cient communities and their incessant pursuit of enjoyment, brought them more under the dominion of imagination than the more fully occupied and less excitable citizens of modern states. The orator and his audience were held together by the closest bonds of sympathy. The orator was absolutely necessary to his audience for the intellectual delight he furnished, and the audience to the orator for the share of substantial power his art gave him over their understandings. It dealt in the boldest apostrophies and most daring invocations, in all the higher flights of exalted imaginations, because stimulants of less vigour and vivacity would have failed to kindle the passions and impress the affections to which its appeals were addressed.

The case is, however, widely different with us, for as society advances to opulence, and is filled with a variety of pursuits, it is cut off from many of those enjoyments which form both the pleasure and the pastime of less busy communities. Commerce has imparted seriousness to the general character of our age, for it leads to labour and dependence in the great body of the people, under the happiest political arrangements. The citizens of most existing communities are withdrawn from the direct exercise of political functions, and are far too busy with their own affairs to be engrossed with matters of public concern, to any thing like the same degree of intensity as the people of the ancient republics. Having delegated the management of their political interests to those who have the leisure to attend to them, one of the first consequences has been a reduction of the size as well as a total revolution in the character of our deliberative assemblies. The men who now participate in the work of legislation are to be led by reasoning and calculation, and are with far more difficulty stirred to enthusiasm and excess than of old. Imagination has scanty materials to work upon, while at the same time there are but few to catch the contagion of sympathy. The calm argumentative oratory of our period would have been ridiculed or not attended to at Athens, or even at Rome, while the passion and vehemence which in general characterized the ancient masters of persuasion, would perhaps share the same fate in one of our deliberative bodies. These different species of the art would either never have had birth out of their ap

propriate eras, or springing up, and finding no sympathy, would have soon decayed. In these opposite periods of oratorical cultivation, we, therefore, find only those kinds of eloquence which are adapted to the condition of manners and the political structure of the states which they signalized.

2. Another general cause of difference between the condition of the art in ancient and modern times, is the comparative infrequency of political revolutions, and the superior stability of law in our day. This circumscribes within much narrower boundaries the field of eloquence. The subversion of established authority, and changes of fundamental institutions, were ordinary occurrences during the perpetual fluctuation of affairs in the ancient democracies. The expulsion of rulers and popular favourites created little sensation, except as affording special themes of 'attack or defence in the Forum or the Public Assembly. The political changes were limited as to both space and number-they did not embrace much more than the population of a single city, or the circumference of a few miles; yet within this narrow span, what a potent tongue and inspiring breath did not these changes lend to oratory? Where are to be found in our day in the revolutions of the largest empires, and the overthrow of the greatest dynasties, as their accompaniments or forerunners, such efforts of eloquence, as signalized the popular commotions of Rome or Athens? It is in the degree that oratory has to deal with the palpable and the particular-with personal interests and perils-with individual persecution or ambition or glory, that her triumphs are established; and it is in proportion as the orator surrenders the details or incidents of revolution, if we may so speak, or its particular concomitants, and ascends to general views and comprehensive principles, that the glories of the art are lost in the abstraction of philosophy.

There are, doubtless, popular impulses which are speedily and successfully aroused whether the address be made in the manner it was at Athens, or, as in our day, in Westminster. There are emotions of universal power and prevalence which kindle readily if the train is laid with due skill, and the match applied at the proper moment. There are inflammable materials in sufficient abundance, at all times, in the mind, if the true point of excitement be happily seized. The feelings of patriotism and national glory are not difficult to arouse. The appeal lies here to the palpable and the obvious-to perceptions which are universal, and demand no previous training or cultivation. There are impressions, however, associated with popular eloquence, which are of much wider compass and more difficult development. The orator who deals with principles that require gradual germination in the mind, acts a similar part to the philosopher who generalizes in compliance with the spirit and habits of his age. He appeals to moral sympathies of deeper culture and more inward energy than any connected

with the sentiments of patriotism or public glory. If he blend with the high philosophy which he unites to eloquence, appeals to the ordinary impulses of our nature, it is as aids and not as principals, in his scheme of persuasion. He enforces social truths with such accessories as may be borrowed or reflected, it is true, from the imagination. But they are only as accompaniments.

Such is the destiny of all oratory that precedes or accompanies a popular convulsion in our day. It is a species of eloquence pervaded more or less by a spirit of generalization. A Mirabeau who addresses the popular sensibility with signal success, is compelled to unite his rhetorical graces to philosophical truths. A Patrick Henry who sways the feelings of his auditors at will, is forced to link his inspiration with that intelligence which is the fruit of reflection. At such periods the national mind must be prepared by an elaborate culture. The glebe must be thoroughly turned up and prepared to receive the seeds of modern eloquence. The orator must find a wide correspondence in the general intelligence and sympathy, which will make his efforts appear as a mere emanation of the national mind-a sign or type of the fermentation that is abroad and around him on every side. All modern oratory of large aims and effective results, will more or less partake of this peculiarity. If in this there is a wide field opened to the oratorical genius of the moderns-if our orators have to deal with larger masses of men than the ancient candidates for the distinctions of eloquence-if the civil revolutions of our day, wrought by the agency of oratory, are more intellectual in their origin, and wider in their effects;-all these circumstances are adverse to the real grandeur of eloquence, to its vehemence and energyto its picturesque expression, as well as to its positive results. Obvious mental associations, in proportion as they become the basis of oratory, impart vividness and vigour to its appeals. Abstract connexions between our thoughts, in the degree that they pervade the general strain of speech, force it to lose in distinctness and vigour what it acquires in depth and generality.

It is impossible to unite incompatible excellencies. It is not in art that man should hold a double empire over distinct and opposite faculties and impulses of the mind. If the enthu siasm on which love of country and a passion for national glory are founded, is of a different character from that which is more spiritual in its origin and essence, the oratory of which it is the common mother, will exhibit corresponding characteristics. The dominion of speech is thus divided, as supremacy in any other

mental pursuit, by distinct boundaries at different eras. The field of picturesque narrative was appropriated by the ancient historians. The domain of philosophical speculation belongs as exclusively to the modern. We thus see in what manner the ancients possessed a superiority in those attributes of eloquence, which have been pointed out as their peculiar property, by living in an era before the relations of humanity were multiplied and extended-before the new connexions of communities had introduced complexity into the science of politics, and deprived us moderns, through the diversity and distraction of our pursuits, of that grandeur which results from simplicity, and that vigour which is the offspring of unity and concen

tration.

We thus behold the advantage of that state of manners for the kindly growth of the arts of speech, which associates man, in his social state, with present power, dignity, and external enjoyment of that form of polity which nourishes genius by the incessant comparison of things in their outward forms and semblances. Such were, in their general characteristics, both the Greeks and Romans. In proportion as their thoughts became concentrated on their country-on their liberty-on their national glory-did their oratory borrow the "thews and sinews" which belong to the elder state of the art. It is impossible, without these causes and concomitants-without these manners and mental characteristics-without this peculiar taste and temperament, ever again to restore that condition of eloquence which belonged to the ancient commonwealths.

3. If this view of the subject be just, the division of pursuits cannot but be adverse to the culture of the art with any singleness of purpose and condensed vigour of mind. The ancient candidate for the prize of eloquence, devoted his whole faculties to a mastery over the instruments of persuasion. He neglected none of the means of success, however slight or insignificant in appearance. He explored every avenue of the mind, and took possession of all the inlets of delight, through the medium of the senses. If he figured as a statesman, the study of eloquence included the whole mental discipline. If he appeared as an advocate, and won the cause, it was to the arts of persuasion he owed the victory. How different is the training of the modern, whether he appear in the Senate or at the Forum! His path is crowded and encumbered with the materials of almost unlimited extent and variety, which the labours of centuries have accumulated, and which he is required to shape to the ends of judicious speech. He is thrown on a scene of business

and into affairs of complexity from the moment of his entrance on a public career. He has to combine and arrange a vast number of details inconsistent with all unity of application. He must be exact in his information, accurate in his principles, comprehensive in his views. He has to acquire systems that he may be prepared to adopt or overthrow them, and he has to adjust contrarient interests according to existing schemes and arrangements of polity. Thus at every step he is forced to blend complex duties of legislation and abstract views of philosophy with the functions of oratory. He cannot pursue eloquence as a separate branch of intellectual discipline and preparation for the conflicts of public life. The ancients having in their political assemblies no balancing of interests-no complicated adjustments-no compromises of policy-no schemes of concession, gave themselves up to a single point of discussion. They were never diverted from a certain unity of intellectual view by the distractions and divisions which pervade our mixed assemblies. Theirs was a singleness of purpose effected by simplicity of means. What weapons of signal power and proof did not these circumstances lend to oratory!

No modern orator thinks to sway the deliberations of the body of which he is a member, to the issues of peace or war, by the energy of his individual powers-by the might of his single voice. This must be the result of many minds acting on large views of expediency, or from kindred associations of patriotism. But we know that on the ancient theatres of eloquence, war was declared, alliances formed, revolutions achieved, by the influence of one potent tongue. Nothing was done by cal culation by previous arrangement-by party combination. Each man, on the scene of public affairs, acted from his own impulses his own stimulants to action, whether of ambition, revenge, glory or power. Each measure was adopted or not, according as it was counselled by eloquence, whose sway was single and supreme. But in the greatest storm of modern declamation, you perceive the speaker under the dominion of a spirit of calculation. In his highest altitude he is not able to escape from the fetters of political combinations.

4. Another striking difference is to be found in the uninterrupted occasions for speaking afforded on the ancient theatres. There was no interregnum to the supremacy of the oratorthere was no abeyance of the faculties of speech. At Rome, the Senate, the Comitia, and the ordinary tribunals of justice, were some of them constantly in session. Throughout the states of Greece, in which eloquence was cultivated as an instru