given to kings!
thus does He manifest to the world the nothingness of its pomps
and its grandeur. If our words fail, if language sinks beneath the
grandeur of such a subject, the simple narrative is more touching
than aught that words can convey. The heart of a great queen,
formerly elevated by so long a course of prosperity, then steeped
in all the bitterness of affliction, will speak in sufficiently
touching language; and if it is not given to a private individual
to teach the proper lessons from so mournful a catastrophe, the
King of Israel has supplied the words--'Hear, O ye great of the
earth! Take lessons, ye rulers of the world!'"[20]

A very different man from Bossuet, but who was perhaps his superior in nervous eloquence, Robespierre, thus spoke on the last occasion when he addressed the Convention, then bent on his destruction:--

"They call me a tyrant! If I were so, they would fall at my feet:
I should have gorged them with gold, assured them of impunity
to their crimes, and they would have worshipped me. Had I been
so, the kings whom we have conquered would have been my most
cordial supporters. It is by the aid of scoundrels you arrive
at tyranny. Whither tend those who combat them? To the tomb and
immortality! Who is the tyrant that protects me? What is the
faction to which I belong? It is yourselves! What is the party
which, since the commencement of the Revolution, has crushed all
other factions--has annihilated so many specious traitors? It
is yourselves; it is the people; it is the force of principles!
This is the party to which I am devoted, and against which crime
is everywhere leagued. I am ready to lay down my life without
regret. I have seen the past; I foresee the future. What lover
of his country would wish to live, when he can no longer succour
oppressed innocence? Why should he desire to remain in an order
of things where intrigue eternally triumphs over truth--where
justice is deemed an imposture--where the vilest passions, the
most ridiculous fears, fill every heart, instead of the sacred
interests of humanity? Who can bear the punishment of seeing
that horrible succession of traitors, more or less skilful in
concealing their hideous vices under the mask of virtue, and who
will leave to posterity the difficult task of determining which
was the most atrocious? In contemplating the multitude of vices
which the Revolution has let loose pell-mell with the civic
virtues, I own I sometimes fear that I myself shall be sullied in
the eyes of posterity by their calumnies. But I am consoled by
the reflection that, if I have seen in history all the defenders
of liberty overwhelmed by calumny, I have seen their oppressors
die also. The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth;
but in very different conditions. No, Chaumette! 'Death is _not_
an eternal sleep!'--Citizens, efface from the tombs that maxim,
engraven by sacrilegious hands, which throws a funeral pall over
nature, which discourages oppressed innocence: write rather,
'Death is the commencement of immortality!' I leave to the
oppressors of the people a terrible legacy, which well becomes the
situation in which I am placed: it is the awful truth, 'Thou shalt
die!'"[21]

It must be evident to every impartial person, from these quotations, that the superiority of ancient to modern eloquence, so far as the art itself is concerned, is great and indisputable. The strong opinion of Lord Brougham, on this subject, must command the universal assent of every reasonable mind:--

"It is impossible for any but the most careless observer, to avoid
remarking the great differences which distinguish the oratory of
ancient from that of modern times. The immeasurable superiority of
the former is far from being the only, or even the principal, of
these diversities: that proceeds, in part, from the greater power
of the languages, especially the Greek--the instrument wielded
by the great masters of diction; and in so far the superiority
must for ever remain undiminished by any efforts on the part of
modern rhetoricians. If, in such varied and perfect excellencies,
the most prominent shall be selected, then doubtless is the palm
due to that entire and uninterrupted devotion which throws the
speaker's whole soul into his subject, and will not even--no,
not for an instant--suffer a rival idea to cross its resistless
course, without being swiftly swept away and driven out of sight,
as the most rapid engine annihilates or shoots off whatever
approaches it with a velocity that defies the eye. There is no
coming back on the same ground, any more than any lingering over
it. All is done at once; but the blow is as effectual as it is
single, and leaves not anything to do. All is at each instant
moving forward, regardless of every obstacle. The mighty flood
of speech rolls on in a channel ever full, but which never
overflows. Whether it rushes in a torrent of allusion, or moves
along in a majestic exposition of enlarged principles, descends
hoarse and headlong in overwhelming invective, or glides melodious
in narrative and description, or spreads itself out shining in
illustrations, its course is ever onward and ever entire; never
scattered, never stagnant, never sluggish. At each point manifest
progress has been made, and with all that art can do to charm,
strike, and please. No sacrifice, even the smallest, is ever
made to effect; nor can the hearer ever stop for an instant to
contemplate or admire, or throw away a thought upon the great
artist, till all is over, and the pause gives time to recover his
breath."[22]

It is the more remarkable that this great and decisive superiority on the part of ancient oratory should exist, when it is recollected that the information, sphere of ideas, and imagery at the command of public speakers, in modern times, is so widely extended in comparison of what it was in Greece and Rome. As much as the wide circuit of the globe exceeds the limited shores of the Mediterranean Sea, do the knowledge and ideas which the modern orator may make use of outstrip those which were at the disposal of the brightest genius in antiquity. Science has, since the fall of Rome, been infinitely extended, and furnished a great variety of images and allusions--many of them of the most elevated kind--which at once convey a clear idea to any educated audience, and awaken in their minds associations or recollections of a pleasing or ennobling description. The vast additions made to geographical and physical knowledge have rendered the wide surface of the globe, and the boundless wonders of the heavens, the theme alike for the strains of the poet, the meditations of the philosopher, and the eloquence of the orator. Modern poetry has added its treasures to those which antiquity had bequeathed to us, as if to augment the chords which eloquence can touch in the human heart. Chivalry has furnished a host of images, ideas, and associations wholly unknown to ancient times; but which, however at times fantastic or high-flown, are all of an ennobling character, because they tend to elevate humanity above itself, and combat the selfish by the very excess of the generous affections. History has immensely extended the sphere of known events, and not only studded the annals of mankind with the brightest instances of heroism or virtue, but afforded precedents applicable to almost every change that can occur in the varied circumstances of human transaction. Above all, Religion has opened a new fountain in the human heart, and implanted in every bosom, with the exception only of those utterly depraved, associations and recollections at once of the most purifying and moving kind. The awful imagery and touching incidents of the Old Testament, exceeding those in the Iliad itself in sublimity and pathos; the pure ideas and universal charity of the New, as much above the utmost efforts of unassisted humanity, have given the orator, in modern times, a store of images and associations which, of all others, are the most powerful in moving the human heart. If one-half of this magazine of ideas and knowledge had been at the disposal of the orators of antiquity, they would have exceeded those of modern Europe as much in the substance and magnificence of their thoughts, as they already do in the felicity and force of their expression.

A key may be found to the causes of this remarkable superiority in ancient eloquence, notwithstanding the comparatively limited extent of the materials of which they had the disposal, in the very qualities in which the ancient orators stand pre-eminent. It is the exquisite taste and abbreviated force of their expression which renders them unrivalled. In reading their speeches, we are perpetually tempted to shut the book even in the most interesting passages, to reflect on the inimitable brevity and beauty of the language. It is a mistake to say this is owing to the construction of the Greek and Roman languages, to the absence of auxiliary verbs, and the possibility of combining expression, as in modern German, so as to convey a complex idea in a single word. Undoubtedly that is true; but who made the ancient languages at once so copious and condensed? It was the ancients themselves who did this. It was they who moulded their tongues into so brief and expressive a form, and, in the course of their progressive formation through successive centuries, rendered them daily more brief and more comprehensive. It was the men who made the language--not the language the men. It was their burning thoughts which created such energetic expressions, as if to let loose at once the pent-up fires of the soul. Those who assert the reverse fall into the same error as the philosophers who ascribe the character of the Anglo-Saxons to their institutions, when, in truth, their institutions are owing to their character.

The main causes to which the extraordinary perfection of ancient oratory are to be ascribed, are the great pains which were bestowed on the education of the higher classes in this most difficult art, and the practice of preparing nearly all their finest orations before delivery. It will sound strange in modern ears to assign these as the causes of this undoubted superiority, when the practice with them is in both particulars directly the reverse; but a very little consideration must convince every reasonable mind that it is to these that it is to be ascribed.

Great as is the importance and undoubted the influence of eloquence in modern Europe, it is by no means so considerable as it was in the states of antiquity. This arises in part from the different structure of government in ancient and modern times. We hear nothing of eloquence in Persia, Egypt, or the East. Military power, political address, were then, as they have ever since been in that part of the world, the sole passports to greatness. But it was otherwise in the republics which studded the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Universally, in them, supreme power was lodged in the citizens of a single city, or in them jointly with the landowners in the vicinity, who could with ease attend its public assemblies. Every free citizen had a vote in those assemblies, in which every subject, political, social, and judicial, was discussed and determined. Questions of peace and war, of imposing or taking off taxes, of concluding treaties, of domestic laws, of appointing generals and ambassadors, of providing for the public subsistence, of determining private suits, of criminal punishments, of life and death, were all submitted to those assemblies, debated in their presence, and decided by their suffrages. Political power, personal fame, the direction of the state, the command of its armaments, the decision of its dearest public and private interests, were all to be attained by obtaining a sway in these public assemblies, and could seldom be obtained in any other way. Hence it was that, as has been finely observed, in modern times, the soldier is brave, and the lawyer is eloquent; but in ancient, the soldier was eloquent, and the lawyer was brave. Power of any sort could be attained only by acquiring an ascendency in the popular assemblies; whoever acquired that ascendency was liable to be immediately called to command the fleets or armies of the republic. Whatever opinions may be formed of the tendency of such a system of government, to insure either the wise direction of its civil interests or the successful protection of its military enterprises, there can be but one as to its effect in insuring the highest attention to oratory, by which alone the command of either could be obtained.

But, in addition to this, the two great instruments of power which, in modern times, so often outweigh the influence of spoken oratory, were awanting. The _press_ was unknown in antiquity; there was no public religious instruction: there were neither daily newspapers to discuss passing events, nor a stock of printed works to form the principles of the people, or mould their judgments, nor an Established Church, to give them early and creditable impressions. Education, derived entirely from oral instruction or costly manuscripts, was so extremely expensive that it was beyond the reach of all but the most wealthy classes. Three-fourths of the persons who had votes in any public assembly had their principles formed, their information acquired, their taste refined, in the theatres and the forum. The temples were open for sacrifice or ceremonies only; not for instruction in religious principle or moral duty. Immense was the addition which this entire want alike of a public press, and a system of religious instruction, had upon the importance of popular oratory. The tragedian and the orator had the entire moulding of the public mind in their hand, alike in fixed principle, previous prepossessions, and instant decision. No daily, or monthly, or quarterly paper existed to form the subject of study at home; no standard works were in every one's hands, to give principles right or wrong, from which they were very unlikely to swerve:--no religious tuition, to the influence of which, in any momentous crisis, appeal might be made. The eloquence of the forum, the transports of the theatre, were all in all.

It resulted, from this extraordinary and most perilous power of oratory in ancient times, that the attention bestowed throughout life, but especially in youth, on training to excellence in it, was unbounded. In truth, education with them was so much directed to the study and the practice of oratory, that it formed in most of their academies the main object of instruction. Other topics--philosophy, poetry, science, mathematics, history--were not neglected, but they were considered chiefly as _subordinate to oratory_--rather, they were the preparatory studies, from which a perfect orator was to be formed. Cicero says expressly, that there is no subject of human knowledge of which the orator may not avail himself, in his public address, and which may not serve to enlighten his narrative, strengthen his argument, or adorn his expression.[23] This shows how lofty was the idea which he had formed of this noble art, and the aids which he was fain to obtain for it, from all, even the most dissimilar, branches of human knowledge. The greatest orators and philosophers of antiquity devoted themselves to instruction in its principles, and consideration of the manner of cultivating it with the highest success. Demosthenes taught, as every schoolboy knows, for a talent: a sum above £200, and equal to at least £500 in modern times. Cicero has left several beautiful treatises on oratory; Isocrates owes his fame mainly to his writings on the same subject; Quintilian has bequeathed to us a most elaborate work on its principles, and the mode of its instruction; the treatise of Aristotle on oratory is not the least celebrated of his immortal works. So vast was the number, and so great was the influence of the schools of rhetoric, that they came, in the later days of antiquity, to supersede almost every other subject of study; they attracted the ingenious youth from every part of the world to the groves of the Academy, and singly supported the prosperity and fame of Greece, for centuries after they had sunk under the withering grasp or declining fortunes of the Byzantine empire.

It is evident from these considerations, as well as the intrinsic beauties which the great masters of the art exhibit, that oratory in ancient times was regarded as one of the _Fine Arts_. It was considered not merely as the means of winning the favour, of convincing the judgment, or securing the suffrages of the judges, but of moving the affections, rousing the feelings, and elevating the mind. Quintilian mentions the various definitions of the art of oratory which had been invented by the rhetorical writers of antiquity, and he inclines to that of Cicero, who held that it was the art of speaking "_apte ad persuadendum_." This was its end, its aim; and undoubtedly it was so: but the _modes of persuasion_--the methods of influencing the judgment or moving the affections--were as various as the channels by which the intellect may be determined, the feelings roused, or the heart touched. Not less than poetry, painting, or statuary, they classed oratory among the fine arts; and, indeed, they placed it at the head of them all, because it embraced all their influences, and retouched, as it were, by allusion, all the chords which they had previously caused to vibrate. The surprising force with which they did this, considering the comparatively limited stock of ideas, knowledge, and imagery which was at their disposal, compared to what obtains in modern times, affords the most decisive proof of the great attention they had bestowed on the principles of the art, and the perfection to which they had brought the means of influencing the mind--not only by the force of reason, or the conceptions of genius, but by all the subordinate methods by which their effect in delivery was to be augmented. With them the object of oratory was not merely to persuade the understanding, but

"To wake the soul by tender strokes of art,
To move the passions, and to melt the heart."

Nor was less attention bestowed, in ancient times, upon training young men, to whatever profession they were destined, in that important and difficult branch of oratory which consists in intonation and delivery. It is well known that this is a branch of the art which is susceptible of the very greatest improvement by education and practice, and that even the brightest natural genius can rarely attain it, without the aid of instruction or the lessons of experience. The surprising improvement which is so often observed in persons trained to different professions or habits, when they have been for some time engaged in public speaking--above all, in emphasis and action--affords daily proof of the vast effects of practice and experience in brightening the delivery of thought. The prodigious influence of accent and intonation in adding to the power of eloquence is equally well known, and may often be perceived in listening to the difference between the same verses when recited by an ordinary reader, and what they appear when illuminated by the genius, or enforced by the feeling, of a Kemble or a Faucit. The ancients, accordingly, were indefatigable in their endeavours to improve themselves in this particular, and availed themselves of means to attain perfection in it to which modern genius would scarcely condescend. Cicero, when advanced in life, and in the meridian of his fame, took lessons from Roscius, the great tragic actor of the day; and the efforts of Demosthenes to overcome the impediments of a defective elocution, by putting pebbles in his mouth, and declaiming on the shores of the ocean, the roar of which resembled the murmurs of the forum, demonstrate that the greatest masters of the art of eloquence were fully alive to the vast influence of a powerful voice and animated delivery, in heightening the effect even of the most perfect efforts of oratory, and disdained no means of adding to their impression. When asked, What is the first requisite of eloquence? the last of these orators answered "Action;" the second? "Action;" the third? "Action." Without going so great a length, and admitting the full influence of the genius of Demosthenes in composing the speeches which he so powerfully delivered, every one must admit the influence of an impassioned delivery in heightening the effect of the highest, and concealing the defects of the most ordinary oratory.

Quintilian opens his second book by a discussion of the question, which he says occupied a prominent place in the schools of antiquity, at what age a boy should be taken from the teachers of grammar, and delivered to the instructors in rhetoric. By the former, they were taught grammar and the elements of composition; by the latter, exercised in themes, compositions in their own language, translations from Greek, extempore debate, and instructed in declamation, intonation, and action. They were not sent out into the world till they had spent several years in the latter preparatory studies and exercises; and in them were trained young men of all sorts, whether intended for the civil or military classes. It was this which gave its statesmen and generals so wonderful a command of the means of moving the human heart, and enabled them, in the most trying situations, and often in the crisis of a battle or the heat of a tumult, to utter those noble and impassioned sentiments which so often determined the fate of the day, or even the fortunes of their country; and which are so perfect that, when recorded in the historians of antiquity, they have the appearance of having been imagined by the genius of the writer. Nor was the attention to these elements of eloquence sensibly diminished in the progress of time, when the establishment of absolute power in the hands of a single person had transferred, as in the days of Napoleon, the discussion of all public or national questions to the council of state, or the private closet of the emperor. On the contrary, it seems to have daily increased, and was never so great as when the military fortunes of the empire were declining, and its external influence yielding to the increasing weight of the northern nations. A false and turgid style of eloquence, indeed, became then generally prevalent, as it always does in the later days of a nation, and in periods of political servitude: but attention to the means of attaining it underwent no diminution. The wisdom or policy of the emperors left various important functions to their _municipia_, or "little senates," as they were called. The judicial functions, for the most part, were still intrusted to the citizens: they had the management, almost uncontrolled, of their local concerns: and so great was the importance of securing their suffrages that the power of influencing them, by means of oratory, continued to the very last to be the chief object of instruction to the youth.

The instructors of youth in England have practically solved the question which divided the teachers of antiquity, for they deliver the youth at once from the grammar-school to the forum. They teach him the dead languages incessantly, up to the age of eighteen, at school: in the universities, mathematics in one university, and logic in the other, divide his time with the composition of Greek prose or Latin verse. But in those branches of study which have a bearing on eloquence, or are likely to improve the style of composition, the main attention of all is still directed to composition in the _dead languages_. They think the art of speaking or writing in English is not to be learned by exercise in that language, but by exercise in another. They hold we are likely to become eloquent in this our English isle, not by translating Cicero into English, but by translating Addison into Latin; to become great poets, not by rendering Horace into the tongue of Gray and Campbell, but by rendering the immortal verses of these into the languages of Pindar or Virgil. Cicero and Mr Pitt were of an opposite opinion. They held that, although the study of the masterpieces of antiquity is the great school of oratory, and the best path to rivalling their beauties, yet this is to be done, not by prosecuting the vain endeavour to emulate, in these days, their perfection in _their tongue_, but by seeking to _transfer it to our own_. Translations from the Greek into Latin formed a large part of the preparatory studies of Cicero,--from Thucydides and Cicero were the favourite occupation at college of Mr Pitt.[24] It may be that these great masters of ancient and modern eloquence were wrong--that their time would have been better employed in composing Greek and Latin verses, in attaining a thorough knowledge of Greek and Latin prosody, or becoming masters of all the niceties of Greek or Latin prose composition; but we shall not enter on the great debate. We are content to let education for all classes, in our universities, remain what Mr Locke long ago said it was, the education of schoolmasters;[25] and shall content ourselves with signalising this peculiar system of training as one great cause of the admitted inferiority of modern to ancient eloquence.

None can be more thoroughly impressed than we are with the vast importance of these noble establishments, or their effect in elevating the tone of the national mind, and improving the taste of the youth who daily issue from their walls. It is just from a sense of these advantages that we are so desirous to enhance and extend the sphere of their usefulness, and, by keeping them abreast of the age, and prepared to meet its wants, secure for the classes they instruct the lead in the national affairs to which they are entitled.

It cannot be disputed that, although English composition, or translation from the classics into English, is not altogether overlooked in the English universities, yet it forms a subordinate object of attention. We are all aware how many eminent men have first become celebrated by their prize poems. But those are the exceptions, not the rule. The classics at one university, the higher mathematics at another, form the great passports to distinction; the highest honours at either are only to be won by attention to one or other, or both, of these branches of knowledge. It is not surprising that, when this is the case, the attention of the young men should be mainly turned to composition in the dead languages, or to the most abstruse parts of mathematics; and that when they come to speak in public, or deliver sermons in their own language, they should, in the great majority of cases, be entire novices, both as concerns the method of composition and the graces of oratory. They are, in truth, called upon for the first time to speak what is to them a _foreign_ language; to discuss topics, to them, for the most part unknown; and practise a difficult art, that of delivery, to which they are entire strangers. If they were to address their audiences in Greek, they might possibly rival Æschines or Demosthenes; if in Latin, outstrip Cicero; and if required to compose verses, equal Horace or Pindar. But since they are called on, when they go out into life, to speak neither in Greek prose nor Latin prose, to compose neither in Greek verse nor Latin verse, but to _speak in good English_, and not about gods and goddesses, but the prices of corn and beef, the evils of pauperism and the load of taxes, they too often find themselves entirely at a loss, and inwardly lament the precious years, never to be recalled, which have been devoted to pursuits of no practical utility in life.

It is the more extraordinary that so little attention should be paid at our universities to composition, or the art of oratory, in the English tongue, that every day's experience proves that the power of public speaking is not only absolutely essential to the most moderate success in many professions, but is indispensable to the highest grades _in all_. In the Houses of Lords and Commons, at the Bar, in the Church, it is of course necessary from the very outset, if the very least eminence is to be looked for. But not only in the professions of which oratory is the very foundation, but in every case of life where a certain degree of eminence has been attained, it becomes of equal importance, and the want of it will be equally felt. The landed proprietor will find it impossible to maintain his influence in his county, unless, on the hustings and in political meetings, on the bench of justices, at county and railway meetings, he is prepared to take his part in debate, and can come off with a creditable appearance. The merchant or manufacturer who has become a _millionnaire_ by a life of laborious industry, will find that he cannot keep his place in society unless he call deliver his sentiments with effect at civic dinners, meetings for business, in the magisterial chair, or at the festive board. Even the soldier and sailor, when they rise to eminence in their profession, are called on to speak in public, and grievously suffer if they cannot do so. Many a gallant spirit, which never quailed before an enemy, has been crushed, and his reputation injured, by inability to speak in a public assembly, or to answer appropriately a complimentary speech at a public dinner. Indeed, the influence of public speaking in the country is not only great, but daily increasing, and it confers influence and distinction often far beyond the real merits of the speaker, and, for its want, the most solid or brilliant parts in other respects can make no compensation. The great body of men invariably impute inability to speak well in public to want of ideas; whereas, in reality, it generally arises from want of practice, and often coexists with the greatest acquirements and the most brilliant genius. Strange that the art of English oratory, upon which the experience of all tells them success in the higher stations of life is entirely dependent, should, by common consent, be invariably neglected, and that the art of making Latin verses, which universal experience tells all is of no earthly use in life, except to one in a thousand, should, by common consent, be universally cultivated!

It is constantly said, that the object of the extraordinary attention paid in our schools and colleges to composition in the dead languages, is to enable the students properly to appreciate the beauties of their authors, and that, without an exact knowledge of prosody and writing in them, this appreciation cannot be attained. This is doubtless in some degree true: but the point is, at what cost is this proficiency attained, and to what proportion of the students is it of any practical benefit? Is there one in ten to whom the beauty of poetry will ever be intelligible, one in a hundred who will ever be a poet? If we were to live to the age of Methusalem, it might be worth while to set apart ten years for classical composition, ten more for Italian, and ten for German; but since our life is limited to threescore and ten years, and a seventh of that only can be devoted to education, is it expedient to devote the _whole_ of that time to that one object? If ten years are devoted to the mastering of Greek composition and Latin prosody, _what time is left_ for learning to speak or write in English? What should we say if ten years were devoted by every English young man to the composition of German or Italian verses, because it would better enable him to appreciate the beauties of Schiller or Metastasio, of Korner or Petrarch? Yet is composition in these living languages more practically useful, both for the business of life and for improvement in our own tongue, than in the dead, because it is often of advantage in society, and their tongues are at bottom derived from the same roots, and are similar in construction to our own.