this truth, and now, on this Sabbath of our country, lay a new stone in the grand temple of universal peace, whose dome shall be as lofty as the firmament of heaven, as broad and comprehensive as the earth itself.

In every speech of Webster we find a discreet and skilful use of this figure of climax. The closing lines of "The First Bunker Hill Monument Oration," which discloses his power at its height, is worthy of memorizing:

And let the sacred obligations which have devolved on this generation, and on us, sink deep into our hearts. Those who established our liberty and our government are daily dropping from among us. The great trust now descends to new hands. Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us, as our appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war for independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defense and preservation; and there is opened to us, also, a noble pursuit, to which the spirit of the times strongly invites us. Our proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great objects which our condition points out to us, let us act under a settled conviction, and an habitual feeling, that these twenty-four States are one country. Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be, our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror.

but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever!

It is said of Edward Everett that his treatment of every speech he made was so masterly "that one would think the subject then in hand had been the special study of his life." In the following extract from his "Eulogy on Lafayette," he combines the figures of exclamation, interrogation, and climax:

There is not, throughout the world, a friend of liberty who has not dropt his head when he has heard that Lafayette is no more. Poland, Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland, the South American republics-every country where man is struggling to recover his birthright-have lost a benefactor, a patron in Lafayette. And what is it, fellow citizens, which gave to our Lafayette his spotless fame? The love of liberty. What has consecrated his memory in the hearts of good men? The love of liberty. What nerved his youthful arm with strength, and inspired him, in the morning of his days, with sagacity and counsel? The living love of liberty. To what did he sacrifice power, and rank, and country, and freedom itself? To the horror of licentiousness-to the sanctity of plighted faith— to the love of liberty protected by law. Thus the great principle of your Revolutionary fathers, and of your Pilgrim sires, was the rule of his life—the love of liberty protected by law.

You have now assembled within these celebrated walls to perform the last duties of respect and love, on the birthday of your benefactor. The spirit of the departed is in high communion with the spirit of the place the temple worthy of the new name which we now behold inscribed on its walls. Listen, Americans, to the lesson which seems borne to us on the very air we breathe, while we perform these dutiful rites! Ye winds, that wafted the Pilgrims to the land of promise, fan, in their children's hearts, the love of freedom! Blood, which our fathers shed, cry from the ground! Echoing arches of this renowned hall, whisper back the voices of other days!

Glorious Washington, break the long silence of that votive canvas! Speak, speak, marble lips; teach us the love of liberty protected by law.

The student of public speaking should pursue this study further on his own account, by dissecting some of the world's great orations. He should note in them the use of these various figures of emphasis and see wherein they give added clearness and power to speech. In this way he will secure for himself something of the art by which the master orators themselves became distinguished.

VI

THE RHETORIC OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

There is no better way to cultivate oratorical style than to study the models of the world's great orators. We shall find some of the distinctive qualities of their speeches in their use of word, phrase, idiom, metaphor, and illustration. If "style is the man, ," then we may study the man and his method through his language.

The ultimate object of the oration is to convince and persuade men. It is to move men to action. Quintilian, in his treatise on the education of an orator, refers to the many celebrated definitions of oratory before his time, such as, "oratory is the art of persuading," "the power of persuading by speaking," "the leading of men by speaking to that which the speaker wishes," "the power of finding out whatever can persuade in speaking," "to say all that ► ought to be said in order to persuade," "the power of saying on every subject whatever can be found to persuade," "the power of finding whatever is persuasive in speaking," "the power of discovering and expressing, with elegance, whatever is credible on any subject whatever." Quintilian contents himself with the definition that "Oratory is the art of speaking well," and adds that "Its object and ultimate end must be to speak well."

The difference between an oration and an essay should be clearly defined. An oration is based upon a brief, or out

line, with all its divisions distinctly indicated in the speaker's mind. It is prepared for the ear, while the essay is intended for the eye. In the one case the speaker may repeat his thought as often as he thinks necessary to accomplish his purpose; in the other, the reader may reread such portions as are not clear to him. The oration may have a wide range of thought, while the essay must strictly observe unity and method throughout. The oration, furthermore, is designed to appeal directly to the emotions, and consequently is more vivid and varied than the essay. First, let us read an extract from Ruskin's essay, "Modern Painters":

It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great, ugly, black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with perhaps a film of morning and evening mist of dew. And instead of this there is not a moment of any day of our lives when nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty that it is quite certain that it is all done for us and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and known but by few; it is not intended that man should live always in the midst of them; he injures them by his presence, he ceases to