is better than skepticism, that government cannot safely divorce itself from religion, and, it may be, in order that the same people might some time return to a firmer, wiser belief of the truth.

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History is the chart of the deliberative orator. It reveals to him the quicksands and rocks where the hopes of empires have been wrecked. It reveals the sources of prosperty, the sources of misfortune. To him who can read it, it offers the suggestions of two hundred generations. It bids us beware of the follies of dead nations. To every individual it offers, somewhere among its records, encouragement to great and good deeds. Would the orator rouse the patriotic self-devotion of his countrymen? History tells him, that among the granite mountains of a small European confederacy, a man was found, who, in a perilous contest, dared to make a path for his comrades, by gathering a sheaf of Austrian lances" into his own bosom; that, in virtue of this generous self-sacrifice, the name of Arnold of Winkelried has become famous the world over; and that for this, and other deeds like it, Switzerland is a larger country than Russia. Would he speak of the permanency and life of truth? He reads how the sun went down on Egypt and the East, and men slept, while it arose on awakening nations, in Italy and England; he reads the oft-told story, how the Philosopher recanted with tears, and the world moved still. Would he tell of the direful effects of oppression? He recollects how the pent-up elements lay simmering together for a thousand years, till they burst off the incumbent mass, and overwhelmed nations. Would he show that revolutions are not productive of evil alone? He recollects that sometimes the new order of things has at last proved better than the old; that the volcano is a safeguard against the more destructive earthquake; and that over the lava torrent there spreads out at length a warm and rich soil. Would he tell of liberty unrestrained by moral sentiment, unprotected by law? He reads of a great nation, recoiling from its own

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frightful image, and rushing for protection, as far as possible, to the bosom of the power it had just madly hurled to air.

It is from an ignorance of what has been, that men commit so many mistakes, and that the same error, after a larger or smaller cycle, returns again, like the forgotten fashions of our fathers.

Man acts according to his belief. He believes in alchemy; and with haggard visage and wasted sinews toils in dark caverns, in the vain hope of transmuting the worthless into the precious metals. He believes in a fountain which gives perpetual youth; and straightway such is the record of history — embarks for unexplored lands, searches with an energy which commands respect in spite of the folly, and pushes on his rugged pilgrimage with an enterprise worthy of the best cause. He believes in the insufficiency of his own judgment in matters of religion, in the divinely appointed supremacy of the priesthood, and for centuries commits his conscience and his faith to his spiritual advisers. He believes that the Bible is the only and sufficient rule of faith and practice, that he may and must examine it, and immediately he produces the Reformation.

Poetry cultivates the imagination. The province of the imagination is not to separate truth from error, but to render all objects instinct with the inspired breath of human passion." It does not demand if things be true independently, but if they be true in their relation to other things. It does not discover, but enliven. It melts together, into one burning mass, the discordant materials thrown into its crucible. Like the colored light of sunset, it bathes in its own hue whatever it touches. Discarding technical rules, as from its nature averse to them, it adapts means to varying circumstances, and seizing upon the hearts of the audience, in aid of belief or in spite of belief, binds them in willing captivity. It annihilates space and time, brings the distant near, draws together the past and the future into the present. It warms the heart of the orator. He then speaks because he feels, not in order that he may feel. The influence flows

from within, outward, not from without, inward. It tears the orator from considerations of himself, bears him above himself, above rule, criticism, apology, audience, every thing but the subject. The orator stands like an enchanter in the midst of spirits that are too mighty for him. He alone could evoke them from the dark abyss; but even he is but half their master. He alone can demand the secrets of futurity; but then he can speak only the words that they give him. He inspires others only as he is inspired himself.

Logic is necessary for that severe form of speech which carries power in its front, and, by its very calmness and repression of earth-born passions, seems to belong to a higher sphere. It must form the bone and muscle of an extended discourse. Imagination clothes the skeleton with beauty, breathes health into the rigid muscles, lights up the eye, loosens the tongue, excites that rapid and vehement declamation which makes the speaker to be forgotten, the subject and the subject only to be thought of, betrays no presence of art, because in fact art is swallowed up in the whirlpool of excited feeling. Besides, there are truths with which logic has no concern; "truths which wake to perish never; " truths to be directly apprehended, as well as truths to be proved; feelings as well as facts. Love and passion and fear laugh at demonstration. "Logic," says one, "is good, but not the best. The irrefragable Doctor, with his chains of inductions, his corollaries, dilemmas, and other cunning logical diagrams and apparatus, will cast you a beautiful horoscope, and speak you reasonable things; nevertheless, the stolen jewel which you wanted him to find you, is not forthcoming. Often by some winged word winged as the thunderbolt is of a Luther, a Napoleon, a Goëthe, shall we see the difficulty split asunder, and its secret laid bare; while the Irrefragable, with all his logical roots, hews at it, and hovers round it, and finds it on all sides too hard for him."

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Poetry not only offers us the language of emotion, but produces emotion, and emotion elicits thought. It has been

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well remarked of the great English dramatist, that he has been true to nature, in placing the "greater number of his profoundest maxims and general truths, both political and moral, not in the mouths of men at ease, but of men under the influence of passion, when the mighty thoughts overmaster and become the tyrants of the mind which has brought them forth." Then the mind rushes, by intuition, upon the truth; scorns subtle and useless distinctions; disregards entirely the husk, seizes and appropriates the kernel. Emotion in the speaker produces emotion in the hearer. You must feel, you must sympathize with him. Your mind darts with the speaker's, right through the textures which cover up the subject, and grasps the heart of it. How deadening are the words of some passionless men! Like a dull mass of inert matter, their lifeless thought stretches across the path of your spirit. Different, indeed, are the words of another, to whom has been given some spark of ethereal fire. His words become to you a law of life. They start your sluggish spirit from its dull equilibrium, and its living wheels shall thenceforth move whithersoever the spirit that is in them moves. Rarely has been found that combination of qualities necessary to the greatest orator,- dignity, enthusiasm, wit, the power of sarcasm, the power of soothing, philosophy which does not despise imagination, imagination which does not spurn the restraints of philosophy.

Such should be the studies of the orator. The great orator must be a great man, a severe student in broad and deep studies. He must thoroughly know his materials, his models, the history of his race, and most of all, the heart within him. Then shall he have power to struggle in the noblest contest, - that of mind with mind, for the noblest object, — the well-being of his race.

2

ROUSSEAU AND COWPER.

BY CARLOS WILCOX.

ROUSSEAU Could weep: yes, with a heart of stone,
The impious sophist could recline beside

The pure and peaceful lake, and muse alone
On all its loveliness at eventide :

On its small running waves in purple dyed
Beneath bright clouds or all the glowing sky,
On the white sails that o'er its bosom glide,
And on surrounding mountains wild and high,
Till tears unbidden gushed from his enchanted eye.

But his were not the tears of feeling fine,
Of grief or love; at fancy's flash they flowed,
Like burning drops from some proud lonely pine
By lightning fired; his heart with passion glowed
Till it consumed his life, and yet he showed
A chilling coldness both to friend and foe,
As Etna, with its centre an abode

Of wasting fire, chills with the icy snow
Of all its desert brow the living world below.

Was he but justly wretched from his crimes?
Then why was Cowper's anguish oft as keen,
With all the heaven-born virtue that sublimes
Genius and feeling, and to things unseen

Lifts the pure heart through clouds that roll between
The earth and skies, to darken human hope?
Or wherefore did those clouds thus intervene
To render vain Faith's lifted telescope,

And leave him in thick gloom his weary way to grope?

He too could give himself to musing deep:
By the calm lake at evening he could stand,
Lonely and sad, to see the moonlight sleep
On all its breast by not an insect fanned,
And hear low voices on the far-off strand,
Or through the still and dewy atmosphere
The pipe's soft tones, waked by some gentle hand,
From fronting shore and woody island near

In echoes quick returned, more mellow and more clear.