he believes his disease is blooming health. A rough realist, or a phalanx of realists, would be prescribed; but that is like proposing to mend your bad road with diamonds. Then poverty, famine, war, im- SOCIAL AIMS. 95 prisonment, might be tried. Another cure would be to fight fire with fire, to match a sentimentalist with a sentimentalist. I think each might begin to suspect that something was wrong.
Would we codify the laws that should reign in households, and whose daily transgression annoys and mortifies us, and degrades our household life — we must learn to adorn every day with sacrifices. Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices. Temperance, courage, love, are made up of the same jewels. Listen to every prompting of honor. " As soon as sacrifice becomes a duty and necessity to the man, I see no limit to the horizon which opens before me." * Of course those people, and no others, interest us who believe in their thought, who are absorbed, if you please to say so, in their own dream. They only can give the key and leading to better society: those who delight in each other only because both delight in the eternal laws; who forgive nothing to each other; who, by their joy and homage to these, are made incapable of conceit, which destroys al most all the fine wits. Any other affection between men than this geometric one of relation to the same thing, is a mere mush of materialism.
These are the bases of civil and polite society; namely, manners, conversation, lucrative labor, and public action, whether political, or in the leading of * Ernest Renan.
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social institutions. We have much to regret, much to mend, in our society; but I believe that with all liberal and hopeful men there is a firm faith in the beneficent results which we really enjoy; that in telligence, manly enterprise, good education, virtu ous life, and elegant manners have been and are found here, and, we hope, in the next generation will still more abound.
ELOQUENCE.
ELOQUENCE.
I DO not know any kind of history, except the event of a battle, to which people listen with more interest than to any anecdote of eloquence; and the wise think it better than a battle.- It is a triumph of pure power, and it has a beautiful and prodigious surprise in it. For all can see and understand the means by which a battle is gained: they count the armies, they see the cannon, the musketry, the cavalry, and the character and advantages of the ground, so that the result is often predicted by the observer with great certainty before the charge is sounded. Not so in a court of law, or in a legis lature. Who knows before the debate begins what the preparation, or what the means are of the com batants? The facts, the reasons, the logic, — above all, the flame of passion and the continuous energy of will which is presently to be let loose on this bench of judges, or on this miscellaneous assembly gathered from the streets, — are all invisible and unknown. Indeed, much power is to be exhibited 100 ELOQUENCE.
which is not yet called into existence, but is to be suggested on the spot by the unexpected turn things may take, — at the appearance of new evidence, or by the exhibition of an unlooked-for bias in the judges, or in the audience. It is eminently the art which only flourishes in free countries. It is an old proverb, that " Every people has its prophet "; and every class of the people has. Our community runs through a long scale of mental power, from the highest refinement to the borders of savage igno rance and rudeness. There are not only the wants of the intellectual and learned and poetic men and women to be met, but also the vast interests of property, public and private, of mining, of manufac tures, of trade, of railroads, etc. These must have their advocates of each improvement and each in terest. Then the political questions, which agitate millions, find or form a class of men by nature and habit fit to discuss and deal with these measures, and make them intelligible and acceptable to the electors. So of education, of art, of philanthropy. Eloquence shows the power and possibility of man. There is one of whom we took no note, but on a certain occasion it appears that he has a secret virtue never suspected, — that he can paint what has occurred, and what must occur, with such clear ness to a company, as if they saw it done before their eyes. By leading their thought he leads their will, and can make them do gladly what an hour ELOQUENCE. 101 ago they would not believe that they could t>e led to do at all: he makes them glad or angry or peni tent at his pleasure; of enemies makes friends, and fills desponding men with hope and joy. After Sheridan's speech in the trial of Warren Hastings, Mr. Pitt moved an adjournment, that the House might recover from the overpowering effect of Sheridan's oratory. Then recall the delight that sudden eloquence gives, — the surprise that the moment is so rich. The orator is the physician. "Whether he speaks in the Capitol or on a cart, he is the benefactor that lifts men above themselves, and creates a higher appetite than he satisfies. The orator is he whom every man is seeking when he goes into the courts, into the conventions, into any popu lar assembly, — though often disappointed, yet never giving over the hope. He finds himself perhaps in the Senate, when the forest has cast out some wild, black-browed bantling to show the same energy in the crowd of officials which he had learned in driving cattle to the hills, or in scrambling through thickets in a winter forest, or through the swamp and river for his game. In the folds of his brow, in the majesty of his mien, Nature lias marked her son; and in that artificial and perhaps unworthy place and company shall remind you of the lessons taught him in earlier days by the torrent in the gloom of the pine- woods, when he was the com panion of the mountain cattle, of jays and foxes, 102 ELOQUENCE.
and a hunter of the bear. Or you may find him in some lowly Bethel, by the seaside, where a hard- featured, scarred, and wrinkled Methodist becomes the poet of the sailor and the fisherman, whilst he pours out the abundant streams of his thought through a language all glittering and fiery with imagination, — a man who never knew the looking- glass or the critic, — a man whom college drill or patronage never made, and whom praise cannot spoil, — a man who conquers his audience by in fusing his soul into them, and speaks by the right of being the person in the assembly who has the most to say, and so makes all other speakers appear little and cowardly before his face. For the time, his exceeding life throws all other gifts into shade, — philosophy speculating on its own breath, taste, learning, and all, — and yet how every listener gladly consents to be nothing in his presence, and to share this surprising emanation, and be steeped and ennobled in the new wine of this eloquence! It instructs in the power of man over, men; that a man is a mover; to the extent of his being, a power; and, in contrast with the efficiency he suggests, our actual life and society appears a dormitory. "Who can wonder at its influence on young and ardent minds? Uncommon boys follow uncommon men; and I think every one of us can remember when our first experiences made us for a time the victim and worshipper of the first master of this art whom ELOQUENCE. 103 we happened to hear in the court-house or in the caucus. We reckon the bar, the senate, journal ism, and the pulpit, peaceful professions; but you cannot escape the demand for courage in these, and certainly there is no true orator who is not a hero. His attitude in the rostrum, on the platform, re quires that he counterbalance his auditory. He is challenger, and must answer all comers. The ora tor must ever stand with forward foot, in the atti tude of advancing. His speech must be just ahead of the assembly, — ahead of the whole human race, — or it is superfluous. His speech is not to be distinguished from action. It is the electricity of action. -It is action, as the general's word of com mand, or chart of battle, is action. I must feel that the speaker compromises himself to his auditory, comes for something, — it is a cry on the perilous edge of the fight, — or let him be silent. You go to a town-meeting where the people are called to some disagreeable duty, — such as, for example, often oc curred during the war, at the occasion of a new draft. They come unwillingly: they have spent their money once or twice very freely. They have sent) their best men: the young and ardent, those of a martial temper, went at the first draft, or the second, and it is not easy to see who else can be spared, or can be induced to go. The silence and coldness after the meeting is opened, and the pur pose of it stated, are not encouraging. When a good 1 04 ELOQUENCE.
man rises in the cold and malicious assembly, you think, Well, sir, it would be more prudent to bo silent; why not rest, sir, on your good record? Nobody doubts your talent and power; but for the present business, wre know all about it, and are tired of being pushed into patriotism by people who stay at home. But he, taking no counsel of past things, but only of the inspiration of his to-day's feeling, surprises them with his tidings, with his better knowledge, his larger view, his steady gaze at the new and future event, whereof they had not thought, and they are interested, like so many children, and carried off out of all recollection of their malignant considerations, and he gains his victory by proph ecy, where they expected repetition. He knew very well beforehand that they were looking behind and that he was looking ahead, and therefore it was wise to speak. Then the observer says, What a godsend is this manner of man to a town! and he, what a faculty! He is put together like a Waltham watch, or like a locomotive just finished at the Tredegar works.
No act indicates more universal health than elo quence. The special ingredients of this force • are: clear perceptions; memory; power of statement; logic; imagination, or the skill to clothe your thought in natural images.; passion, which is the heat; and then a grand will, which, when legitimate and abiding, we call character, the height of man- ELOQUENCE. 105 ELOQUENCE. 105 hood. As soon as a man shows rare power of ex pression, like Chatham, Erskine, Patrick Henry, Webster, or Phillips, all the great interests, whether of state or of property, crowd to him to be their spokesman, so that he is at once a potentate, a ruler of men. A worthy gentleman, Mr. Alexander, lis tening to the debates of the General Assembly of the Scottish Kirk, in Edinburgh, and eager to speak to the questions, but utterly failing in his endeavors, — delighted with the talent shown by Dr. Hugh Blair, went to him, and offered him one thousand pounds sterling if he would teach him to speak with propriety in public. If the performance of the advocate reaches any high success, it is paid in England with dignities in the professions, and in the state with seats in the cabinet, earldoms, and woolsacks. And it is easy to see that the great and daily growing interests at stake in this country must pay proportional prices to their spokesmen and defenders. It does not surprise us, then, to learn from Plutarch what great sums were paid at Athens to the teachers of rhetoric; and if the pupils got what they paid for, the les sons were cheap.
But this power which so fascinates and astonishes and commands is only the exaggeration of a talent which is universal. All men are competitors in this art. We have all attended meetings called for some object in which no one had beforehand any warm 5* 106 ELOQUENCE.
interest. Every speaker rose unwillingly, and even his speech was a bad excuse; but it is only the first plunge which is formidable, and deep interest or sympathy thaws the ice, loosens the tongue, and will carry the cold and fearful presently into self-posses sion, and possession of the audience. Go into an as sembly well excited, some angry political meeting on the eve of a crisis. Then it appears that eloquence is as natural as swimming, — an art which all men might learn, though so few do. It only needs that they should be once well pushed off into the water, overhead, without corks, and, after a mad strug gle or two, they find their poise and the use of their arms, and henceforward they possess this new and wonderful element.
The most hard-fisted, disagreeably restless, thought- paralyzing companion sometimes turns out in a public assembly to be a fluent, various, and effec tive orator. Now you find what all that excess of power which so chafed and fretted you in a tete-a- tete with him was for. What is peculiar in it is a certain creative heat, which a man attains to perhaps only once in his life. Those whom we admire — the great orators — have.some habit of heat, and, moreover, a certain control of it, an art of husbanding it, — as if their hand was on the organ-stop, and could now use it temperately, and now let out all the length and breadth of the power. I remember that Jenny Lind, when in this ELOQUENCE. 107 country, complained of concert-rooms and town-halls, that they did not give her room enough to unroll her voice, and exulted in the opportunity given her in the great halls she found sometimes built over a railroad depot. And this is quite as true of the action of the mind itself, that a man of this talent sometimes finds himself cold and slow in private company, and perhaps a heavy companion; but give him a commanding occasion, and the inspiration of a great multitude, and he surprises by new and un looked-for powers. Before, he was out of place, and unfitted as a cannon in a parlor. To be sure there are physical advantages, — some eminently leading to this art. I mentioned Jenny Lind's voice. A good voice has a charm in speech as in song; some times of itself enchains attention, and indicates a rare sensibility, especially when trained to wield all its powers. The voice, like the face, betrays the nature and disposition, and soon indicates what is the range of the speaker's mind. Many people have no ear for music, but every one has an ear for skilful reading. Every one of us has at some time been the victim of a well-toned and cunning voice, and perhaps been repelled once for all by a harsh, mechanical speaker. The voice, indeed, is a deli cate index of the state of mind. I have heard an eminent preacher say, that he learns from the first tones of his voice on a Sunday morning whether he is to have a successful day. A singer 108 ELOQUENCE.
cares little for the words of the song; he will make any words glorious. I think the like rule holds of the good reader. In the church I call him only a good reader who can read sense and poetry into any hymn in the hymn-book. Plutarch, in his enumera tion of the ten Greek orators, is careful to mention their excellent voices, and the pains bestowed by some of them in training these. What character, what infinite variety, belong to the voice! sometimes it is a flute, sometimes a trip-hammer; what range of force! In moments of clearer thought or deeper sympathy, the voice will attain a music and pene tration which surprises the speaker as much as the auditor; he also is a sharer of the higher wind that blows over his strings. I believe that some orators go to the assembly as to a closet where to find their best thoughts. The Persian poet Saadi tells us that a person with a disagreeable voice was reading the Koran aloud, when a holy man, passing by, asked what was his monthly stipend. He answered, " Nothing at all." " But why then do you take so much trouble? " He replied, " I read for the sake of God." The other rejoined, " For God's sake, do not read; for if you read the Koran in this manner you will destroy the splendor of Islamism." Then there are persons of natural fascination, with certain frankness, winning manners, almost endearments in their style; like Bouillon, who could almost per suade you that a quartan ague was wholesome; like ELOQUENCE. 109 Louis XL of France, whom Commines praises for "the gift of managing all minds by his accent and the caresses of his speech "; like Galiani, Vol taire, Eobert Burns, Barclay, Fox, and Henry Clay. What must have been the discourse of St. Bernard, when mothers hid their sons, wives their husbands, companions their friends, lest they should be led by his eloquence to join the monastery.
It is said that one of the best readers in his time was the late President John Quincy Adams. I have heard that no man could read the Bible with such powerful effect. I can easily believe it, though I never heard him speak in public until his fine voice was much broken by age. But the wonders he could achieve with that cracked and disobedient organ showed what power might have belonged to it in early manhood. If " indignation makes good verses," as Horace says, it is not less true that a good indignation makes an excellent speech. In the early years of this century, Mr. Adams, at that time a member of the United States Senate at Washington, was elected Professor of Ehetoric and Oratory in Harvard College. When he read his first lectures in 1806, not only the students heard him with delight, but the hall was crowded by the Professors and by unusual visitors. I remember when, long after, I entered college, hearing the story of the numbers of coaches in which his friends came from Boston to hear him. On his return in 110 ELOQUENCE.
110 ELOQUENCE.
the winter to the Senate at Washington, he took such ground in the debates of the following session as to lose the sympathy of many of his constituents in Boston. "When, on his return from Washington, he resumed his lectures in Cambridge, his class at tended, but the coaches from Boston did not come, and, indeed, many of his political friends deserted him. In 1809 he was appointed Minister to Eussia, and resigned his chair in the University. His last lecture, in taking leave of his class, contained some nervous allusions to the treatment he had received from his old friends, which showed how much it had stung him, and which made a profound impres sion on the class. Here is the concluding para graph, which long resounded in Cambridge: — "At no hour of your life will the love of letters ever oppress you as a burden, or fail you as a resource. In the vain and foolish exultation of the heart, which the brighter prospects of life will sometimes excite, the pen sive portress of Science shall call you to the sober pleas ures of her holy cell. In the mortifications of disap pointment, her soothing voice shall whisper serenity and peace. In social converse with the mighty dead of ancient days, you will never smart under the galling sense of dependence upon the mighty living of the present age. And in your struggles with the world, should a crisis ever occur, when even friendship may deem it prudent to desert you, when even your country may seem ready to abandon herself and you, when ELOQUENCE. Ill priest and Levite shall come and look on yon and pass by on the other side, seek refuge, my unfailing friends, and be assured you shall find it, in the friendship of Laelius and Scipio, in the patriotism of Cicero, Demos thenes, and Burke, as well as in the precepts and example of Him whose law is love, and who taught us to remem ber injuries only to forgive them."
The orator must command the whole scale of the language, from the most elegant to the most low and vile. Every one has felt how superior in force is the language of the street to that of the academy. The street must be one of his schools. Ought not the scholar to be able to convey his meaning in terms as short and strong as the porter or truck man uses to convey his? And Lord Chesterfield thought " that without being instructed in the dia lect of the Halles no man could be a complete mas ter of French." The speech of the man in the street is invariably strong, nor can you mend it by making it what you call parliamentary. You say, "if he could only express himself"; but he does already better than any one can for him, — can always get the ear of an audience to the exclusion of everybody else. Well, this is an example in point That some thing which each man was created to say and do, he only or he best can tell you, and has a right to supreme attention so far. The power of their speech is, that it is perfectly understood by all; and I be lieve it to be true, that when any orator at the bar 112 ELOQUENCE.