the sublime and transcendent genius of Milton flutters with dark and heavy wings, near the earth, but faintly tinged with the celes tial light, and rests on objects blasted or deformed. Let him then, whose soul is pure and holy with the love of nature, take his posi tion in the midst of creation, and commence the mighty work of the eternal perfection of thought. On Thursday, the 12th of this month, the Hon. JOHN Q. ADAMS, was inaugurated as the first Boylston Professor of Rhetorick and Oratory at Harvard University. We have requested a copy of his inaugural Oration delivered on that occasion, with a belief, that its perusal would afford high gratification to our readers. For his prompt compliance with our request, we beg leave to tender him our most grateful acknowledgements. AN INAUGURAL ORATION. BY HON. J. Q. ADAMS. IT is the fortune of some opin ions, as well as of some individual characters, to have been, during a long succession of ages, subjects of continual controversy among mankind. In forming an estimate of the moral or intellectual merits of many a person, whose name is recorded in the volumes of histo ry, their virtues and vices are so nearly balanced, that their station in the ranks of fame has never been precisely assigned, and their reputation,even after death,vibrates upon the hinges of events, with which they have little or no perceptible connexion. Such too has been the destiny of the arts and sciences in general, and of the art of rhetorick in particular. Their advancement and decline have been alternate in the annals of the world. At one period they have been cherished, admired, and cultivated; at another neglected, despised, and oppressed. Like the favourites of princes, they have had their turns of unbounded influence and of excessive degradation. Now the enthusiasm of their votaries has raised them to the pinnacle of greatness; now a turn of the wheel Once has hurled them prostrate in the dust. Nor have these great and sudden revolutions always resulted from causes seemingly capable of producing such effects. At one period, the barbarian conqueror destroys, at another he adopts, the arts of the vanquished people. The Grecian Muses were led captive and in chains to Rome. there, they not only burst asunder their own fetters, but soon mounting the triumphal car, rode with 'supreme ascendancy over their victors. More than once have the Tartars, after carrying conquest and desolation over the empire of China, been subdued in turn by the arts of the nation, they had enslaved; as if by a wise and equitable retribution of nature the authors of violence were doomed to be overpowered by their own prosperity, and to find in every victory the seeds of defeat. On the other hand, the arts and sciences, at the hour of their highest exaltation, have been often reproached and insulted by those, on whom they had bestowed their choicest favours, and most cruelly assaulted by the weapons, which themselves had conferred. At the At the zenith of modern civilization, the palm of unanswered eloquence was awarded to the writer, who maintained, that the sciences had always promoted rather the misery, than the happiness of mankind; and in the age and nation, which heard the voice of Demosthenes, Socrates has been represented as triumphantly demonstrating, that rhetorick cannot be dignified with the name of an art; that it is but a pernicious practice...the mere counterfeit of justice. This opinion has had its followers from the days of Socrates to our own, and it still remains an inquiry among men, as in the age of Plato and in that of Cicero, whether eloquence is an art, worthy of the cultivation of a wise and virtuous man. To assist us in bringing the mind to a satisfactory result of this in quiry, it is proper to consider the art, as well in its nature, as in its effects; to derive our inferences, not merely from the uses, which have been made of it, but from the purposes, to which it ought to be applied, and the end, which it is destined to answer. The peculiar and highest characteristick, which distinguishes man from the rest of the animal creation, is reason. It is by this attribute, that our species is constituted the great link between the phy sical and intellectual world. By our passions and appetites we are placed on a level with the herds of of the forest; by our reason we participate in the divine nature it self: formed of clay, and compounded of dust, we are, in the scale of creation, little higher than the clod of the valley; endowed with reason, we are little lower than the angels. It is by the gift of reason, that the human species enVol. III. No. 6. 2N joys the exclusive and inestimable privilege of progressive improvement, and is enabled to avail itself of the advantages of individual discovery. As the necessary adjunct and vehicle of reason, the faculty of speech was also bestowed as an exclusive privilege upon man: not the mere utterance of articu late sounds; not the mere cries of passion, which he has in common with the lower orders of animated nature but as the conveyance of thought; as the means of rational intercourse with his fellow-creature, and of humble communion with his God. It is by the means of reason, clothed with speech, that the most precious blessings of social life are communicated from man to man, and that supplication, thanksgiving, and praise are addressed to the author of the uniHow justly then, with the great dramatick poet may we exclaim, verse. "Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not A faculty thus elevated, given us for so sublime a purpose, and destined to an end so excellent, was not intended by the supreme Creator to be buried in the grave of neglect. As the source of all human improvements it was itself susceptible of improvement by industry and application, by observation and experience. Hence, wherever man has been found in a social state, and wherever he has been sensible of his dependance upon a supreme disposer of events, the value and the power of publick speaking, if not universally acknowledged, has at least been universally felt. For the truth of these remarks let me appeal to the testimony of history, sacred and profane. We shall find it equally clear and conclusive from the earliest of her records, which have escaped the ravages of time. When the people of God were groaning under the insupportable oppressions of Egyptian bondage, and the Lord of hosts condescended by miraculous interposition, to raise them up a deliverer, the want of eloquence was pleaded, by the chosen object of his ministry, as an argument of his incompetency for the high commission, with which he was to be charged. To supply this deficiency, which, even in the communication of more than human powers, Eternal Wisdom had not seen fit to remove, another favoured servant of the Most High was united in the exalted trust of deliverance, and specially appointed, for the purpose of declaring the divine will, to the oppressor and the oppressed to the monarch of Egypt and the children of Israel. "Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother? I know that he can speak well. And he shall be thy spokesman unto the people: and he shall be, even he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and thou shalt be to him instead of God." It was not sufficient for the beneficent purposes of divine Providence that the shepherd of his flock should be invested with the power of performing signs and wonders to authenticate his mission, and command obedience to his words.... The appropriate instrument to appal the heart of the tyrant upon his throne, and to control the wayward dispositions of the people, was an eloquent speaker; and the importance of the duty is apparent in the distinction, which separated it from all the other transcendent gifts, with which the inspired leader was endowed, and committed it as a special charge to his associate. Nor will it escape your observation, that when the first great object of their joint mission was accomplished, and the sacred system of laws and polity for the emancipated nation was delivered by the voice of heaven from the holy mountain, the same eloquent speaker was separated from among the children of Israel, to minister in the priest's office; to bear the iniquity of their holy things; to offer up to God, their creator and preserver, the publick tribute of their social adoration. In the fables of Greece and Egypt the importance of eloquence is attested by the belief, that the art of publick speaking was of celestial origin, ascribed to the invention of a God, who, from the possession of this faculty, was supposed to be the messenger and interpreter of Olympus. It is attested by the solicitude, with which the art was cultivated at a period of the remotest antiquity. With the first glimpse of historical truth, which bursts from the oriental regions of mythological romance, in that feeble and dubious twilight, which scarcely discerns the distinction between the fictions of pagan superstition and the narrative of real events, a school of rhetorick and oratory, established in the Peloponnesus, dawns upon our view. After the lapse of a thousand years from that time, Pausanias, a Grecian geographer and historian, explicitly asserts, that he had read a treatise upon the art, composed by the founder of this school, a cotemporary and relative of Theseus in the age preceding that of the Trojan war. The poems of Homer abound with still more deci sive proofs of the estimation, in which the powers of oratory were held, and of the attention, with which it was honoured as an essential object of instruction in the education of youth. From that era, through the long series of Greek and Roman history down to the gloom of universal' night,in which the gioiies of the Roman empire expired, the triumphs and the splendour of eloquence are multiplied and conspicuous. Then it was, that the practice of the art attained a perfection ever since unrivalled, and to which all succeeding times have listened with admiration and despair. At Athens and Rome a town-meeting could scarcely be held, without being destined to immortality; a question of property between individual citizens could scarcely be litigated, without occupying the attention, and engaging the studies of the remotest nations and the most distant posterity. There is always a certain correspondence and proportion between the estimation in which an art is held, and the effects which it produces. In the flourishing periods of Athens and Rome eloquence was power. It was at once the instrument, and the spur to ambition. The talent of publick speaking was the key to the highest dignities; the passport to the supreme dominion of the state. The rod of Hermes was the sceptre of empire: the voice of oratory was the thunder of Jupiter. The most powerful of human passions was enlisted in the cause of eloquence, and eloquence in return was the most effectual auxiliary to the passions, In proportion to the wonders she atchieved, was the eagerness to acquire the faculties of this mighty magician. Oratory was taught as the occupation of a life. course of instruction commenced with the infant in the cradle and continued to the meridian of manhood. It was made the fundamental object of education, and every other part of instruction for childhood and of discipline for youth was bent to its accommodation. Arts, science, letters, were to be thoro.ghly studied and investigated, upon the maxim,that an orator must be a man of universal knowledge. Moral duties. were inculcated, because none but a good man could be an orator. Wisdom, learning, Virtue herself were estimated by their subserviency to the purposes of eloquence, and the whole duty of man consisted in making himself an accomplished publick speaker. With the dissolution of Roman liberty, and the decline of Roman taste, the reputation and the excellency of the oratorical art fell alike into decay. Under the despotism of the Casars, the end of eloquence was perverted from persuasion to panegyrick, and all her faculties were soon palsied by the touch of corruption, or enervated by the impotence of servitude. Then succeeded the midnight of the monkish ages, when with the other liberal arts she slumbered in the profound darkness of the cloister. At the revival of letters in modern Europe, eloquence, together with her sister muses awoke, and shook the poppies from her brow. But their torpors still tingled in her veins. In the interval, her voice was gone; her favourite languages were extinct; her organs were no longer attuned to harmony, and her hearers could no longer understand her speech. The discordant jargon of feudal anarchy had banished the musical dialects, in which she had always delighted. The The theatres of her former triumphs were either deserted, or they were filled with the babblers of sophistry and chicane. She shrunk intuitively from the forum, for the last object she remembered to have seen there, was the head of her darling Cicero, planted upon the rostrum. She ascended the tribunals of justice; there she found her child, Persuasion, manacled and pinioned by the letter of the law; there she beheld an image of herself, stammering in barbarous Latin, and staggering under the lumber of a thousand volumes. Her heart fainted within her she lost all confidence in herself: together with her irresistible powers, she lost proportionably the consideration of the world, until, instead of comprizing the whole system of publick education, she found herself excluded from the circle of sciences, and declared an outlaw from the realms of learning. She was not, however, doomed to eternal silence. With the progress of freedom and of liberal science in various parts of modern Europe, she obtained access to mingle in the deliberations of their parliaments. With labour and difficulty she learned their languages, and lent her aid in giving them form and polish. But she has never recovered the graces of her former beauty, nor the energies of her ancient vigour. The immeasurable superiority of ancient over modern oratory is one of the most remarkable circumstances, which offer themselves to the scrutiny of reflecting minds, and it is in the languages, the institutions, and the manners of modern Europe, that the solution of a phenomenon, so extraordinary,must be sought. The assemblies of the people, of the select councils, or of the senate in Athens and Rome were held for the purpose of real deliberation. The fate of measures was not decided before they were proposed, Eloquence produced a powerful effect, not only upon the minds of the hearers, but upon the issue of the deliberation. In the only countries of modern Europe,where the semblance of deliberative assemblies has been preserved, corruption, here in the form of executive influence, there in the guise of party spirit, by introducing a more compendious mode of secu ring decisions, has crippled the sublimest efforts of oratory, and the votes upon questions of magnitude to the interest of nations are all told, long before the questions themselves are submitted to discussion. Hence those nations, which for ages have gloried in the devotion to literature, science, and the arts, have never been able to exhibit a specimen of deliberative oratory, that can bear a comparison with those, transmitted down to us from antiquity. Religion indeed has opened one new avenue to the career of eloquence. Amidst the sacrifices of paganism to her three hundred thousand gods, amidst her sagacious and solemn consultations in the entrails of slaughtered brutes, in the flight of birds, and the feeding of fowls, it had never entered her imagination to call upon the pontiff, the haruspex, or the augur, for discourses to the people, upon the nature of their duties to their maker, their fellow-mortals, and themselves. This was an idea too august to be mingled with the absurd and ridiculous, or profligate and barbarous rites of her deplora. ble superstition. It is an institu tion for which mankind are indebted to christianity; introduced by the Founder himself of this divine religion, and in every point of view worthy of its high original. |
