another."

In addition to their choral strain of moral piety, where, for instance, can be found in works of the same kind so rare a mine of thought, for the worshipper to take to his bosom, for the writer to enrich his discourse, for the thinker to ponder, for the divine to quote, for all to assimilate and use, as in those of George Eliot?

These remarks suggest the advantages of the novelist as a teacher. If historical, as Sir Walter Scott, he instructs us, with more or less fidelity, in the manners, customs, laws, beliefs, characters and events of the age in which the scenes are laid. As a critic or speculator, the doctrine he intends to convey, unlike that of the avowed instructor or declared reformer, is not clothed in abstract conceptions which, to be fully and clearly understood, require thoughtful reflection, but in concrete instances that come home at once to the feeblest comprehension.' If he be one of high order, he throws a beauty over what would else be vulgar and mean, yet brings virtue and vice into striking antithesis; helps to give a better insight into human character and actions, prompts our affections to the good, sharpens our antipathy to the bad; accomplishes all this while he provides a mode of pleasing relaxation. Not in the direct formation of this or that special opinion, but in subtle impressions upon the whole character, is his influence exercised most powerfully.

The imagination and fancy should not be cultivated too exclusively. Without a wise selection and regulation of intellectual food, there is danger of that mood in which action is renounced, resolve becomes nerveless, and the soul sinks into passivity. The condition of many a habitual and exclusive novel-reader might be likened not inaptly to that of the enervated companions of Ulysses,

1 Masson's British Novelists.

2 For this reason the wisest men in all ages have more or less employed fables as the vehicles of knowledge.

who, feeding upon the lotos, murmur, in luxuriant sleepi

ness:

How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,

With half-shut eyes ever to seem

Falling asleep in a half dream.

It is never the nature of this species of composition, considered in itself, but the faulty manner of its make-up, that exposes it, as a rule, to reprobation. Pass by, we should say, mere love-and-marriage stories. Put far from you a thoroughly bad book — bad either for coarseness of style or for laxity of morals. Perhaps such as put forward licentiousness as licentiousness are less harmful than those in which poison is distilled so subtly that the evil is wrought almost before suspicion is awakened — in which right and wrong are muddled up together into a sort of neutral tint, in which characters are made attractive by their faults, and sin is quite forgotten in sympathy for the sinner so piteous, so interesting, so beautiful!

CHAPTER XXI.

DEPARTMENTS OF EXPRESSION--ORATORY.

Eloquence is vehement simplicity.-CECIL.

He has oratory who ravishes his hearers while he forgets himself.LAVATER.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you overstep not the modesty of nature.--SHAKESPEARE.

IT

T has been said that an audience leaving the theatre in which a drama of Sophocles was performed, felt themselves inspired with the thoughts and conceptions of the poet, so were raised to the dignified standard of his nature and intellect; and that this beneficial effect manifested itself, not by issuance in visible acts, but rather by diffusion over the general tenor of their lives. On the other hand, an audience quitting the theatre in which Demosthenes thundered against Philip, associate, unite, arm, and march against the invader. In the one case, individuals are purified, elevated; in the other, they are rendered unanimous for purposes whose end is action.

The comparison suggests the prevailing and highest aim of the orator - to make himself master of our will. Hence the current definition of oratory. the art of per

suading, impelling. But acts may be internal, results may be invisible. More specifically, more comprehensively, therefore, oratory is discourse delivered to an assembly with the view of inculcating certain ideas, impressing with certain sentiments, inducing certain resolves, or of doing these three at once.

The fuller statement is in accordance with the accepted

division of oratory into secular and sacred, and the subdivision of the former into demonstrative, whose proper business is the praise or dispraise of persons and things, as in panegyrics, invectives, gratulatory, funeral, and Fourth-of-July addresses; deliberative (sometimes called political), employed on questions affecting the public welfare, agitated in the halls of legislation or before mass meetings consulting on the adoption or rejection of measures; judicial, or forensic, employed in courts of law, seeking to determine the relation of the law to the fact, and to influence the decision of judges and juries, who have power to absolve or to condemn. Where men are convened for debate or consultation, the orator is one of the assembly, every member of which has equal right with himself to the expression of opinion. He, at least theoretically, is to think less of bringing a majority to his side than of ascertaining which side is the true one for all. He has also the excitement of responsibility, is aided by the animation and topical suggestiveness of controversy. In occasional addresses-not excluding the performances of my young friends on school and college commencement days the speaker has to do essentially with spectators, who are at peace, who hear him on a subject not felt to be of pressing importance, who yet are to be interested. As a rule, he has wide range can fetch his topics from a great variety of quarters. Before the bench, he is, or should be, a logician, showing what is just and true; he is in the presence of acknowledged superiors, who are to decide upon the strength of his reasoning; he is watched severely by those who have made such questions as he is discussing the serious study of their lives. Composed and compact, earnest but subdued, before the judge, he may be freer, even passionate; before the jury, he may steal away 'from the legal evidence and character of the act to its social effects and dramatic bearings.' His problem is to

escape the dulness of logic without falling into the impropriety of harangue. Before a congregation of worshippers, he is a preacher, endeavoring to influence man in his strictly personal life, not superficially and transiently, but profoundly and permanently. His appeal is not to carry a point connected with his own ambition or gains, but to advance their spiritual good. He regards his hearers in every relation and condition of life as members of the family and subjects of the state, as laboring and professional, as poor and rich, as ignorant and enlightened. His themes are noble, important, sublime; he chooses them at leisure, and can premeditate carefully: but they are familiar, trite, abstract, forever recurring. Yet must he fix the attention. His difficult task is to overcome listlessness, indifference, inertia, and bestow on what is common the charm of novelty.

'In

With these distinctions, we proceed to speak of the principles of eloquence in general. The chief stress is to be put upon matter and argument. Ideas must form the ground-work. 'A fine style,' says Buffon, 'is such only by the infinite number of truths which it presents.' 'In your arguments at the bar,' says Wirt to a young friend, let argument strongly predominate. Sacrifice your flowers, and let your columns be Doric rather than Composite the better medium is Ionic. Avoid, as you would the gates of death, the reputation of floridity.' any knot of men conversing on any subject,' says Emerson, 'the person who knows most about it will have the ear of the company, if he wishes it, and lead the conversation no matter what genius or distinction other men there present may have; and in any public assembly, him who has the facts, and can and will state them, people will listen to, though he is otherwise ignorant, though he is hoarse and ungraceful, though he stutters and screams.' 'The orator,' again, is thereby an orator,