less time and attention can be given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will that idea be conceived.

Conciseness will guard the speaker from undue repetition, rambling, and prosiness. The crisp phrase delights the hearer, because he can grasp it so easily. It gives added strength, force, and vividness to a speaker's thought. Carefully note this extract from Emerson's oration on "The American Scholar," delivered at Cambridge, Mass., on August 31, 1837:

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world of value is the active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man contains within him, altho, in almost all men, obstructed, and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth, and utters truth, or creates. In this action, it is genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every man. In its essence it is progressive. The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop with some past utterance of genius. That is good, say they let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead; man hopes, genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure efflux of the deity is not his; cinders and smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There are creative manners, there are creative actions, and creative words; manners, actions, words -that is, indicative of no custom or authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind's own sense of good and fair.

The best test of euphony is to read aloud. Infelicities of expression that may go unchallenged in silent reading

are quickly detected when sounded. Awkward combinations, jingling recurrences, harshness not purposely employed, and everything offensive to the ear should be studiously avoided.

The euphonious style and brilliant diction of Cardinal Newman is worthy of close study. He invariably read his sermons to the congregation, and to some extent sacrificed delivery to thought and style, but there was an indescribable fascination about him which kept his hearers spellbound. In commenting upon the disadvantage of manuscript speaking, a writer says of Newman: "You must take the man as a whole; there was a stamp and seal upon him; there was a solemn sweetness and music in the tone and the manner which made even his delivery, tho exclusively from written sermons, singularly attractive." Still another says of him, "What delicacy of style, yet what strength! how simple, yet how suggestive! how homely, yet how refined! how penetrating, yet how tenderhearted." Newman owed much of his incomparable use of English to his love of music, and his exquisite taste for harmony and cadence. His constant use of the pen, and his study of verse, may well be emulated by the student of public speaking. Cicero was one of Newman's earliest models. For euphony, simplicity, exactitude, and clearness, it would be difficult to find anything superior to the following passage from Cardinal Newman's address on "Literature":

A great author, gentlemen, is not one who merely has a copia verborum, whether in prose or verse, and can, as it were, turn on at his will any number of splendid phrases and swelling sentences; but he is one who has something to say and knows how to say it. I do not claim for him, as such, any great

depth of thought, or breadth of view, or philosophy, or sagacity, or knowledge of human nature, or experience of human life, tho these additional gifts he may have, and the more he has of them the greater he is; but I ascribe to him, as his characteristic gift, in a large sense the faculty of expression. He is the master of the twofold Logos, the thought and the word, distinct, but inseparable from each other. He may, if so be, elaborate his compositions, or he may pour out his improvisations, but in either case he has but one aim, which he keeps steadily before him, and is conscientious and single-minded in fulfilling. That aim is to give forth what he has within him; and from his very earnestness it comes to pass that, whatever be the splendor of his diction or the harmony of his periods, he has with him the charm of an incommunicable simplicity. Whatever be his subject, high or low, he treats it suitably and for its own sake. If he is a poet, "nil molitur ineptè.” If he is an orator, then, too, he speaks not only "distinctè" and "splendidè," but also "aptè." His page is the lucid mirror of his mind and life.

He writes passionately, because he feels keenly; forcibly, because he conceives vividly; he sees too clearly to be vague; he is too serious to be otiose; he can analyze his subject, and therefore he is rich; he embraces it as a whole and in its parts, and therefore he is consistent; he has a firm hold of it, and therefore he is luminous. When his imagination wells up, it overflows in ornament; when his heart is touched, it thrills along his verse. He always has the right word for the right idea, and never a word too much. If he is brief, it is because few words suffice; when he is lavish of them, still each word has its mark, and aids, not embarrasses, the vigorous march of his elocution. He expresses what all feel, but all can not say; and his sayings pass into proverbs among his people, and his phrases become household words and idioms of their daily speech, which is tessellated with the rich fragments of his language, as we see in foreign lands the marbles of Roman grandeur worked into the walls and pavements of modern palaces.

Such preeminently is Shakespeare among ourselves; such

preeminently Vergil among the Latins; such in their degree are all those writers who in every nation go by the name of classics. To particular nations they are necessarily attached from the circumstances of the variety of tongues, and the peculiarities of each; but so far they have a catholic and ecumenical character, that what they express is common to the whole race of man, and they alone are able to express it.

If then the power of speech is a gift as great as any that can be named-if the origin of language is by many philosophers even considered to be nothing short of divine-if by means of words the secrets of the heart are brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hidden grief is carried off, sympathy conveyed, counsel imparted, experience recorded, and wisdom perpetuated-if by great authors the many are drawn up into unity, national character is fixt, a people speaks, the past and the future, the east and the west are brought into communication with each other-if such men are, in a word, the spokesmen and prophets of the human family-it will not answer to make light of literature or to neglect its study; rather we may be sure that, in proportion as we master it in whatever language, and imbibe its spirit, we shall ourselves become in our own measure the ministers of like benefits to others, be they many or few, be they in the obscurer or the more distinguished walks of life-who are united by us by social ties, and are within the sphere of our personal influence.

When a man aims directly at originality, he usually misses it. When he tries to appear to be something other than he is, he is almost certain to become unreal and ineffective. Emerson said: "Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person with whom you speak. The following is an amusing but instructive illustration of the passion for big words and unusual expressions:

MY BRETHREN: The cosmical changes continually occurring, manifest a concatenation of causes for the multiferous forms

that present themselves for meditation and study. As we pursue our investigations in the various departments, we realize more distinctly the ever present and eternal relation of things. Cosmological philosophy demonstrates that force is persistent, and hence is indestructible, therefore this indestructibility is grounded upon the absolute. To prove this to your entire satisfaction, it is only necessary for me to quote the formula : "The absolutoid and the abstractoid elementisms of being, echo or reappear by analogy within the concretoid elaborismus." We reject the theory of the eternity of matter as well as the hypothesis of an infinite series, and contend that matter in its primordial condition is but a term in a system of causations; that after illimitable duration passed through changes of manifold particularities which we have ultimated in an endless multiplicity of forms that have produced the present complicated condition of things.

Prolixity soon wearies an audience. Too much brilliancy of style easily dazzles the eyes, and loftiness of expression may shoot so high over the heads of the hearers as to defeat its purpose. Sublime thought does not necessarily demand big words and elegant language. "And God said let there be light: and there was light" is an eloquent example of great thought in simple words. Coleridge once said: "If men would only say what they have to say in plain terms, how much more eloquent they would be!" Amateur speakers are too prone to look at the objective effect of their language, instead of at the subjective quality of their thought. This will sometimes lead them into Fourth-of-July bombast, such as this:

There is a divinity that shapes our ends, and that same divine inspiration revealed to the American patriots who fought against colonial oppression, the symbol of liberty that was destined to float in the cause of humanity until the end of time.