cated with vengeance. Nature is everywhere painted in these strong images, which have become common. It is from her that instinct learns to assume a modest tone and air, when it is necessary. The natural desire of captivating our judges and masters; the concentrated energies of a profoundly stricken soul, which prepares to display the sentiments which oppress it, are the first teachers of this art.

It is the same nature which sometimes inspires lively and animated sallies; a strong impulse on a pressing danger, prompts the imagination suddenly. Thus a captain of the first caliphs, seeing the mussulmen fly from the field of battle, cried out: "Where are you running to? your enemies are not there."

This speech has been given to many captains: it is attributed to Cromwell. Strong minds much oftener accord than fine wits.

Rasi, a mussulman, captain of the time of Mahomet, seeing his Arabs frightened at the death of their general Derar, said to them: "What does it signify that Derar is dead? God is living, and observes your actions."

Where is there a more eloquent man than that English sailor who decided the war against Spain in 1740?" When the Spaniards, having mutilated me, were going to kill me, I recommended my soul to God, and my vengeance to my country!"

Nature, then, elicits eloquence; and if it be said that poets are created and orators formed, it is applicable only when eloquence is forced to study the laws, the genius of the judges, and the manners of the times. Nature alone is spontaneously eloquent.

The precepts always follow the art. Tisias was the first who collected the laws of eloquence, of which nature gives the first rules. Plato afterwards said, in his Gorgias, that an orator should have the subtlety of the logician, the science of the philosopher, almost the diction of the poet, and the voice and gesture of the greatest actors.

Aristotle, also, showed that true philosophy is the secret guide to perfection in all the arts. He disco

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vered the sources of eloquence in his book of Rhetoric. He showed that logic is the foundation of the art of per suasion, and that to be eloquent is to know how to demonstrate.

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He distinguished three kinds of eloquence; the deliberative, the demonstrative, and the judiciary. The deliberative, is employed to exhort those who deliberate in taking a part in war, in peace, &c.; the demonstrative, to show that which is worthy of praise or blame; the judiciary, to persuade, absolve, con-demn, &c.

He afterwards treats of the manners and passions with which all orators should be acquainted.

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He examines the proofs which should be employed in these three species of eloquence, and finally he treats of elocution, without which all would languish. recommends metaphors, provided they are just and noble; and, above all, he requires consistency and decorum.

All these precepts breathe the enlightened precision of a philosopher, and the politeness of an Athenian; and, in giving the rules of eloquence, he is eloquent with simplicity.

It is to be remarked, that Greece was the only country in the world in which the laws of eloquence were then known, because it was the only one in which true eloquence existed.

The grosser art was known to all men; sublime traits have everywhere escaped from nature at all times; but to rouse the minds of the whole of a polished nation; to please, convince, and affect at the same time, belonged only to the Greeks.

The Orientals were almost all slaves; and it is one of the characteristics of servitude to exaggerate every thing. Thus the Asiatic eloquence was monstrous. The west was barbarous in the time of Aristotle.

True eloquence began to show itself in the time of the Gracchi, and was not perfected until the time of Cicero. Mark Antony, the orator Hortensius, Curion, Cæsar, and several others, were eloquent men.

This eloquence perished with the republic, like that

of Athens. Sublime eloquence, it is said, belongs only to liberty; it consists in telling bold truths, in displaying strong reasons and representations. A man often dislikes truth, fears reason, and likes a wellturned compliment better than the sublimest eloquence.

Cicero, after having given the examples in his harangues, gave the precepts in his book of the Orator; he followed almost all the methods of Aristotle, and explained himself in the style of Plato.

It distinguishes the simple species, the temperate, and the sublime.

Rollin has followed this division in his Treatise on Study; and he pretends that which Cicero does not, that the temperate' is a beautiful river, shaded with green forests on both sides; the simple,' a properlyserved table, of which all the meats are of excellent flavour, and from which all refinement is banished; that the sublime' thunders forth and is an impetuous current which overthrows all that resists it.

Without sitting down to this table, without following this thunderbolt, this current, or this river, every man of sense must see that simple eloquence is that which has simple things to expose, and that clearness and elegance are all that are necessary to it.

There is no occasion to read Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, to feel that an advocate who begins by a pompous exordium on the subject of a partition wall is ridiculous; it was, however, the fault of the bar until the middle of the seventeenth century; they spoke with emphasis of the most trivial things. Volumes of these examples might be compiled; but all might be reduced to this speech of a witty advocate, who, observing that his adversary was speaking of the Trojan war and of Scamander, interrupted him by saying, "The court will observe that my client is not called Scamander, but Michaut."

The sublime species can only regard powerful interests, treated of in a great assembly.

There may still be seen lively traces of it in the Parliament of England: several harangues partook of it which were pronounced there in 1739, when they de

bated about declaring war against Spain. The spirits of Cicero and Demosthenes seem to have dictated several passages in their speeches; but they will not descend to posterity like those of the Greeks and Romans, because they want the art and charm of diction, which place the seal of immortality on good works.

The temperate species is that of those preparatory discourses, of those public speeches, and of those studied compliments, in which the deficiency of matter must be concealed with flowers.

These three species are often mingled, as also the three objects of eloquence, according to Aristotle: the great merit of the orator consists in uniting them with judgment.

Great eloquence can scarcely be known to the bar in France, because it does not conduct to honours, as in Athens, Rome, and at present in London; neither has it great public interests for its object; it is confined to funeral orations, in which it borders a little upon poetry.

Bossuet, and after him Flechier, seem to have obeyed that precept of Plato, which teaches us that the elocution of an orator may sometimes be the same as that of a poet.

Pulpit oratory had been almost barbarous until P. Bourdaloue; he was one of the first who caused reason to be spoken there.

The English did not arrive at that art until a later date, as is avowed by Burnet, bishop of Salisbury. They knew not the funeral oration; they avoided, in their sermons, all those vehement turns which appeared not to them consistent with the simplicity of the Gospel; and they were diffident of using those far-fetched divisions which are condemned by archbishop Fenelon, in his dialogues "Sur l'Eloquence."

Though our sermons turn on the most important subjects to man, they supply few of those striking parts which, like the fine passages of Cicero and Demosthenes, are fit to become the models of all the western nations. The reader will therefore be glad to learn the effect produced by M. Massillon, since bishop

of Clermont, the first time that he preached his famous sermon on the small number of the elect. A kind of transport seized all the audience; they rose involuntarily; the murmurs of acclamation and surprise were so great as to disturb the orator; and this confusion only served to augment the pathos of his discourse. The following is the passage:

"I will suppose that this is our last hour, that the heavens open over our heads, that time is past and that eternity commences; that Jesus Christ is going to appear to judge us according to our works, and that we are all here to receive from him the sentence of eternal life or death: I ask you, overwhelmed with terror like yourselves, without separating my lot from your own, and putting myself in the same situation in which we must all one day appear before God our judge,—if Jesus Christ, were now to make the terrible separation of the just from the unjust, do you believe that the greatest part would be saved? Do you believe that the number of the righteous would be in the least degree equal to the number of the sinners? Do you believe that, if he now discussed the works of the great number which is in this church, he would find ten righteous souls among us? Would he find a single one?" There are several different editions of this discourse, but the substance is the same in all of them.

This figure, the boldest which was ever employed, and the best timed, is one of the finest turns of eloquence which can be read either among the ancients or moderns; and the rest of the discourse is not unworthy of this brilliant appeal.

Preachers who cannot imitate these fine models would do well to learn them by heart, and deliver them to their congregations (supposing that they have the rare talent of declamation) instead of preaching to them, in a languishing style, things as common-place as they are useless.

It is demanded, if eloquence be permitted to historians? That which belongs to them consists in the art of arranging events, in being always elegant in their expositions, sometimes lively and impressive, sometimes