stolid. At any rate, he will try. He has a nature, as Coleridge might have said, towards his audience. He is sure, if they only knew what he knows, they would feel as he feels, and believe as he believes. And by this he conquers. This living faith, this enthusiasm, this confidence, call it as we will, is an extreme power in human affairs. One croyant, said the Frenchman, is a greater power than fifty incrédules. In the composition of an orator the hope, the credulous hope, that he will convince his audience is the primum mobile, it is the primitive incentive which is the spring of his influence and the source of his power. Mr. Gladstone has this incentive in perhaps an excessive and dangerous measure. Whatever may be right or wrong in pure finance, in abstract political economy, it is certain that no one save Mr. Gladstone would have come down with the Budget of 1860 to the Commons of 1860. No other man would have believed that such a proposal would have a chance. Yet after the warning--the disheartening warning of a reluctant Cabinet-Mr. Gladstone came down from a depressing sick-bed, with semi-bronchitis hovering about him, entirely prevailed for the moment, and three-parts conquered after all. We will not say that the world is given to men of this temperament and this energy; on the contrary, there is often a turn in the tide, the ovation of the spring may be the prelude to unpopularity in autumn;* but we see that audiences are given them; we see that unimpressible men are deeply moved by them-that the driest topics of legislation and finance are for the instant affected by them that the prolonged effects of that monetary influence may be felt for many years, sometimes for centuries. The orator has a dominion over the critical instant, and the consequences of the decisions taken during that instant may last long after the orator and the audience have both passed away.

Nor is the didactic impulse the only one which is essential to a great political orator, nor is it the only one which Mr. Gladstone has. We say it with respect, but he has the contentious impulse. He illustrates the distinction between the pacific and the peaceful. On all great questions, on the controversies of states and empires, Mr. Gladstone is the most pacific of mankind. He hates the very rumour of war; he trusts in moral influences; he detests the bare idea of military preparations. He will not believe that preparations are necessary till the enemy is palpable. In the early part of 1853 he did not believe that the Russian war was impending; after the conversations of the Emperor Nicholas with Sir Hamilton Seymour, he proposed to Parliament a scheme for converting some portions of the National Debt, which could only be successful if peace continued, and which, after the outbreak of the war, failed igno* As we have had sufficient evidence within the last few months, in

Mr. Gladstone's own case.

miniously. In 1860, mutatis mutandis, he did the same. He staked his financial reputation upon a fine calculation; he gave us a Budget in which the two ends scarcely met. The Chinese war came, and they no longer met. Some one said he was not only a Christian, but a morbid Christian. He cannot imagine that any thing so coarse as war will occur; when it does occur, he has a tendency to disapprove of it as soon as he can. During the Russian war he soon joined, in fact if not in name, the peace-at-all-price party; he exerted his finest reasonings and his most persuasive eloquence against a war which was commenced with his consent. At the present moment no Englishman, not Mr. Bright himself, feels so little the impulse to arm. He will not believe in a war till

he sees men fighting. He is the most pacific of our statesmen in theory and in policy.-When you see Mr. Gladstone he is about the most combative. He can bear a good deal about the politics of Europe, but let a man question the fees on vatting, or the change in the game-certificate, or the stamp on bills of lading-what melodious thunders of loquacious wrath! The world, he hints, is likely to end at such observations, and that they should be made by the honourable member who made them-"by the honourable member who four years ago said so-and-so, and five years before that moved, &c. &c." The number of well-intentioned and tedious persons that Mr. Gladstone annually scolds into a latent dislike of him must be considerable.

But though we may smile at the minutia in which this contentious impulse sometimes shows itself, we must remember that the impulse itself is essential to a great political orator, everywhere in some degree, but in England especially. To be an influential speaker in the House of Commons, a man must be a great debater. He must excel not only in elaborate set speeches, but likewise in quick occasional repartee. No one but a rather contentious person will ever so excel. Mr. Fox, the most genial of men, was asked why he disputed so vehemently about some trifle or other. He said, "I must do so; I can't live without discussion." And this is the temperament of a great debater. It must be a positive pain to him to be silent under questionable assertions, to hear others saying that which he cannot agree with. An indifferent sceptic, such as we formerly spoke of, endures this very easily. "He thinks, no doubt, what the speaker is saying is quite wrong; but people do not understand what he is saying; very likely they won't understand the answer: besides, we've a majority; what is the use of arguing when you have a majority? Let us outvote him on the spot, and go to bed." And so report says have whips argued to Mr. Gladstone, but he is ever ready. He takes up the parable of disputation at a quarter-past twelve, and goes on till he has exhausted argument, illustration, ingenuity, and research. To hardly

any man have both the impulses of the political orator been given in so great a measure: the didactic orator is usually felicitous in exposition only: the great debater is, like Fox, only great when stung to reply by the astrus of contention. But Mr. Gladstone is by nature, by vehement overruling nature, great in both arts; he longs to pour forth his own belief; he cannot rest till he has contradicted everyone else.

In addition to this oratorical temperament, Mr. Gladstone has in a high degree the most important intellectual talent of an orator; he has what we may call an adaptive faculty. He has described this himself better than most people would have done. "Poets of modern times have composed great works, in ages which stopped their ears against them. Paradise Lost' does not represent the time of Charles the Second, nor the Excursion' the first decades of the present century. The case of the orator is entirely different. His work, from its very inception, is inextricably mixed up with practice. It is cast in the mould offered to him by the mind of his hearers. It is an influence principally received from his audience (so to speak) in vapour, which he pours back upon them in a flood. The sympathy and concurrence of his time is, with his own mind, joint parent of his work. He cannot follow nor frame ideals; his choice is, to be what his age will have him, what it requires in order to be moved by him, or else not to be at all. And as when we find the speeches in Homer, we know that there must have been men who could speak them, so, from the existence of units who could speak them, we know that there must have been crowds who could feel them." We may judge of the House of Commons in the same way from the great "Budget " speech. No one, indeed, half guides, half follows the moods of his audience more quickly, more easily, than Mr. Gladstone does. There is a little playfulness in his manner, which contrasts with the dryness of his favourite topics, and the intense gravity of his earnest character. He has the same sort of control over the minds of those he is addressing that a good driver has over the animals he guides; he feels the minds of his hearers as the driver the mouths of his horses.

The species of intellect that is required for this task is preeminently the advocate's intellect. The instrument of oratory, at least of this kind of oratory, is the argumentum ad hominem. It is "inextricably mixed up with practice." It argues from the data furnished to him "by the minds of his hearers." He receives his premises from them "like a vapour," and pours out his "conclusions upon them like a flood." Such an orator may believe his conclusions, but he can rarely believe them for the reasons which he assigns for them. He may be an enthusiast in his creed, he may be a zealot in his faith, but not the less will he be an

advocate in his practice; not the less will he catch at disputable premises because his audience accepts them; not the less will he draw inferences from them which suit his momentary purpose; not the less will he accept the most startling varieties of assertion, for he will imbibe from one audience a different " vapour" of premises from that which he will receive from another; not the less will he have the chameleon-like character which we associate with a consummate advocate; not the less will he be one thing to-day, with the colour of one audience upon him; not the less will he be another to-morrow, when he has to address, persuade, and influence some different set of persons.

We scarcely think with Mr. Gladstone that this style of oratory is the very highest, though it is very natural that he should think so, for it exactly expresses the oratory in which he is the great living master. Mr. Gladstone's conception of oratory, in theory and in practice, is the oratory of Pitt, not the oratory of Chatham or of Burke: it is the oratory of adaptation. We do not deny that this is the kind of oratory which is most generally useful, the only kind which is commonly permissible, the only one which in general would not be a bore; but we must remember that there is an eloquence of great principles which the hearers scarcely heed, and do not accept-such as, in its highest parts, is the eloquence of Burke,—we must remember that there is an eloquence of great passions, of high-wrought intense feeling, which is nearly independent of the peculiarities of its audience, because it appeals to our elemental human nature,—which is the same, or much the same, in almost every audience, which is everywhere and always susceptible to the union of vivid genius and eager passion. Such as this last was, if we may trust tradition, the eloquence of Chatham, the source of his rare, magical, and occasional power. Mr. Gladstone has reither of these. Few speakers equally great have left so few passages which can be quoted, so few which embody great principles in such a manner as to be referred to by coming generations. He has scarcely given us a sentence that lives in the memory; nor is his declamation, facile and effective as it always is, the very highest declamation: it is a nearly perfect expression of intellectualised sentiment, but it wants the volcanic power of primitive passion.

The prominency of advocacy in Mr. Gladstone's mind is in appearance, though not in reality, diminished by the purity and intensity of his zeal. There is an elastic heroism about him. When he begins to speak, we may know that we are going to hear what we shall not agree with. We may believe that the measures he proposes are mischievous; we may smile at the emphasis with which some of their minutæ are insisted upon; but we inevitably feel that we have left the ordinary earth. We know that high senti

ments will be appealed to by one who feels high sentiments; that strong arguments will be strongly stated by one who believes that argument should decide controversy. We know that we are

beyond the realm of the "whip"; we have left behind us the doctrine that corruption is the ruling power in popular assemblies, that patronage is the purchase-money of power. We are not alleging that in the real world in which we live there is not some truth—more or less of truth-in these lower maxims; but they do not rule in Mr. Gladstone's world. He was not born to be a Secretary or even a First Lord of the Treasury. If he tried his hand at it, he would perplex the borough attorneys out of their lives. And he could not keep the office a month; he would evince a real disgust at detestable requests, and guide with odd impulsiveness the delicate and latent machinery. His natural element is a higher one. He has and it is one of the springs of great power-a real faith in the higher parts of human nature; he believes, with all his heart and soul and strength, that there is such a thing as truth; he has the soul of a martyr with the intellect of an advocate.

THES

ART. III.-SCIENTIFIC DREDGING IN THE DEEP SEAS. HESE are days of great scientific activity. There is scarcely a province of natural science but what is invaded by a whole army of eager investigators, who, with a dogged perseverance, are following up the splendid discoveries of recent years, intent upon making reluctant nature tell her remaining secrets, and reveal her hidden treasures. The terra incognita of the surface of the earth, speaking generally, is now limited to the central regions of our great Continents; an insignificant portion in comparison with what lies buried beneath the waters of the "great deep." The bed of the ocean is almost a virgin field for the naturalist, in which a new world has suddenly opened out to us, possessing forms of life as strange and startling as ever met the sight of those who have for the first time trod some newly discovered land. The work hitherto done in this field of research, though mainly experimental, has proved the possibility of a systematic and exhaustive investigation; whilst at the same time, it has produced such a multitude of novelties as almost to confound the investigators..

The attention of the scientific world was drawn to the question of deep-sea dredging by a combination of circumstances. The different Government coast surveys and soundings had brought up, from time to time, samples of its living wonders. In sub-marine telegraphy, it became a question of great practical importance to