does not know that the Thebans, and their predecessors in power, the Lacedæmonians, and the Persian king, would have been glad and thankful to let Athens take anything that she liked, besides keeping what she had got, if she would only have done what she was told, and allowed some other power to lead Greece?

Such a bargain, however, was for the Athenians of those days neither conditional, nor congenial, nor supportable. In the whole course of her annals, no one could ever persuade Athens to side with dishonest strength, to accept a secure slavery, or to desist, at any moment in her career, and from doing battle and braving danger for preeminence, for honor, and for renown.

You, Athenians, find these principles so worthy of veneration, so accordant with your own character, that you praise none of your ancestors so highly as those who put them into action. You are right. Who must not admire the spirit of men who were content to quit their country, and to exchange their city for their triremes in the cause of resistance to dictation; who put Themistocles, the author of his course, at their head, while as for Kyrsilos, the man who gave his voice for accepting the enemy's terms, they stoned him to death, yes, and his wife was stoned by the women of Athens? The Athenians of those days were not in search of an orator or a general who should help them to an agreeable servitude. No, they would not hear of life itself if they were not to live free. Each one of them held that he had been born the son, not only of his father and his mother, but of his country also. And wherein is the difference? It is here. He that recognizes no debt of piety save to his parents awaits his death in the course of destiny and of nature. But he that deems himself the son of his

country also will be ready to die sooner than see her enslaved. In his estimate those insults, those dishonors which must be suffered in his city when she has lost her freedom will be accounted more terrible than death.

If I presumed to say that it was I who thus inspired you with a spirit worthy of your ancestors, there is not a man present who might not properly rebuke me. What I do maintain is that these principles of conduct were your own; that this spirit existed in the city before my intervention, but that, in the successive chapters of events, I had my share of merit as your servant. Eschines, on the contrary, denounces our policy as a whole, invokes your resentment against me as the author of the city's terrors and dangers, and, in his anxiety to wrest from me the distinction of the hour, robs you of glories which will be celebrated as long as time endures. For, if you condemn Ktesiphon on the ground that my public course was misdirected, then you will be adjudged guilty of error: you will no longer appear as sufferers by the perversity of fortune.

But never, Athenians, never can it be said that you erred when you took upon you that peril for the freedom and safety of all. No, by our fathers who met the danger at Marathon; no, by our fathers who stood in the ranks at Platea; no, by our fathers who did battle on the waters of Salamis and Artemision; no, by all the brave who sleep in tombs at which their country paid those last honors which she had awarded, Eschines, to all of them alike, not alone to the successful or the victorious! And her award was just. The part of brave men had been done by all. The fortune experienced by the individual among them had been allotted by a power above man.

Here is the proof. Not when my extradition was de

manded, not when they sought to arraign me before the Amphictyonic Council, not for all their menaces or their offers, not when they set these villains like wild beasts upon me, have I ever been untrue to the loyalty I bear you. From the outset, I chose the path of a straightforward and righteous statesmanship, to cherish the dignities, the prerogatives, the glories of my country: to exalt them: to stand by their cause. I do not go about the market-place radiant with joy at my country's disasters, holding out my hand and telling my good news to any one who, I think, is likely to report it in Macedon; I do not hear of my country's successes with a shudder and a groan and a head bent to earth, like the bad men who pull Athens to pieces, as if, in so doing, they were not tearing their own reputations to shreds, who turn their faces to foreign lands, and, when an alien has triumphed by the ruin of the Greeks, give their praises to that exploit, and vow that vigilance must be used to render that triumph eternal.

Never, powers of Heaven, may any brow of the immortals be bent in approval of that prayer. Rather, if it may be, breathe even into these men a better mind and heart; but if so it is that to these can come no healing, then grant that these, and these alone, may perish utterly and early on land and on the deep: and to us, the remnant, send the swiftest deliverance from the terrors gathered above our heads; send us the salvation that stands fast perpetually.

ORATORY

BY HENRY WARD BEECHER

Oratory has this test and mark of divine providence, that God, when he makes things perfect, signifies that he is done, by throwing over them the robe of beauty; for beauty is the divine thought of excellence. All growing things, in their earlier stages, are rude. All of them are in vigorous strength, it may be; but not until the blossom comes, and the fruit hangs pendant, has the vine evinced for what it was made. God is a God of beauty; and beauty is everywhere the final process. When things have come to that, they have touched their limit.

A living force that brings to itself all the resources of imagination, all the inspirations of feeling, all that is influential in body, in voice, in eye, in gesture, in posture, in the whole animated man, is in strict analogy with the divine thought and the divine arrangement; and there is no misconstruction more utterly untrue and fatal than this: that oratory is an artificial thing, which deals with baubles and trifles, for the sake of making bubbles of pleasure for transient effect on mercurial audiences. So far from that, it is the consecration of the whole man to the noblest purposes to which one can address himself-the education and inspiration of his fellow men by all that there is in learning, by all that there is in thought, by all that there is in feeling, by all that there is in all of them, sent home through the channels of taste and of beauty. And so regarded, oratory should take its place among the highest departments of education.

But oratory is disregarded largely; and one of the fruits of this disregard is, that men fill all the places of power

with force misdirected; with energy not half so fruitful as it might be; with sincerity that knows not how to spread its wings and fly. If you were to trace and to analyze the methods which prevail in all the departments of society, you would find in no other such contempt of culture, and in no other such punishment of this contempt.

How much squandering there is of the voice! How little is there of the advantage that may come from conversational tones! How seldom does a man dare to acquit himself with pathos and fervor! And the men are themselves mechanical and methodical in the bad way, who are most afraid of the artificial training that is given in the schools, and who so often show by the fruit of their labor that the want of oratory is the want of education.

How remarkable is sweetness of voice in the mother, in the father, in the household! The music of no chorded instruments brought together is, for sweetness, like the music of familiar affection when spoken by brother and sister, or by father and mother.

Conversation itself belongs to oratory. How many men there are who are weighty in argument, who have abundant resources, and who are almost boundless in their power at other times and in other places, but who, when in company among their kind, are exceedingly unapt in their methods. Having none of the secret instruments by which the elements of nature may be touched, having no skill and no power in this direction, they stand as machines before living, sensitive men. A man may be as a master before an instrument; only the instrument is dead; and he has the living hand; and out of that dead instrument what wondrous harmony springs forth at his touch! And if you

can electrify an audience by the power of a living man on