in his answer to William J. Bryan, maintains that to establish in this country a double standard of value in the currency would be contrary to sound finance and public honor. Tariff revision is discussed by Grover Cleveland in his message of 1887, and an exactly contrary position to that assumed by the Democratic President is taken by J. G. Blaine in his "A Century of Protection."

The end of the nineteenth century has witnessed some important changes in the attitude of the United States toward foreign territorialism. The Spanish war laid upon our country claims and responsibilities which are treated from divers points of view in the orations of Senator Hoar, J. P. Dolliver, and J. W. Bailey. The annexation of Hawaii, while opposed by Champ Clark in 1898, had been favored by Senator Davis in his speech delivered five years earlier. Minor matters of contemporary history furnish subjects for G. C. Perkins on the exclusion of the Chinese, and John Tyler Morgan on the Nicaragua Canal. These political orations may therefore be said to throw light on almost every subject of national importance which has occupied our statesmen throughout the history of the United States.

The contemporary history of the British Empire is also illustrated by the speeches of Lord Salisbury, Arthur J. Balfour, Lord Rosebery, and Lord Milner.

It may be objected that the collection of speeches which I here introduce is of very unequal as well as of very varied literary value. On the other hand, I contend that literary perfection is not the main requisite in a public y address. What makes the great orator is thorough conviction and absolute sincerity of purpose. The first duty of the public speaker is the advocacy of truth as he sees and believes it to be. High moral qualities are essential to the production of true eloquence, whether the matter dealt with be great or small. The most powerful and the most influential speeches, ancient or modern, were those uttered in strict accordance with the needs of the hour, and uttered out of an overflowing heart excited by some future contingency dreaded or desired. A really great speech, however, requires a great occasion, and we must remember that great occasions are those which are accompanied with danger or

anxiety, and the great speech is called forth by prognostications of coming disaster, or the sense of falsehood to be unmasked, truth to be vindicated, and public salvation to be secured. There is some cause for national gratulation that the speeches that are here published as uttered by contemporary statesmen do not reach that pitch of sublimity which the orator never attains excepting under the consciousness of impending calamity, national ruin, or danger to some vital principle of personal or political life. The greatest speeches that were ever made were delivered when the orator foresaw with the unerring eye of divination the eclipse of his country's liberties—an event which, in spite of foreboding and philippic, most surely came to pass.

It is a cause for gratitude that these speeches of our later orators are calm, businesslike, and unclouded by anxiety or despair. What they lack in comparison with the burning utterances of Demosthenes, Patrick Henry, or Webster, they gain as testimonies and records of history. They bear on their face plain evidence that they were uttered in a day when tempests and cataclysms no longer threatened the stability of the state; when the country could continue its advance in calmness and strength toward the fulfilment of a wider destiny, in which she should not only become the market and financial center of the world, but should have power to hold out a helping hand for the deliverance of weaker peoples from the grasp of tyranny.

We venture to hope that the general and topical index appended to these five volumes will be of valuable service to those who desire to use the work intelligently, and to see many great epochs and incidents in the world's history illustrated by the power of contemporary eloquence. Especially useful such an index will prove to those who are studying the political history of the United States.

It will be noted that although "Political Oratory" belongs to the series entitled "Modern Eloquence," we have included in the selections a few specimens of ancient Greek and Roman oratory-so few, indeed, as by no means to alter the nature of the work, but rather to emphasize its essential character and aim. The models of the classic world are indeed of distinctly modern importance, as is indicated by

the advice of Lord Brougham and Senator Hoar, both of which high authorities direct the attention of the modern student of oratory to the study of Demosthenes and Cicero, without whose names a list of political orators would have palpably been incomplete.

Epiphamins Weion.

THE

ELOQUENCE

HE secret of eloquence eludes every attempt to discover it. Many writers, ancient and modern, have tried to tell the nature of it, or to instruct the ambitious youth in that which he covets as the art of all arts, the power of controlling the will of other men by the gift of speech. Cicero said the best things ever said about it. Perhaps Emerson has come next to him. Each was a great orator in his own way. But it is like poetry. When you have got the most comprehensive definition your attention is called to some example clearly outside your definition, which everybody will agree is genuine eloquence or genuine poetry. When you have studied carefully all the rules of the school and got by heart all the instruction of the professor, some untaught genius like Burns, or Patrick Henry, spontaneously, as a bird sings, eclipses all the trained

masters.

A good style is an essential in an orator. It is acquired commonly by infinite labor and pains. To get it the scholar must have the benefit of the best masters and the severest criticism. He is told that to perfect himself he must study foreign tongues, must know how Cicero or Demosthenes handled a legal argument, or swayed a deliberative assembly. But when he has got through his study he finds himself beaten on his own ground by John Bright, or Erskine, or some Methodist or Hard-shell Baptist preacher from the backwoods.

For all that, it is true that training makes the orator. There will be no great orator, as there will be no great poet, with rare exceptions, who does not observe Horace's rule—

"Nocturna versate manu, versate diurna."

There have been natural orators who seem to have owed little to study. There have been a few famous speeches that were without premeditation. But the number of either is very small. Little that has been produced in that way keeps a permanent place in literature. In general, so far as eloquence is remembered, after the occasion that called it forth has gone by, or so far as anybody cares to read it afterward, it is like every other human accomplishment, the result of careful and laborious training. I have no doubt that the great natural orators of the world who have had no help from books or masters, and owe little to previous study, would all agree in lamenting their disadvantage and in envying their more fortunate rivals, whatever they may have done that was well done on the inspiration of an instant occasion. They would have done better if their faculties had been trained by study, and they would have done great things a hundred times as often. The great natural orators of the world are few in number, and each of them is remembered by one or by very few speeches only.

If the American youth aspires to this desirable accomplishment, which he is likely to desire beyond all others, he had better take Cicero or Quintilian, or the best writers or instructors in the art of oratory for his guide. He had better make careful preparation rather than trust himself to the inspiration of the sibyl, who will be quite unlikely to be at hand when most needed.

The longer I live, the more highly I have come to value the gift of eloquence. Indeed, I am not sure that it is not the single gift most to be coveted by man. To be a perfect and consummate orator is to possess the highest faculty given to man. He must be a great artist, and more. He must be a master of the great things that interest mankind. What he says ought to have as permanent a place in literature as the highest poetry. He must be able to play at will on the mighty organ, his audience, of which human souls are the keys. He must have knowledge, wit, wisdom, fancy, imagination, courage, nobleness, sincerity, grace, a heart of fire. He must himself respond to every emotion as an Eolian harp to the breeze. He must have

An eye that tears can on a sudden fill,

And lips that smile before the tears are gone.