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BOOK VIII.

Nineteenth Century Orators of France

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HE history of France in recent times has been unique and highly interesting. Nowhere else

in history can be found the record of a country that had four political revolutions, each followed by a transformation in the government, within a century. Such has been the case in France. The unparalleled revolution of 1789 was followed by feebler copies in 1830, 1848 and 1871, a republic following the monarchy in three of these cases, while a change of dynasty took place in the second. Here was abundant political change, uprooting of old institutions, exposure of administrative abuses, radical variations in conditions. In all this there was abundant occasion for oratory, and that of the most strenuous character. The type of eloquence to which the first revolution gave occasion we have already shown. That of the succeeding ones was less vehement. Only one orator of recent France can be named who in any sense compares in character with those of the age of Mirabeau. This is Victor Hugo, whose assaults on "Napoleon the Little" were as cutting and virulent as the most unbridled diatribes of the days of the guillotine. As a rule, however, the nineteenth century oratory of France was in a quieter and more classical vein, some of the most famous and polished orators winning their reputation on non-political issues. As regards the leaders in political oratory-Lamartine, Thiers, Gambetta and others--those, while vigorous and aggressive in tone, were of a far milder type than the fiery orators of the previous century or the indignant and incisive Hugo of their own.

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VICTOR COUSIN (1792-1867)

AN EMINENT ORATOR AND PHILOSOPHER

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HE Sorbonne, a famous college at Paris of ancient institution, possessed in the early part of the nineteenth century three lecturers of wide fame, Cousin, Guizot and Villemain, the former two in especial having a world-wide reputation. Cousin was appointed to the chair of philosophy in 1815, and for a number of years delivered eloquent and popular lectures to large audiences, his lectures displaying an admirable combination of sensibility, imagination and reason. His popularity was immense, but his liberal opinions caused him to be deprived of his professorship in 1820, though he was replaced in 1828. His lectures, which were prepared with the care of those of Demosthenes and Cicero in the past, of Ruskin, Emerson and others in the present age, were published in book form, one series of them being on "The True, the Beautiful and the Good." He wrote various other works, developing an eclectic system of philosophy of high estimation. After the revolution of 1830, Cousin, like Guizot, entered upon a political career, and for a time, in 1840, was Minister of Public Instruction. His speeches in the Chambers displayed superior powers of oratory. He took no part in public affairs after the Revolution of 1848.

SUPREMACY OF THE ART OF POETRY

[The following eloquent passage, in which the claim of poetry to supremacy over its sister arts is effectively presented, is from one of Cousin's lectures on "The True, the Beautiful and the Good."]

The art par excellence, that which surpasses all others, because it is incomparably the most expressive, is poetry.

Speech is the instrument of poetry; poetry fashions it to its use, and idealizes it, in order to make it express ideal beauty. Poetry gives to it the charm and power of measure; is makes of it something intermediary

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between the ordinary voice and music-something at once material and immaterial, finite, clear, and precise; like contours and forms, the most definite, living, and animated; like color pathetic, and infinite like sound.

A word in itself, especially a word chosen and transfigured by poetry, is the most energetic and universal symbol. Armed with this talisman, poetry reflects all the images of the sensible world, like sculpture and painting; it reflects sentiment like painting and music, with all its varieties, which music does not attain, and in their rapid succession which painting cannot follow, as precise and immobile as sculpture; and it not only expresses all that, it expresses what is inaccessible to every other art:-I mean thought, entirely distinct from the senses and even from sentiment; thought that has no forms; thought that has no color, that lets no sound escape, that does not manifest itself in any way; thought in its highest flight, in its most refined abstraction.

Think of it! What a world of images, of sentiments, of thoughts at once distinct and confused, are excited within us by this one word-country! and by this other word, brief and immense-God! What is more clear and altogether more profound and vast!

Tell the architect, the sculptor, the painter, even the musician, to call forth also by a single stroke all the powers of nature and the soul. They cannot; and by that they acknowledge the superiority of speech and poetry. They proclaim it themselves, for they take poetry for their own measure; they esteem their own works, and demand that they should be esteemed, in proportion as they approach the poetic ideal. And the human race does as artists do; a beautiful picture, a noble melody, a living and expressive statue, gives rise to the exclamation, How poetical! This is not an arbitrary comparison; it is a natural judgment which makes poetry the type of the perfection of all the arts; the art par excellence, which comprises all others, to which they aspire, which none can reach.

When the other arts would imitate the works of poetry, they usually err, losing their own genius without robbing poetry of its genius. But poetry constructs, according to its own taste, palaces and temples, like architecture; it makes them simple or magnificent; all orders, as well as all systems, obey it; the different ages of art are the same to it; it reproduces, if it please, the Classic or the Gothic, the beautiful or the sublime, the measured or the infinite.

Lessing has been able, with the exactest justice, to compare Homer to the most perfect sculptor; with such precision are the forms which that marvelous chisel gives to all things determined. And what a painter, too, is Homer! And, of a different kind, Dante! Music alone has something more penetrating than poetry, but it is vague, limited, and fugitive.

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE (1790-1869)

THE ORATOR OF THE 1848 REVOLUTION

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N the 25th of February, 1848, when a seditious and furious mob traversed the streets of Paris, demanding the red flag of anarchy instead of the tricolor of the Republic, Alphonse de Lamartine, a member of the revolutionary government, appeared before them, and in a passionate burst of eloquence calmed their feelings and brought them back to reason. Never before in history had oratory won a triumph like this, and it placed Lamartine high among political orators.

Known before as a poet of splendid powers, and as a historian by his brilliant "History of the Girondists," Lamartine, in 1848, became the master spirit and the moderator of the revolution, repressing the tendency to violence by admirable displays of eloquence, courage and magnanimity, and winning an immense popularity, which, however, was not long lived. His decline in public estimation was shown in the election for President in December, 1848, in which he received only 8000 votes. During the remainder of his life he produced a number of valuable historical works.

WHAT IS THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

[Lamartine's views of the true character of the French Revolution and of the benefits which remained after its reign of terror had passed away, are well shown in the following extract from one of his speeches.]

What, then, is the French Revolution? Is it, as the adorers of the past say, a great sedition of a nation disturbed for no reason, and destroying in their insensate convulsions their church, their monarchy, their classes, their institutions, their nationality, and even rending the map of Europe? No! the Revolution has not been a miserable sedition of

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE

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France; for a sedition subsides as it rises, and leaves nothing but corpses and ruins behind it. The Revolution has left scaffolds and ruins, it is true; therein is its remorse; but it has also left a doctrine; it has left a spirit which will be enduring and perpetual so long as human reason shall exist.

We are not inspired by the spirit of faction! No factious idea enters our thoughts. We do not wish to compose a faction-we compose opinion, for it is nobler, stronger, and more invincible. Shall we have, in our first struggles, violence, oppression and death? No, gentlemen! let us give thanks to our fathers; it shall be liberty which they have bequeathed to us, liberty which now has its own arms, its pacific arms, to develop itself without anger and excess. Therefore shall we triumph-be sure of it! and if you ask what is the moral force that shall bend the government beneath the will of the nation, I will answer you; it is the sovereignty of ideas, the royalty of mind, the Republic, the true Republic of intelligence; in one word, opinion-that modern power whose very name was unknown to antiquity. Gentlemen, public opinion was born on the very day when Gutenberg, who has been styled the artificer of a new world, invented, by printing, the multiplication and indefinite communication of thought and human reason. This incomprehensible power of opinion needs not for its sway either the brand of vengeance, the sword of justice, or the scaffold of terror. It holds in its hands the equilibrium between ideas and institutions, the balance of the human mind. In one of the scales of this balance-understand it well-will be for a long time placed mental superstitions, prejudices self-styled useful, the divine right of kings, distinctions of right among classes, international animosities, the spirit of conquest, the venal alliance of Church and state, the censorship of thought, the silence of tribunes, and the ignorance and systematic degradation of the masses. In the other scale, we ourselves, gentlemen, will place the lightest and most impalpable thing of all that God has created— light, a little of that light which the French Revolution evoked at the close of the last century-from a volcano, doubtless, but from a volcano of truth.

SAFETY ONLY IN THE REPUBLIC

[From Lamartine's remarkable speeches of 1848 we select the following eloquent appeal for the Republic, as the only security against the reign of anarchy and bloodshed which was threatened in the temper of the populace.]

For my part, I see too clearly the series of consecutive catastrophes I should be preparing for my country, to attempt to arrest the avalanche of such a Revolution, on a descent where no dynastic force could retain it without increasing its mass, its weight, and the ruin of its fall. There is,

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