Adams and Jefferson. His oratory was mainly of the old type, only some degrees removed from the half-pedantic clas sicism that was the ideal of the early academic orators. Yet he was undeniably eloquent, both in the conventional and in the real sense of the word-clear in thought, strong and pure and sonorous in diction, with a beauty of imagery and an animation of style that have set his printed speeches among the select examples of modern oratorical prose. What those speeches must have been in utterance all the enthusiastic accounts of their hearers will not suffice for us to realize, since the force of the speaker's personality must have counted for even more than his words, lending impressiveness to his simplest and calmest statements, and enabling him, when deeply stirred, to carry everything before him. Henry Clay, 1777-1852. Henry Clay, who belonged to Virginia by birth and to Kentucky by residence, came into public life somewhat before Webster, and rose to be the recognized leader of the Whig party, and, with the exception of Webster, its foreJ. C. Calhoun, most man. He was three times a candidate for the 1782-1850. Presidency, and once narrowly missed election. Though 'opposed to slavery, he was not radical in his views. As the chief promoter of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the author of the compromise measures of 1850, he earned the title of "the great pacificator." As an orator he held and swayed audiences as effectually as ever Webster did, though more exclusively by his personality and his rhetorical magic. He lacked the learning and depth of that great statesman, and his orations are now little read. From farther south, and with wholly southern views and doctrines, came John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina. It was he, then president of the Senate, whom Webster was really attacking in his famous Reply to Hayne in 1830, for Calhoun was an ardent believer in States' Rights and was the author of the doctrine of Nullification. He was scarcely eloquent, as we ordinarily understand the term, but was a great thinker, and the clearness of his logic was conspicuous in everything he said. This, coupled with his earnestness and his candor, gave him a clear title to his fame. 1799-1859. Edward Everett, 1794-1865. Massachusetts produced the men who pressed Webster most closely for oratorical honors of the academic kind—Rufus Choate, the lawyer, and Edward Everett, the Rufus Choate, scholar, statesman, and diplomatist. Choate was never brought into the same great conflicts as Webster, his eloquence being expended before juries; but he had even more than Webster's scholarship and refinement, and, with a fervid imagination and an inexhaustible flow of words, he exercised over emotional hearers that "spell" which it was long thought to be an orator's highest virtue to exercise. His oratory held much of the poetic quality, and is seen at its best in his eulogies—the eulogy, for example, on Webster. Everett, who began life as an editor and professor of Greek, held many high positions: he was governor of Massachusetts, minister to Great Britain, president of Harvard College, Secretary of State, and United States senator. His oratory also was of the finished and scholarly type. It might even be called cold, for Everett lacked the personal force which Choate and Webster possessed. Yet by frequent lectures on the platform he came into closer touch with the general public than most statesmen of his day. Emerson testified to his great influence on the youth of New England; and late in life he delivered his famous eulogy on Washington one hundred and fifty times in the interest of the Mount Vernon Association. His last important oration was the one delivered at the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg in 1863 -an occasion made most memorable by another address, the unpretentiously noble speech of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, almost the antithesis of the academic orators, was a potent influence upon what might be called the modern school that school which discards pedantic phrases Abraham and classical allusions, rather avoids rhetorical 1809-1865. climaxes and other effects, and depends upon a less impassioned, more conversational manner. Lincoln's training was obtained in actual law-practice, where he had to confront and handle real issues before audiences immediately concerned. His audiences, too, were of the primitive West, more keen than cultured. He practiced at the Illinois bar as early as 1837; and in 1858, when a candidate for the United States senatorship from Illinois, he held in that state the series of joint discussions with Stephen A. Douglas, largely on the slavery question, which made him famous. The schooling was precisely suited to the man, and it was a wholly natural result that the more momentous addresses which he was called upon later to deliver his two inaugural addresses, for instance, or the Gettysburg address—should be models of simplicity, sincerity, directness, and force. Whatever virtues lie in the Saxon character and may be expressed in the Saxon tongue, these are summed up in the unadorned eloquence of Abraham Lincoln. Charles Sum ner, The anti-slavery movement brought forth speakers of many kinds in many places, but apart from Lincoln and Garrison (who was more of a journalist than a speaker), the 1811-1874. most conspicuous orators identified with the direct Wendell Phil-issue of abolition were Charles Sumner and Wendell lips, 1811-1884. Phillips, both of Boston, and both again orators of the scholarly type. Sumner's work was done chiefly in Congress, where he was recognized for years as the great antislavery leader. Indeed, the history of Sumner is virtually the history of the anti-slavery conflict. His speeches were marked by soundness of reason and stateliness of style, and the fifteen published volumes of them make an imposing addition to our literature. The speech on "The True Grandeur of Nations" is best remembered. Wendell Phillips was a platform orator, who made public speaking his life-work. His long service to the abolitionists made his name, like Garrison's and Sumner's, almost synonymous with their cause. As an orator he added to the learning, grace, and polish of Everett, something more of personal force that grew out of real devotion, however mixed its motives, to a great moral principle. After the war he continued in the lecture field. His best-known addresses are those on "Toussaint L'Ouverture" and "The Lost Arts." As a rule, the oratory of the pulpit leaves a less permanent record than that of the platform, and there is practically nothing to be added here to what was said on this subject in the chapter on religion and philosophy in New England. In that place were mentioned the Unitarian ministers, Channing and others, and also the Congregationalists Bushnell of Hartford and Beecher of Brooklyn. Doubtless Beecher was, though somewhat erratic, one of our most versatile and brilliant preachers. But even though we extend our survey beyond the time-limit of this chapter to the present day, we can find no other to mention by the side of these, unless it be Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), late of the Protestant Episcopal church at Boston. The oratory of the pulpit, as of the platform generally, has distinctly waned. HISTORY AND CRITICISM ill-con The historians, so-called, of the days of our earliest literature were scarcely entitled to that name. Whatever history they wrote was in the nature of chronicles or annals-dry, nected, unexplained relations of occurrences, without the insight, imagination, and mastery of expression that were needed to make literature. On the other hand, whatever literature they wrote was the narration of personal experiences, useful and entertaining, but without the breadth of vision and critical spirit that would have made worthy history. Our real histo rians-men with a mastery of facts, with a power of arranging and interpreting those facts, and with a definite artistic purpose -appeared only with the nineteenth century. George Ban croft, 1800-1891. Irving's excellent work in this field has already been described. Passing over, then, the names of the early and minor writers of the century-Sparks, the biographer, with his worthy lives of Washington and Franklin; Hildreth, with his discriminating but uninteresting history of the United States; Palfrey, with his very able but also unromantic history of New England; J. S. C. Abbott, with biographies and a history of the Civil War; and James Parton, a later biographer, with lives of Franklin, Voltaire, and others,—we come to the name of one who, although by no means the greatest, was long the most conspicuous of our historians-George Bancroft. The publication of Bancroft's History of the United States, in ten successive volumes, ex tended from 1834 to 1874, with a revised edition in 1883. How careful and exhaustive his researches were may be inferred from this fact, and also from the fact that the portion of our history covered by them extends only to 1789. It was a huge undertaking, to which Bancroft brought all the resources of wealth, training, and social and political influence-everything, in short, but genius. He lived at Washington where he had free access to the government archives, and he collected besides an enormous private library of transcripts of documents from all parts of the world. Invaluable, however, as his great work is, its over-patriotic and slightly partisan bias prevents it from being accepted as a final authority, while its want of picturesqueness in matter and style makes it hard to read, and puts it quite without the pale of literature. Two of our historians were attracted, like Irving, to foreign |