light of eloquent diction or of quaint and humorous phrase. Before this audience he wins the highest praise who adds to the charm of his discourse the soundest wisdom of any orator, the knowledge or instinct of where to stop. The world owes many a worthy lesson to the orator who uses the "Puritan," the "Land o' Cakes," and the names of St. George and St. David to point a modern moral and to justify the doubtful present by joining it on to a past which is secure. The records of these societies show many examples of eloquence of the highest order, some of which ought to be given to a larger world than they reached when delivered.

It is a popular idea that those who are gifted with oratorical power have few other gifts, that their influence perishes with the moving of popular audiences and that they have not in other spheres the power they show in arousing the multitude. In many cases this is so, but those who move public sentiment move it in different degrees. Public sentiment also is of two different kinds: the voice of the people, which is the hurried result of the untrained and uninstructed emotions, and that voice of the people, uttered after due thought and experience, which is the solid and enduring basis of human action. Gales, which are but air in motion, may toss the surface of the seas into wild and ravening waves; but the great strength of the ocean is underneath it all, and, aided by the steadfast genius of man, transports to every shore the products of every land.

Men who stir the surface of thought for the moment may be inferior and command little permanent respect, but the great orators have left too many landmarks behind them to be confounded with retoricians and men of the moment. We have not one of his orations left by which we might judge for ourselves, but if there be anything in the testimony of all the men of his time, Julius Cæsar is entitled to rank among the greatest orators of his age. Yet, however much we may mourn over the passage of the Rubicon, we cannot deny to Cæsar the highest rank of all those who have managed the affairs of practical life. Daniel Webster, who was our greatest orator, has never been denied the rank of a great man. Henry Clay, whose oratory was of that sympathetic kind

which we most suspect, was the most powerful party leader who ever dictated his will to others.

While we must acknowledge the faults of Cicero, we can also demonstrate that his great superior, "The Or ator" himself, has not only left behind him orations which are the models for the emulation of all the world, but also the memory of a life of patriotic devotion and wisdom which, if the Immortal Gods had so willed, might have saved to Athens its preeminence among the cities of Greece and preserved the liberties of the ancient world.

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LECTURES AND LECTURERS

66

T is said that more popular lectures have been delivered in the United States in the past year than in any period of its history. People talk of what they call the lecture system." And, sometimes they even speak of it as a part of the national system of education. It is certainly true, as the reader shall see, that the earlier lectures of the Nineteenth century were prepared and delivered with a definite idea of education. It is also true, however, that with the changes of methods and resources, the lecture system is now to be classed as a part of the system of public entertainment. A good lecturer now may teach or not, but he must entertain.

Lecture courses, on plans which have some similarity to the methods of to-day, were delivered in New England early in the century. The history of American lectures, however, goes even further back. It is matter of amusement now to remember that when the first plays were acted in Boston, they were advertised as moral lectures. Thus Garrick's farce of "Lethe" was produced as a satirical lecture called "Lethe, or Æsop in the Shades," by Mr. Watts and Mr. and Mrs. Solomon. Otway's "Venice Preserved" was announced as a moral lecture in five parts, "in which the dreadful effects of conspiracy will be exemplified"; and "Romeo and Juliet," and "Hamlet," etc., were masked under the same catching and hypocritical phraseology. On October 5, 1785, was produced a moral lecture, in five parts, "wherein the pernicious tendency of libertinism will be exemplified in the tragical history of George Barnwell, or, the London Merchant,' delivered by Messrs. Harper, Morris, Watts, Murray.

Solomon, Redfield, Miss Smith, Mrs. Solomon, and Mrs. Gray."

The name "lecture" had been familiar to the New England Puritan and his descendants since 1630. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that half of the people who crossed the Atlantic in that year came because they wanted to hear lectures. This was one desire among many which led them to emigrate. And there was, perhaps, no desire which expressed itself so often or so simply. After their arrival a regular week-day "lecture" in each settlement was just as much a matter of course as a regular Sunday service. In the contemporary narratives of the first ten years, as in such books as Winthrop's "Journal," there are more references to these week-day lectures than there are to public schools.

The reason for this is to be found in the English history of that time. It is easy to understand that the enthusiastic Puritan preachers did not care to confine themselves to the limited range of the book of Homilies. Nor did they care much for saints' days, and they would range far afield in their choice of subjects for Sunday preaching. But this was a matter where it was hard for Archbishop Laud or any high churchman to interfere. It was when John Cotton left his own pulpit and went up and down in England delivering week-day lectures that Laud and that set saw the danger of such voices crying aloud in their wilderness, and tried to silence them. Many a radical Puritan preacher won his public reputation outside of his parish church. And it is easy enough to see that any attempt on the part of the authorities to stop such week-day lectures, proved to be simply what our modern Philistinism calls a good advertisement. If John Cotton were turned out from Leicester and not permitted to lecture one Thursday, all the people of Leicester would be eager to hear John Wheelwright when it was announced that he would lecture the next Thursday.

Archbishop Laud, however, was not a person easily discouraged. As the phrase of the time went, he was "thorough": a word from which, I suppose, our word Tory was born. The more the Puritan preachers lectured on week-days, the more the Archbishop suppressed them. And this was a grievance which came home to everybody.

Other attacks on Puritan preaching fell upon the ministers. A man would not make the sign of the cross in baptism, and he would not wear a surplice when the Archbishop wanted him to. But such attacks did not concern the laity directly. When, however, the Archbishop said that they should not go to hear lectures, the personal right of an Englishman to use his time as he chose was wounded. And, of course, the more men were told that they must not go to week-day lectures, the more those men swore, that, as God lived, they would.

It is curious to me to see that for twenty references to these Puritan lectures which I could find in our New England records, I should find it hard to discover one in the local authorities in English literature. Even in so careful and complete a book as Masson's "Life of Milton," which covers wonderfully well the Puritan history of most of the Seventeenth century, I have not found one reference to this distinctly Puritan method of exciting and warning the people, of educating them to a larger social and political life. In John Bunyan's Memoirs, however, there is one distinguished exception to this silence. Here is more than one reference either to his speaking on week-days or listening at week-day addresses. I suppose that where the parson in a village looked with favor on the traveling lecturer, he would throw open the village church that the people might hear. Or, if the parson were not favorable, the lecturer had only to avail himself of the audience afforded by a country fair or a market-day, and to advertise his lecture by announcing freely that the parson had closed the doors of the church against him. Then a larger congregation would assemble than would have welcomed him within doors. I think, but am not certain, that for success every such traveling preacher needed ready power of extempore speech. I do not believe that the word lecture implied what its origin seems to require-that it should be read.

The origin of such lectures delivered in different places by speakers other than the resident clergy seems to go back as far as the reign of Edward VI. Dr. Brown writes me from England: "In my own native county of Lancashire, in the reign of Edward VI, seeing that the old Catholic feeling was still strong among many of the