/ 
 
J. 
 
OEATION 
 
 DELIVERED BY 
 
 CHAELES MURRAY NAIRNE, M. A., 
 
 BEFORE THE 
 
 fhitoctot & f titMmpixm f uktm 
 
 RUTGERS COLLEGE, 
 
 NEW BRUNSWICK, N. J. 
 
 .„^£t8 = lorfe: 
 
 JOSEPH W. HARRISON, BOOK AND JOB PRINTER, BY STEAM, 
 447 Broome Street, one door west of Broadway, 
 
 18 5 7. 
 

 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1857, by the 
 
 P II ILO CLEAN SOCIETY, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District 
 of New York. 
 
 YORK PUBL. U»fc» 
 
PniLOCLEAN Hall, June 30, 1857, 
 
 Prof. Charles M. Nairne, 
 
 Sir : — At a Special Meeting of the Philoclean 
 Society, held this day, it was unanimously resolved that a 
 vote of thanks be tendered to Charles Murray Nairne, for 
 his very interesting and eloquent Address, and that a copy 
 of the same be requested for publication. 
 
 We, the Committee, sincerely hope you will comply 
 with the wishes of the Society. 
 
 Cyrus B. Durand, 
 
 John B. Drury, 
 
 T. Sandford Doolittle. 
 
 New York, July 1st, 1857. 
 Gentlemen : — 
 
 I have much pleasure in acknowledging 
 your vote of thanks, and in giving up my manuscript to 
 your Society for publication. 
 
 I remain, 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 Charles Murray Nairne. 
 
 To CVRUS B. DURAND, 
 JOHN B. DRURY, 
 T. SANDFORD DOOLITTLE. 
 
o h^t i o nsr. 
 
 Mb. President and Gentlemen of the 
 
 Philoclean and Peithessophian Societies : 
 
 Judging from the exercises with which your acaclemi- 
 cal course is closed, and the crowds of delighted listeners 
 who always countenance your efforts on such occasions, 
 one would conclude that, both in your estimation and in 
 theirs, Oratory is regarded as the crown of all your labors 
 — the bright consummate flower of all your cultivation. — 
 And who will venture to discourage you by pronouncing 
 this estimate erroneous ? I am aware that men of mere 
 literature and science are prone to underrate any excel- 
 lence except that which belongs to their own pursuits. — 
 They forget that simple intellectual or artistic power may 
 exist, and very frequently does exist, without that practical 
 sagacity, and force of will, which are necessary to govern 
 men ; and that a first-rate ruler or general might make no- 
 thing better, with any amount of training, than a second- 
 rate orator, philosopher, or poet. ^Nevertheless, as a test 
 of the mental activity, strength, and symmetry to which 
 your college culture has conducted you, I know of no sin- 
 gle exercise more decisive than the production of a speech. 
 It is better to give than to receive — to bring forth than to 
 absorb ; and many a student, who has succeeded in master- 
 
ing the conceptions of others, may fail in reproducing the 
 
 results of his study, in a composition of his own. Philoso- 
 phy may have been pondered that lie might learn the na- 
 ture and laws of mind ; science, that lie might learn to ana- 
 lyse and deduce ; rhetoric and language, that he might 
 learn to clothe his ideas in suitable words ; and in all these 
 he may have made respectable proficiency ; he may also 
 have gathered a store of facts and principles from history 
 and general reading, and of images from poetry and elo- 
 quence ; still, if he is found wanting in the power of making 
 use of his acquisitions in some original production, his 
 training has certainly come short of its proper end. Unless 
 as a mechanical hearer of recitations, sometimes called a 
 teacher, or a dry, insect-like perforator of some narrow stra- 
 tum in the wide world of knowledge, sometimes called a 
 savant, he does not deserve the name of a productive la- 
 borer. He is a plant without fruit — a failure — an unfin- 
 ished man ! There is no academical duty which taxes a 
 student's abilities so much as the work of really good com- 
 position. Its difficulty is notorious in every school; and 
 while your pupil will pore willingly over classics, or mathe- 
 matics, or physics, or philosophy, striving to comprehend 
 and remember the thoughts of other men, — he goes either 
 reluctantly, or with a profound sense of its arduousness, 
 to the task of gracefully embodying his own. The prepar- 
 ation of lessons may be done — not with absolute perfection, 
 I admit, — but yet very resjDectably, while the whole soul 
 is never fully awake ; but all the energies of the soul must 
 be aroused to the utmost for the elaboration of a meritori- 
 ous essay or oration. This task demands the same enthusi- 
 astic wakefulness, as original scientific research, and the 
 
exercise of a greater number of faculties,— of faculties, 
 indeed, which the mere scientific investigator may not pos- 
 sess. It is the assemblage and concentration of all your 
 accomplishments in one grand exhibition of your profi- 
 ciency. 
 
 In the retrospect of my own university life, I can recall 
 the frequent pretences of prize essays being written in a 
 few hours, and of prize poems thrown off by some young 
 prodigy — some Lucilius without his mud — who could 
 dictate two hundred verses while standing on one foot. — 
 If these representations had been true, the essays, I fear, 
 would never have been crowned, and the verses would 
 have been as lame as the poet's own attitude. Your expe- 
 rience, I am persuaded, will bear me out in pronouncing 
 all such pretensions false ; for even when the mere process 
 of writing may have been comparatively easy and rapid, 
 the materials of the composition must have been previously 
 familiarized to the mind of the writer, either by careful 
 special research, or in the course of his general study and 
 reflection. From nothing, nothing is made ; and the inspi- 
 ration even of Genius is by no means identical with that 
 of the twelve apostles, who were commanded not to think 
 beforehand of what they should say in their mission, because 
 a mouth and wisdom irresistible were promised them in the 
 hour of need. No such promise has been made either to 
 you or to me. Our eloquence, if we have any, must be 
 supplied from provident accumulations ; else it will be of 
 little credit to ourselves, and small advantage to our hearers. 
 Besides, the very wonderfulness of the improvisatore pro- 
 ductions, whose existence I have presumed to question, is 
 
8 
 
 founded on the admitted difficulty of good writing ; for 
 where there is no extraordinary difficulty there can be no 
 miracle. 
 
 " Nee deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus !" 
 
 Nor is this estimate of the excellence of oratory pecu- 
 liar to the student. It is also the general estimate of man- 
 kind. The time has never been when the admiration of 
 the human race has not been divided between these two — 
 the great speaker and the great warrior. The genius of 
 Homer is more diffuse, but not more loftily inspired, in 
 picturing the exploits of Achilles, than in describing the 
 eloquence of Nestor and Ulysses ; and the Indian Chief is 
 as proud of his oratory as of his daring. Some years ago we 
 had a work on the decisive battles of the world. A suita- 
 ble companion to this, would be another on the decisive 
 conventions of the world ; and I believe that in the hands 
 of a competent historian, the latter would be equally exci- 
 ting with the former. Doubtless there is a fascinating sub- 
 limity in the career of a conqueror. The imagination dwells 
 with rapture, on the long procession of his legions, their 
 helms and corslets flashing over the land, and their ensigns 
 waving interminably to the horizon's verge ; the gorgeous 
 troop of chieftains and bannermen that surround his car ; the 
 swell of martial music, inspiring valor, and measuring the 
 tramp of his innumerable host ; the shock of charging squad- 
 rons; the bravery that laughs at death, and exults amid 
 thunders more terrible than those of heaven ; the capture 
 and the rescue ; the rout and the rally, and all the dread mag- 
 nificence of war ! But there is a loftier, although a calmer 
 sublimity — at least we can well conceive of such — in the 
 
9 
 
 triumph of a great speaker , for " earthly power doth then 
 show likest God's," when an eloquent man holds the hearts of 
 myriads in his grasp, and turns them whithersoever he wills. 
 Picture to yourselves the collected rank and wisdom of some 
 mighty realm — an assemblage of all that is great, and sage, 
 and learned — within some ancient pile of high renown, or on 
 some famous plain, where the vaulted sky affords a grander 
 canopy than fretted roof and pillared dome, and the congre- 
 gated people form a nobler environment than sculptured 
 walls ! They are met to deliberate on some great scheme or 
 enterprise, — some holy crusade or declaration of indepen- 
 dence — that involves the world's fate throughout all future 
 time, — and high amid the throng stands forth the Orator! 
 On him all eyes are bent, to him all hearts are turned, his 
 very look draws audience, his voice goes forth amid the 
 hush, and no pealing organ or grand orchestra ever sent out 
 through ten thousand breasts a wave of influence so elec- 
 trical ! Truth grows to full stature as his proof proceeds, 
 the general judgment is carried captive, and, while demon- 
 tration and conviction are followed up by persuasion, and 
 pathos, and passionate appeal, and patriotic fervor, and 
 indignant denunciation, the multitude, like ocean beneath 
 the breeze, stirs submissive to his words — it trembles, it 
 swells, it fluctuates, it uplifts the thunder of its acclaim — 
 the cry ascends, " It is the will of God !" — the lightning of 
 eloquence hath fused the souls of that assembly into one, 
 and who shall now withstand the burning torrent ? This is 
 verily a triumph beyond the soldier's ovation, a conquest 
 without humiliation, a subjugation unattended either by 
 suffering or shame ! 
 

 10 
 
 Or can we not conceive a display of oratory grander 
 
 still, though accompanied by less of worldly pomp? The 
 Son of Man, who spake as never man spake, and whose 
 divine countenance it has, for ages, been the pride of high- 
 est art to portray — seated on the mountain side, or by the 
 crowded shore, and uttering with a majesty of eloquence, 
 " above all Greek, above all Roman fame," the sublime 
 revelations of the Evangel ? Or Paul on Mars' Hill, casting 
 into shade, more by the superiority of his theme than the 
 perfection of his rhetoric, the glory of Demosthenes, amid 
 the children of those same Athenians whom the illustrious 
 orator had roused to stem the aggressions of the Macedo- 
 nian king? Or some heroic old covenanter, from whose 
 heart the fear of God had expelled all fear of man, sustain- 
 ing the courage of persecuted saints, as by the rushing 
 waterfall, or on the lonely moor, or in the sequestered 
 burial ground, amid the tombs of their fathers, he preached 
 to them the resurrection of those dead, and the bliss of 
 immortality? Or the rapt missionary — leader of the only 
 true crusade — proclaiming to the wondering ears of idol- 
 worshippers, amid the snows of Greenland, or the soft luxu • 
 riance of Hindostan, the attributes of the only living God, 
 the love of the only Redeemer, and the dread recompenses 
 of an eternity that no longer remained a delusion and a 
 dream ? What thinking man will say that these heavenly 
 uses of eloquence do not place the orator on the very top- 
 most pinnacle of human greatness ? 
 
 Such may be regarded as the general estimate of oratory 
 among men. But there are communities in which, from 
 the nature of their institutions, eloquence is of special 
 
11 
 
 value, and the gifts of the orator invest him with a special 
 power. A despotic empire can be no nursery for truly 
 great speakers. There, few great subjects fall to be dis- 
 cussed. Political rights and public interests — those noblest 
 fields of eloquence — are overlaid by absolute rule. Even 
 religion is a thing prescribed and watched, and the tongue 
 of the orator must be attuned to no loftier theme than the 
 flattery of an autocrat, or the vain ceremonies of a compul- 
 sory faith. The strained laudations of terrified imbecility, 
 and boastful reminiscences of glory passed away, are, even 
 in the mouth of a Cicero, poor substitutes for the natural 
 inspirations of honest truth, the glow of patriotism, and the 
 trumpet strains of independence. On the other hand, where- 
 ever freedom has found a home, there eloquence will flour- 
 ish. The empire of Opinion is there established, and an 
 idea is more influential than a sceptre. In such a state, 
 he who can control the intellect, and heart, and will of the 
 people, is the real potentate, He leads his countrymen. — 
 He defends his country. He makes peace and declares 
 war. He is the highest and most legitimate of principali- 
 ties and powers. Sow, this is precisely the kind of a 
 community in which our lot is cast ; and hence in no other 
 is the truly eloquent man more needed, and more entitled 
 to public admiration. America has been jocularly satirized 
 by one of her most gifted sons, as a mighty Logocracy — a 
 huge government of talk ! ~No doubt the frequency of our 
 rhetorical exhibitions, and the incompetency of many who, 
 for lack of better men, are thrust forward on such occasions, 
 lay her open to ridicule and sarcasm. Let it never be for- 
 gotten, however, that our very passion for public speaking 
 is a token of our liberty; and our true wisdom is, not to 
 
12 
 
 laugh at the passion, or attempt suppressing it ; but to 
 regulate it, to refine it, to enlighten it, and to use it. To 
 us a discussion of oratory is no mere speculation, like the 
 character of some foreign sage or hero ; no mere recreation, 
 like poetical or picturesque reminiscences of Rome or Venice. 
 It is a thoroughly practical question; an absolutely vital 
 question. It involves our prosperity and existence as a 
 nation. Our talkers are our guides and governors ; and 
 surely a mighty matter would he gained, if, in any way, it 
 could he brought about that our platform brawlers, our 
 shallow ranters, and common-place figure-mongers, instead 
 of having the best chance, should have little or no chance 
 at all ; if the common judgment were so enlightened, and 
 the common taste so rectified, that mere glitter should not 
 pass for substance — mere words for things — mere " sound 
 and fury signifying nothing" for eloquence — bragging for 
 conscious worth — mob flattery for public spirit — abuse 
 for argument — libel for logic — sneers for sense, — and 
 vituperation for demonstration. And to whom, gentlemen, 
 can we look for the desired process of enlightenment and 
 rectification, if not to our students? Their avowed object 
 is to become leaders of our country's thought. They are 
 in training either for orators, or for judges of oratory. — 
 The} r hope to be the lights of the land ; but if the very 
 light that is among us be darkness, how great is that dark- 
 ness ! Allow me, therefore, in the remainder of this address, 
 to furnish you, if I can, with some tests whereby you may 
 try the spirit of eloquence both in yourselves and others, 
 and with some considerations which may constrain you to 
 hold fast by that which is good. In doing this I shall not 
 content myself with simple precept, but shall add thereto 
 
13 
 
 the illustration of successful example. The example I have 
 chosen is that of Thomas Chalmers, the Scottish preacher ; 
 not that his oratory was, by any means, perfect, but because 
 he Avas a more effective speaker than any I ever heard, and 
 because I have had the best opportunities of ascertaining 
 the secrets and peculiarities of that art, by which he acted, 
 with an absolutely magical power, on the multitudes who 
 hung upon his lips. 
 
 What, therefore, is Oratory ? Let us first attempt to 
 approach our answer retrogressively — to back up to it, if I 
 may use such a common phrase — by a series of negatives. 
 
 Oratory, is not delivery. In the days of Demosthe- 
 nes, men had not got so far as to separate eloquence 
 from speech. Eloquence and elocution, deriving their 
 names from the same root, were almost or altogether 
 identical. On no other principle can we explain the oft- 
 quoted ojDinion of the Greek statesman, when he affirmed 
 that action was the first, second, and third requisite of ora- 
 tory ; for now-a-days, Ave should say that he was describing 
 a stage player— not an orator. The press is a powder of 
 modern times, and modern speech-makers can address mil- 
 lions, without the instrumentality of voice or gesture. — 
 These we are left to supply ourselves, as Ave do scenery and 
 action in perusing a drama ; and hence Ave characterize a 
 speech as eloquent, apart altogether from its delivery. — 
 The great orations of antiquity are eloquent still, and would 
 be so, had they never been addressed to an audience. Their 
 immortality is not due to action, which passed aAvay for 
 ever with the occasion of their utterance. It is true that a 
 
u 
 
 finished delivery will set oft a discourse which may exhibit 
 few or none of the higher attributes of eloquence, and 
 therefore, as Demosthenes averred, delivery ought to be a 
 matter of much care with him who aims at oratorical suc- 
 cess. Yet elocution no more constitutes eloquence than 
 smooth versification constitutes poetry. Xo speech is really 
 eloquent, which is not eloquent when coolly perused in the 
 privacy of our own chambers. Gesture, tone, and emphasis, 
 are nothing else than accessories of oratory ; and would be 
 as far from rendering common places eloquent, as a dress 
 of lace and spangles would be, from converting a wooden 
 image of the Virgin Mary into a Greek Slave, or a Venus 
 di Medicis. The vulgar might, and would, admire the 
 block for its finery ; but the refined and tasteful would 
 prefer the naked marble, for that intrinsic beauty, which 
 foreign ornament might easily mar, but could not possibly 
 improve. 
 
 With respect to the celebrated saying of Demosthenes, 
 I cannot help thinking — may I be pardoned for the pre- 
 sumption ! — that both Cicero .and Quintilian must have 
 misapprehended its true meaning. To lay so much stress 
 on mere delivery is manifestly absurd ; for a poor speech 
 with elaborate action would be ridiculous — as ridiculous as 
 Tom Thumb in the costume of Xapoleon, or a fishing boat 
 in the rig of a man-of-war. May not the Grecian orator 
 have intended to recommend, in addition to an animated 
 delivery, the study of that style which Aristotle has named 
 the " agonistic," wherein we wrestle with an auditory, in 
 opposition to the " graphic," which we use in the written 
 disquisition or essay % The style of a speech, even when 
 
15 
 
 composed in the closet, ought to be vehement and dramatic, 
 as is natural to one who may be supposed to address an 
 assembly without premeditation, and on the spur of some 
 pressing and momentous occasion. When Lord Jeffrey went 
 into parliament, he delivered a learned and labored produc- 
 tion in favor of the English Reform Bill. It was, in fact, the 
 best argument on that side of the question ; nevertheless it 
 fell almost dead on the house, because, as the newspapers of 
 the time described it, it was nothing but a spoken article ; 
 very suitable for the written pages of the Edinburgh Review, 
 but very unsuitable for the agonistic arena of the House of 
 Commons. It wanted action. It could not possibly be 
 taken for the fresh, natural utterance of spontaneous thought 
 and feeling. It was anything but Demosthenic. 
 
 Delivery, then, is not oratory. It is far from being 
 even the first requisite of oratory. Neither again, is oratory 
 mere accurate and convincing ratiocination ; for, in that 
 case, Euclid's Elements of Geometry would be the most 
 eloquent of books, and the " pons asinorum" would stand 
 as a rival to the ^sp/ srs<pavou. Logical demonstration is 
 not oratory ; but as will more particularly appear hereafter, 
 it is an essential attribute of true eloquence. 
 
 Nor, further, is oratory the simple power of stirring 
 the passions ; for a speech that proves nothing, but deals 
 only in passionate appeals, cannot be effectual except on 
 rare occasions ; that is, when the facts which constitute the 
 ground of the appeal are well known, or have been previ- 
 ously established by proof. An advocate who should over- 
 look the law and testimony in a case, and run off into 
 
16 
 
 general declamation, could succeed only with a foolish 
 jury, and a more foolish judge; and even a eulogist must 
 show some good claim to praise on the part of his hero, if 
 he expects an intelligent audience to sympathize in his 
 encomium. Besides, even if we did define eloquence to be 
 the faculty of exciting emotion, we should not come one 
 whit nearer a true and satisfactory account of its nature. — 
 The question would still remain unsolved ; what is the secret 
 of that power ? In other words, we are brought back, at the 
 conclusion of all our negatives, to the original enquiry : — 
 What is Oratory ? 
 
 The difficulty of an answer is obvious. It is as hard to 
 tell what Oratory is, as to tell what Poetry is. All the line 
 arts have a close relation to each other; and perhaps in 
 seeking for the essential characteristic of one, we may fall 
 upon that of another also. 
 
 In my school-days, when I had lost one shaft, 
 
 I snot, his fellow of the self-same flight 
 
 The self-same way, with more advised watch, 
 
 To find the other forth ; and -by adventuring both 
 
 I oft found both. 
 
 Let us try, then, the art of Painting; so near akin to 
 Poetry that Horace, you remember, thus unites them : 
 
 " — Pictoribus atque poetis 
 
 Quidiibet audendi semper fuit aequa potestas ;" 
 
 and let us take for illustration one of the simplest exhibi- 
 tions of the art. We may have two portraits of the same 
 person, which are accurate likenesses, while only one of 
 
lr 
 
 them proves the possession of Genius by the artist. In the 
 one we can trace all the features of the original. All the 
 ■necessary of a portrait is there, but nothing whatever of 
 the possible / no sublimation of the mere mortal into the 
 immortal ; no penetration and forth-showing of the inner 
 man, no irradiation of humanity with the light of imagina- 
 tion ; no appearance, on the painted figure, of aught save 
 plain, matter-of-fact existence. In the other we have 
 more than matter-of-fact. Truth — the whole truth is there ; 
 yet not simply the truth as it is, but likewise the truth as it 
 ought to be — an approximation, at least, to the portraiture 
 of the body, as it shall appear, when, retaining all its fea- 
 tures, it shall, notwithstanding, be raised a glorious body. 
 It is thus that Genius anticipates Heaven ! 
 
 Or, to take a second illustration from Sculpture. The 
 Apollo Belvidere is not merely a handsome statue — fault- 
 less in face and form. It is a divinity in marble — 
 
 " The Sun iu human limbs arrayed " — 
 
 an embodiment of beauty and grace, majesty and power, 
 which we almost think we could separate from the image, 
 as if they were hovering around it, or emanating from it. — 
 It shows all the necessary in member, joint, and lineament, 
 and all the possible in the ideal of our nature. It is poetry 
 in stone ! 
 
 And thus Ave are brought to the same blending of the 
 possible with the necessary in poetry. Remember always 
 that this blending is not the incongruous addition of perfec- 
 tion to imperfection. It is no mechanical mixture of "iron 
 
18 
 
 with miry clay." It is a substantial union of the divine 
 with the human — the celestial with the earthly — the 
 etherializing of things that be, into things that may be, 
 while yet they preserve their identity. To Peter Bell, that 
 most prosaic personage with most unpoetical name, depicted 
 by "Wordsworth — 
 
 " A primrose by a river's brim, 
 A yeiiow primrose was to him, 
 
 And it was nothing more." 
 
 It presented all the necessary of a flower. But a mind 
 of another order would have made it poetical — sublimed 
 it into such an object as it would have appeared to Eve in 
 paradise, or to an angel by the river of life ! 
 
 jNTow, have we anything like this process in oratory ? 
 ISTo doubt we have. It is this which distinguishes it from 
 common talk, and pedestrian disquisition. Still oratory is 
 not poetry. The celestial element is differently exhibited. 
 In poetry, earth is raised to heaven ; in oratory, heaven is 
 brought down to earth. In the former, it is as if a man 
 assumed the tongue of an angel ; in the latter, it is as if an 
 angel brought his bright mind, and glowing speech to bear 
 on things terrestrial. There is, in oratory, a more practical 
 exercise of genius than in poetry — a more direct applica- 
 tion of its energy to every-day matters. Eloquence is the 
 beauty of utility; poetry is the utility of beauty. Elo- 
 quence resembles the breeze of heaven in the sail of a 
 majestic vessel wafting onward the productions of human 
 labor ; poetry is like the light of heaven that floats around 
 
19 
 
 all objects, and seems to animate tliem, and fills the air 
 as with an ether of life ! 
 
 But after all, as in poetry, so in oratory, we must be 
 contented, perhaps, with an appeal to the consciousness of 
 men in respect to the feeling of it. We know it when it 
 comes before us, if we are endowed with the faculty of 
 apprehending it ; and to those who cannot apprehend it on 
 being simply presented, no definition will suffice to render 
 it palpable. We may mention, however, certain qualities 
 of eloquence which explanation will make more clear, and 
 which may be so far acquired by care and practice. If we 
 are not able to impart "the gift and faculty divine" that 
 make the orator, we may put the oratorical aspirant in the 
 fair way of doing justice to his inspiration, if he happens 
 to have any. 
 
 And First, the eloquent man is natural. His manner, 
 his tones, his style, his argumentation, his feeling, his flights 
 of fancy, are all the spontaneous results of his mind's being 
 fully occupied with his subject, and with nothing else, for 
 the time being. A manner studied and artificial ; tones 
 that rise not from, and correspond not w T ith, the sentiment 
 he utters ; a style that attracts attention to itself, and is not 
 the transparent vehicle of his thoughts ; reasoning that is 
 far-fetched .and fantastic, such as Shakespeare ridicules in 
 Poionius ; pathos that tends to start no tear because it finds 
 no sympathy ; and figures that neither elucidate nor adorn, 
 but are only attempts to make the people say " how smart 
 he is," constitute a mere parody of oratory, scarcely impo- 
 
sing on the ignorant, and fitted to provoke the mirth of 
 wise men, if their disgust did not stifle their laughter. 
 
 Archbishop Whateiey who, although himself no orator, 
 is yet an admirable judge of eloquence, has said — and, by 
 the way, we recommend to all students his observations on 
 this point — that elocution and declamation, as commonly 
 studied, have spoiled more speakers than they have bene- 
 fitted. In this I heartily agree with the Archbishop ; for 
 the artificial inflexions, tones, postures, stretchings forth of 
 the hands, and heavenward rolling of the eyes, exhibited by 
 persons who attempt to put their elocution in practice, and 
 their ambitious imitations of the speeches which they have 
 parrotted for spouting, counterfeit nature more abominably 
 than the great, stiff, staring dolls that excite rustic wonder 
 in the shop windows of a metropolitan hair dresser. One 
 flash of real nature is worth a whole eternity of such mum- 
 mery. If our attention to gesture and inflexion has been 
 carried so far as to cure all awkwardness of tone and motion, 
 then we have really made a valuable acquisition. We can 
 then give our feelings full play, without the risk of ungrace- 
 fulness. But if our art and practice in vocal gymnastics 
 go not so far as to conceal themselves by becoming a second 
 nature, we had better rest contented with that which nature 
 has originally bestowed on us, and which she will certainly 
 not fail to display, if we honor her with the Jaith of true 
 men. The accomplished musician thinks of his theme, and 
 not of his fingers, when he charms the sense, and so must 
 the speaker of his theme, and not of his tones and postures, 
 if he would charm the soul. His voice must be attuned, 
 his limbs must be moved, as his thoughts must be suppli- 
 
21 
 
 ed, from within, and as little as possible from without, 
 liimself. 
 
 Secondly, an eloquent man is natural because he is 
 earnest and honest. His heart's desire is to communicate 
 with the mind of his audience — to lay hold of it and wield 
 it for some cherished purpose. JSTeither can his oratory be 
 of the highest order unless his earnestness springs from 
 thoroughly honest conviction, and passionate love of truth. 
 The lured defender of the guilty, and the partizan advocate 
 of a faction, tight for victory and spoil ; and in the excite- 
 ment of the contest, they may summon up a theatrical and 
 transient earnestness ; but that earnestness can no more be 
 compared with the fervor of an honest truth-worshipper, 
 than the valor of ajllibustero deserves to be compared with 
 the courage of a patriot — the heroism of Walker with the 
 heroism of Washington. In the latter sort of earnestness 
 there is no selfishness, and hence it can lead to no display of 
 self. Only let it be pure and strong enough, and the man 
 who is under its inspiration will never be chargeable with 
 unlawful artifice, or vain-glorious exhibition. Both end and 
 means will be worthy. The appropriateness of every ele* 
 ment in his discourse will be in direct proportion to the 
 singleness and intensity of his desire to enforce truth ; and 
 however poorly he may have been exercised in the study 
 of speech-making, he will at least show no hollow rhetoric^ 
 no conceited reasoning, no aifected intonation, no incongru- 
 ous action. Honest nature will have her way, and shame 
 the art of the schools. If men who attempt oratory could 
 only divest themselves of the idea of themselves; if they 
 were really taken up with the subject of their speech alone 
 
« — if they would confine themselve to the single aim of 
 stating and enforcing truth with some adequate sense of its 
 importance, and leave vanity and popularity at home, how 
 much folly would be avoided by speakers, and how much 
 pain spared on the part of pitying and wearied listeners. — 
 A man thoroughly, purely in earnest does not talk as a 
 mere talker. He says what he has to say, and is content. 
 He speaks as if his sole concern were the truth and perti- 
 nence, not the beauty and brilliancy, of what he utters. And 
 even in the retirement of the closet, he who writes best, is 
 he who writes with the single, sincere purpose of presenting 
 Truth in her own naked symmetry and glory. Genuine 
 oratory walks and does not dance, marches and does not 
 minuet, rushes and does not gracefully caper ! 
 
 In the Third place, there cannot be true eloquence 
 without solid thought. Eloquence is not pretty sentences, 
 and ornate diction ; neither is it, as some suppose, the 
 power of dramatic anecdote, whether picturesque, pathetic 
 or ludicrous. Eloquence is not any of these, although they 
 all may frequently, and with propriety go along with it ; but 
 it is thought and demonstration clothed with sentiment, 
 adorned as the goodly tree is, by the efflorescence of its 
 own branches, not by garlands hung on, and above all, 
 instinct with the fervor of a truth-worshipper. A discourse 
 that proves nothing may be graceful and effecting ; but it 
 does not deserve the name of oratory ; and even its power 
 to move depends, as I have said before, on its being an ex- 
 position of things that have been previously established by 
 proof. Declamation that has no substratum of substantial 
 mind- work, is mere literary syllabub — frothy, windy, and, 
 
23 
 
 in large doses, sickening. Oratory is impassioned argu- 
 ment. 
 
 But the advance of time warns me to quit this general 
 speculation on the nature and properties of eloquence, and 
 proceed to the consideration of the oratory of Chalmers, 
 which I have proposed as our special exemplification. In 
 pointing out the characteristics of his eloquence, I shall, in 
 addition to other matters, be able to show you, how the 
 three great qualities of naturalness, earnestness, and im- 
 passioned argumentation, will overcome many defects, 
 which, without these qualities, would have been laughable 
 or displeasing. For while no man ever excelled the Scot- 
 tish preacher in the overwhelming efiicacy of his displays, 
 no man, with an orator's reputation, was ever more careless 
 of many of the adjuncts of oratory, or cumbered the free 
 course of his conceptions, by a more artificial and singular 
 style. He was great in spite of these peculiarities ; and 
 perhaps ultimately they came to possess, for his admirers, 
 a certain charm, as being suggestive of the man. 
 
 Like all great men, Chalmers was a lover of knowl- 
 edge ; but there were certain ideas which he grappled to. 
 his heart with the ardor of a peculiar and enthusiastic af- 
 fection. Most philosophers have a favorite walk of investi- 
 gation ; and to that, in all its particulars, their thoughts are 
 turned. They explore it, not only in its great features, but 
 even in its most minute, and are not satisfied till they feel 
 perfectly at home in all. But Chalmers can scarcely be 
 said to have thoroughly mastered any one science : I would 
 not except even Ethics and Theology. Far be it from me to 
 
24 
 
 insinuate that he had not power to scale the loftiest heights, 
 and search the profoundest depths of any subject. He 
 could have been, if he had chosen, a mathematician, astron- 
 omer, chemist, geologist, linguist, or metaphysician of the 
 very highest order. But Divine Providence withdrew him, 
 in mid career, from the pursuit of science, and demanded 
 the consecration of all his gifts to the revival of Evangelism 
 in the church of his fathers, and the continuance of the great 
 work which the Scottish Reformers began, but which had 
 long been laid aside for the cultivation of mere literature, 
 by such ecclesiastical leaders as Robertson and Blair. From 
 that moment, Chalmers ceased to think that study ought to 
 be pursued for one's own pleasure only. lie studied for 
 the advantage of the human race. This was his whole aim ; 
 and whether his subject w T as metaphysics or mathematics, 
 political economy or divinity, he was not contented with 
 the mere enjoyment derived from the exercise of his own 
 genius ; no, nor yet the discovery of truth and the fame of 
 scientific scholarship — but his chief aim was to apply the 
 researches of philosophy to the well being of the world. — 
 All his knowledge was gathered that he might justify the 
 ways of God to man, and bring back into harmony and 
 happiness the constitution of things, as it was originally 
 framed by the Creator. These circumstances will explain 
 the fragmentary nature of his acquirements. He sought no 
 more information on any subject than was necessary for 
 this high purpose ; but he did seek such information on 
 a great variety of subjects. The same has been the case 
 with many other illustrious orators. Lord Brougham is a 
 remarkable instance in point. Without a minutely profound 
 acquaintance with science, his lordship is so far a living ency- 
 
25 
 
 Icopsedia, that he can draw felicitous illustrations from many 
 quarters, and his mind is so completely imbued with the 
 philosophic and logical spirit of science, that his speeches 
 are truly impassioned demonstrations. His researches have 
 been conducted oratorically ; that is, only to such an extent 
 as an orator requires to go for the composition of a great 
 speech, and a statesman for high mental training. A minute 
 knowledge of science is one thing, and a scientific spirit is 
 another. An expert application of the transcendental cal- 
 culus, or an acute perception of geometrical relations, is 
 different from that mental symmetry and mathematical 
 metaphysique, which are the very soul of all reasoning, 
 and which remove every effort of a really great orator out 
 of the category of mere declamation. A simple mathema- 
 tician is a one-sided man ; an exceeding dry man ; an angu- 
 lar, rectilineal, diagrammatic, square root of a man ; — but 
 there never was an orator of the very highest order, who 
 could not have been a great mathematician, if he had made 
 that science bis peculiar study. 
 
 Chalmers courted not semblance but substance — not 
 prettiness, but power. His marvellous faculty of illustra- 
 tion, and his towering fancy — those gifts which would have 
 gained him renown as a poet — were never exercised for the 
 sake of mere ornament. Whatever he said he must prove 
 something. His mind would not permit him to talk without 
 arguing. Hence he is never vapid. Amid the brightest 
 blaze of his imagery, we discern a substantial and symmet- 
 rical form. His discourses may be likened to structures — 
 not always — in fact, not often, belonging to any regular order 
 of architecture — but always fine, and always useful in their 
 
26 
 
 every part. You cannot discern a column, or buttress, or 
 bracket, placed for mere embellishment. Sculptured it may 
 be, even to a profusion of richness ; yet it is always intro- 
 duced for real support. Anything that is appended simply 
 for show is, in oratory, as well as in architecture, an imtaste- 
 ful redundancy. It matters not how beautiful it may be in 
 itself, if, in its actual position, it is useless. Imagery that 
 conceals, rather than sets off, the truth, is no better than 
 bright rags — the purpurei panni of the Roman Satirist. — 
 Unnecessary ornament in a speech is as bad as if a soldier 
 should carry a pennon in his sword hand, to embarrass his 
 own attack, and not upon the staff of his lance to scare the 
 steed of his adversary. Now Chalmers's demonstrative 
 propensity guards him almost always against this abuse ; 
 and that is the grand secret of his eloquence. Its strength 
 is equally remarkable with its gorgeousness. His very 
 descriptions and similes are arguments. In one of his astro- 
 nomical discourses, he refutes the infidel objection to divine 
 revelation, which is based on the material insignificance of 
 our planet when compared with the whole universe of God : 
 and in doing so, he charms and melts us with the descrip- 
 tion of a mariner — "a sailor boy " — in a tempest, and 
 afterwards amid the dangers and hardships of some savage 
 isle. But when we find him, in the end of the passage, 
 introducing the thought that the distresses of this wanderer 
 absorb the soul of his parent, as she listens to the howling 
 of the storm, and forgets all her children except him, because 
 they are safe at home, while he is far away and in peril, we 
 perceive that the whole is only a picturesque argument to 
 justify the yearning of the Great Parent over that province 
 of His dominions which had gone astray, while the rest re- 
 
27 
 
 mained true to their allegiance — which was forlorn and hope- 
 less, while the rest were rejoicing in the blessedness of their 
 Father's home. The same may be said of his description 
 of the English fox-hunt in his sermon on cruelty to animals. 
 This brilliantly poetic scene is not painted for mere effect ; 
 neither is it presented for the sake of welding to its termi- 
 nation certain common-place reflections, beginning with 
 ah ! and alas ! on the barbarity of human sports. This is 
 what a common declaimer would have done. But in Chal- 
 mers's mouth it is a step in a close and ingenious demon- 
 stration on the philosophic question of abstract cruelty. — 
 It is truly a useful pillar in the edifice he has been rearing. 
 Scores of examples of the same kind might be gathered 
 from the Doctor's writings. It is in this argumentative 
 idiosyncracy that his great strength lies ; and here he reads 
 a noble lesson to all who would be really eloquent. 
 
 The truth is, that Doctor Chalmers was a man of most 
 fervid earnestness, and notwithstanding all his peculiarities, 
 eminently natural. It would be the greatest possible mis- 
 take to suppose that he was, to any noticeable extent, tinct- 
 ured with the vanity of self-display. Doubtless he shared 
 with other illustrious men in the love of fame — "that last 
 infirmity of noble minds ;" but his glowing love for his 
 brethren of the species, and his heart's desire to see them 
 good and happy, both here and hereafter, were so strong 
 and over-mastering, as to divest him of all, or nearly all 
 exhibition of himself, and the affectation of what some men 
 call fine writing. More than any speaker I ever listened 
 to, he abandoned himself, in the delivery of his discourses, 
 to the full energy of his feelings ; and, like a good u spirit- 
 
28 
 
 ual medium " of the present day, he seemed entirely pas- 
 sive to the inspiration of his own genius. It possessed him. 
 It bore him along as in a chariot of fire ; and no hearer had 
 inclination or power to observe whether the writing was 
 fine or do. To criticise the composition was out of the 
 question. The spirit of criticism was exorcised by the 
 spell of the orator's vehemence. The truth spoken was 
 everything, the terms employed were nothing. Indeed, I 
 have often felt, in the utterance of his grandest passages, 
 an effect similar to that produced by instrumental music, 
 which lodges an idea, or raises an emotion in the soul, 
 without the intervention of words. The thought and feel- 
 ing were there ; but if you had attempted to report the 
 language, you would have found the task impossible. Your 
 attention had been so entirely occupied with the truth con- 
 veyed, that you lost all consciousness of the vehicle. This, 
 surely, was the very triumph of earnestness ; and no man 
 can hope to entrance an audience as Chalmers did, unless 
 he can, in like manner, totally forget himself, and abandon 
 his body, soul, and spirit to the force of truth alone ! 
 
 It was this combination, therefore, of intense, heart-blood 
 earnestness, and vivid demonstration, with a fervid and lofty 
 imagination in Chalmers, that rendered his eloquence so 
 effective, and that makes his discourses read so well in pri- 
 vate. Aided gr tly in their force by his own energetic 
 pronunciation of them, they are, nevertheless, not of that 
 kind which, when perused in the closet, cause us to wonder 
 wherein their charm consisted when pronounced. Hugh 
 Miller, in that sad but noble dying " Testimony " of his, 
 speaks of Chalmers's oratory as something wonderful that 
 
29 
 
 u lives in memory as a vanished power, which even his 
 extraordinary writings fail adequately to represent." Still 
 the writings, apart altogether from their delivery, are extra- 
 ordinary ; and that is the real point of distinction between 
 declamation and genuine eloquence. 
 
 Doctor Chalmers's oratory was effective, partly in conse- 
 quence of his style and delivery, and partly in spite of these. 
 His style was formed upon that of the old puritan and 
 presbyterian divines ; but it was at the same time very 
 much his own. Their phrases and idioms he adopted — and 
 he loved them because they were, in a great measure, the 
 same as, or similar to, those of the Bible ; but the structure 
 of his periods was entirely different from theirs. It was 
 not conversational, neither did it bear the marks of being 
 easily executed. The fact is, that composition as well as 
 thinking, in the case of Chalmers, was a laborious matter, 
 and in both, he appears to have had an utter aversion to 
 common-place, or to anything resembling common-place. 
 Hence his very limited extemporaneous power. Doctor 
 Samuel Johnson thought in the same style with other men, 
 and then translated the ideas thus embodied, into his well- 
 known sonorous and mechanical rythm. Instances of this 
 double process are on record — instances in which the great 
 moralist first expressed himself in ordinary terms, and then 
 clothed the sentiment anew in its characteristic dress. It 
 was even so with Chalmers. His written, and much of his 
 spoken, language, was translated from the ordinary vehicle 
 of thought, into his own peculiar style. But in this style, 
 with all its impurities, there is a force, and a majesty, and 
 grand music, which, in themselves, possess a fascination. — 
 
30 
 
 Both auditor and reader are carried along by its very pon- 
 derosity, and the roll of its oriental and barbaric melody. 
 And so sublimely energetic was the man, that the language 
 employed, so far from offending by its singularity, seemed 
 the very instrument that was fitted for the orator's grasp. 
 It was the hammer of Thor, the club of Hercules, the sword 
 of Gideon ! I cannot help recurring to the vehemence — 
 the ingenium perfervidum — of the Scottish preacher. The 
 energy of Doctor Chalmers's delivery is inconceivable by 
 any one who never heard him. Those Demosthenic ges- 
 tures — the supplosio pedis and percussio femoris — the 
 stamping of the foot and the smiting of the thigh — which 
 gentlemanly Hugh Blair deemed unsuitable to modern ora- 
 tory, were common manifestations of Chalmers's intensity. 
 He wore a pulpit carpet every year to tatters ; and such 
 too, would have been the fate of his pulpit Bible, had not 
 his beadle fallen on the notable expedient of inserting in 
 the middle of it, where his manuscript lay, a seven-fold 
 shield of the stoutest brown paper ! He was John Knox 
 revived, but a poetical John Knox. In the impetuosity 
 and power of his utterance, in the greatness of his thoughts 
 and sentiments, in the splendid appropriateness of his illus- 
 trations, and in the pathetic majesty of his appeals, the 
 awkwardness of a very uncouth gesticulation, and a strik- 
 ingly provincial pronunciation, were entirely forgotten. — ; 
 His figure and motions were anything but graceful ; but 
 you saw that all his motions were natural. There could be 
 no doubt about that. His voice was not musical, and I 
 rather fear he never took a lesson in elocutionary inflexion ; 
 but his tones and modulations were the spontaneous expo- 
 nents of genuine feeling ; and when he rose into some of 
 
31 
 
 his loftiest soarings, his organs gave forth a solemn and 
 rapturous sound, like what we can imagine to be the voice 
 of an angel, or " prophet old," sent on some embassage of 
 mingled entreaty, expostulation, and threatening. It was 
 there that he held his audience spell-bound. It was not 
 pathos, it was not sarcasm, it was not ornate description. 
 There might be occasionally the presence of all these. — 
 But it was sublimity, loftiness, celestial grandeur. If you 
 wept, your tears were tears of ecstacy rather than of sor- 
 row ; if you trembled, it was as one would tremble were 
 the eternal world disclosed to him; if you rejoiced, your 
 joy was joy unspeakable ; and the whole effect was height- 
 ened by the certainty, founded on the preacher's scrupulous 
 habit of arguing, that you were not led captive by mere 
 impulse, but that your emotion was the legitimate conse- 
 quence of a vivid apprehension of truth. 
 
 Chalmers was the most honest of all great speakers* 
 He would as soon have thought of cheating you out of your 
 money, as of carrying his point by unfair means. Truth ought 
 to be sustained by truth, and not by stratagem. If you ask 
 me — and I have been asked a hundred times — to what fac- 
 ulty of the soul his eloquence was addressed — to the intel- 
 lect, the heart, or the imagination ? I answer, that it was ad- 
 dressed mainly and ultimately to the conscience. The intel- 
 lect, the heart, and the imagination, he regarded as avenues 
 to this, the ruling power in man ; and his demonstrations, 
 his illustrations, his figures, his pathos, were all advances 
 along those avenues to that ruling power. There are many 
 persons who look upon success as the test of oratory. How 
 often do we hear them tell of lawyers, who, by playing on 
 
32 
 
 the feelings of a jury, have liberated miscreants whom they 
 knew to be such ; of diplomatists, who, like Belial in Mil- 
 ton's infernal parliament, 
 
 " Could make the worse appear, 
 The better reason, to perplex and dash 
 Maturest counsels." 
 
 and of political speech-makers, who, by dexterous misrep- 
 resentation, and ungenerous abuse of human emotion, have 
 succeeded in cozening whole constituencies out of their 
 suffrages; — how often do we hear such deceivers lauded 
 as masters in the art of eloquence, and their hollow exhi- 
 bitions extolled as the highest triumphs in oratory ! The 
 end, say such talkers, will justify the means. An end, 
 which they may deem desirable, is to be attained, and they 
 persuade themselves that all rhetorical artifices are lawful, 
 nay, meritorious, in attaining it. Alas ! this is not the tri- 
 umph, but the degradation of Eloquence ! Alas ! that the 
 gift of Heaven should so be prostituted ! It is little better 
 than the eloquence of the Devil when he ruined Eve, by 
 lying like truth, and working on the heart of an innocent 
 unsuspecting woman ; or when, in the wilderness of Juclea, 
 he tempted the Savior, whose heart was tenderer than 
 woman's, but whose conscience was sovereign of his heart, 
 and more than a match for the Devil. The conscience, 
 after all, is the proper object of the honest orator's aim. 
 A speaker may plead interest if he will, or ambition if he 
 will. He may address himself to the love of country, or 
 the indignation, or the revenge, or the pity of his auditors, 
 but if he shrinks from contact with their consciences, he 
 is simply an expert deceiver. He may counsel robbery 
 under the guise of retribution, but he dares not call it 
 
33 
 
 robbery ; he may inflame party spirit under the sem- 
 blance of patriotism, but he dares not call it party spirit ; 
 he may insinuate licentiousness under the name of liberty, 
 but he dares not call it licentiousness ; he may inculcate 
 infidelity while denouncing bigotry, but he dares not call 
 it infidelity. He is compelled to mask his real endeavors, 
 under terms that stand between him and the conscience of 
 those who hear him ; otherwise he would betray the dia- 
 bolical hoof, and be saluted with the hisses and execrations 
 of the poor dupes who now admire him as an angel of 
 light. Of such scorn Chalmers stood in no danger ; for 
 he loved the honest truth with his whole great soul, and 
 spoke the honest truth like a brave and upright man. To 
 all chicanery he was a total stranger in his own practice, 
 and so generous were his views of human nature that he 
 did not hastily believe even in the duplicity of politicians. 
 It is well remembered when, in his country cottage at 
 Burnt-island, he received intelligence that Lord Aberdeen, 
 then high in the councils of England, had played fast and 
 loose with his proposals for a settlement of the Free Church 
 controversy, how his eyes filled with tears — a most; rare 
 and sublime spectacle in Chalmers — and he denounced, 
 far more in sorrow than in anger, those accursed politics — 
 for such were his strong words — which had power to 
 bewitch the mind of one whom he had been accustomed to 
 regard as a nobleman by nature, no less than by imposition 
 of the royal hand. Lord Aberdeen's virtue was Chalmers's 
 last hope ; and that hope gone, he pronounced the fiat 
 which disrupted the venerable Church of Scotland, saying, 
 " If the civil power refuses to be regulated in its relation to 
 the church, that relation must be destroyed !" " Lord 
 
34 
 
 Aberdeen," he added, " has been the sneck-drawer, and I 
 have been the snool, but I would rather be the snool than 
 the sneck-drawer!" — that is, when interpreted, Lord Aber- 
 deen has been the shuffler, and I have been the simpleton, 
 but I would rather be the simpleton than the shuffler ! This 
 was, indeed, a noble utterance — very quaint and very char- 
 acteristic in its expression, but still very noble. He would 
 rather bear the reproach of honesty, and be deceived, than 
 the reputation of smartness, and be a deceiver. 
 
 And now, gentlemen, what can we do to follow and 
 uphold the example of the great and good man whose ora- 
 tory we have been considering ? In this free country, many 
 or most of us may be called on frequently to address our 
 fellow-citizens, and all of us, in virtue of our education^ 
 must, to a greater or less extent, be able to guide the judg- 
 ment, and regulate the taste of the communities wherein 
 our lot may be cast. Our duty, therefore — our duty as 
 scholars, as men, as christians, as patriots — is to set our 
 faces like flint against all falsehood, all deception, all vain 
 show, .all ear-tickling, all mental dissipation, both in our- 
 selves and other men. Let us see to it, that no temptation 
 — no greed of worthless applause, no slavish worship of 
 democracy, shall ever make us faithless to that which is 
 true, and lovely because it is true ; and that every public; 
 speaker — whether he be preacher, advocate, legislator, , 
 politician, or lecturer, shall receive most impartially our: 
 approbation or disapprobation — our countenance or oppo- 
 sition — just as he adheres to, or deviates from, truth in 
 thought, in word, in action. Be it our task — not arrogantly 
 and ignorantly assumed — but imposed by our common conn- 
 
35 
 
 try, to guard her citizens against the stimulants of oratori- 
 cal empirics. Let us give our popular instructors to know, 
 that, so far as we can lielp it, they shall not for bread give 
 the people a stone ! 
 
 And O ye good people, especially ye young men and 
 maidens — " virginibus puerisque canto" — who deem your- 
 selves arbiters of elegance — pray assnre yourselves that 
 it is really bread you are asking for — the staff of mental 
 life, and not some curious sweetmeats — fantastic painted 
 cakes — whereof the nutriment is scanty, and the dyspeptic 
 qualities abundant ; or, peradventure, some frothy com- 
 pound, corrupted into a mere similitude of wine — as Tacitus 
 eighteen hundred years ago described the German beer — 
 but not the generous juice of the grape itself — fit beverage 
 to digest good food, and making glad the heart of gods and 
 men. There is widely-spread and deeply rooted among us, 
 in this country of enterprise and excitement — of hurry and 
 high pressure — a distressing intolerance, a foolish juvenile 
 impatience of thought and demonstration — a luxurious 
 appetite for high-spiced rhetoric — a passive, spectacular 
 indolence, that desires to be fed as infants are — and that 
 too, without even the trouble of absorption — by having 
 the luscious mixture placed within our lips — a pertinacious 
 refusal to meet a reflective speaker half way, and to follow 
 him through any lengthened train of argument — a perverse 
 determination to be tickled and entertained, rather than 
 a manly effort to rouse our thinking faculties, and to task 
 our reason, as Heaven intended we should do, when it made 
 conscience the crown, and reason the sceptre of human 
 sovereignty. This great sin, we maintain, lies at the door 
 
36 
 
 of many of our people, and hence it is that speakers, more 
 intent on popularity than truth ; — greater lovers of transient 
 fame than of their father-land — have made up their minds 
 to indulge this pernicious craving, rather than to cure it — 
 to blaze and sparkle, like fire-works, for the amusement of 
 a crowd, instead of shining, and warming, and giving life, 
 like the great steady sun in the sky. Think not that I 
 exaggerate the dangers of this course. All history tells 
 me that the eloquence of a nation, and the well being of 
 a nation, are united by an indissoluble bond. As the one 
 rises, so rises the other, when the one culminates, so does 
 the other, as the one declines so does the other. They are 
 reciprocally the consequence and the evidence of each other. 
 Out of the abundance of the national heart, the national 
 mouth speaketh. When that heart is sound and true — 
 when it throbs with the pulsations of perfect health, and 
 glows with the fervor of great aspirations, its utterances are 
 utterances of purity, and power, and beauty. When that 
 heart is corrupt, its talk is a meretricious imitation of bet- 
 ter things — it is the talk of a self-seeker with meanest 
 purpose in his bosom, and fulsomest profession on his lips. 
 The citadel is undermined and the spoiler is nigh. The 
 salt has lost its savor, and when, at last, commotion comes 
 — as come it will — it comes not to purify but to poison — 
 not to send freshness to the clouds, and fatness to the land, 
 but to cast up, as from the depths of a putrid sea, pestilence 
 and desolation ! Let us give good heed to our ways. Our 
 material prosperity is marvellous, our material progress is 
 unparalleled. But how prosper we in public virtue ? What 
 progress have we made in purity and truth ? How many 
 among us have caught the mantles of the great spirits who 
 
37 
 
 ascended from the fields of our early glory ? How many 
 of us now have faith and honesty sufficient to divide the 
 waters, should gathering iniquity come in upon us like a 
 flood ? Do not our itching ears, and mouths speaking great 
 swelling words of vanity, proclaim our failing earnestness, 
 and our degeneracy in those great substantial qualities 
 which made the American Revolution a grand success, 
 while all that followed it in Europe have been most miser- 
 able failures ? I call on you, by the memory of your fath- 
 ers, by the pride of your race, by the love of your country, 
 by the hopes of mankind, to aid, with all your strength, 
 in setting up once more the standard of truth, and in resto- 
 ring her dominion, ere it be too late. Doubtless she has 
 still among us many a public champion, without fear and 
 without reproach, and an ultimate protection from fatal 
 outrage in the yet numerous host of our uncorrupted pri- 
 vate citizens. Heaven pity us and all men, if she has not ! 
 For, when shamed by profligacy, and trampled down by 
 recklessness, she slowly, reluctantly, but indignantly with- 
 draws from any land, all history proclaims that its doom is 
 sealed, its life principle is gone, and its subsequent activity 
 is nothing save the struggles, and throes, and writhings of 
 a great body that has hegun to die ; although, like the 
 mighty republic of the ancient world, it may toss, for woful 
 centuries, in the long and terrible process of dying ! Should 
 we ever deserve such fate — should Divine Justice ever be 
 provoked to make the heart of this people fat, and their 
 ears heavy —should their eyes ever become blinded to their 
 priceless blessings, and their youthful glories ever suffer an 
 eclipse, the gloom of such a catastrophe would shed disas- 
 trous twilight, not only over this new world, but over half 
 
38 
 
 the nations of the old ; but should it be the Almighty Killer's 
 will, that in spite of our waywardness, the youth of this peo- 
 ple shall still be renewed like the eagle's, which they have 
 chosen for their emblem — should they grasp the thunder- 
 bolt, not to strike the feeble, but to confound the guilty — 
 should they be able to gaze undazzled even on the noontide 
 splendor of their hopes, and, when tempests come, to cleave 
 the adverse storm, and soar high into the pure serene of heav- 
 en — then shall many a heart, that has been mourning for all 
 the abominations that are done amongst us, leap once more 
 for joy, and many an eye, that has been turned in earnest 
 longing towards this land of promise, shall brighten again 
 with the assurance that oppression is doomed, and that the 
 great day of liberty is drawing nigh !