duced, and scattered with a sparing hand. Another observation of Crassus will be found of eminent utility to be held in remembrance by the student. In maintaining, that an orator ought to have some tincture of every science, he cautions against the application of too much time to studies of minutiae, and especially of science merely speculative. The knowledge, necessary to discourse with propriety upon any art, is very different from that, which is indispensable to practise the art. The orator is to obtain such knowledge, as may be useful to him in the exercise of his own profession; and that, without being equally profound, will enable him to discourse upon the art more copiously, and more accurately too, than can the very artists, who make it the exclusive occupation of their lives.

The principles of the oratorical art, like all other knowledge, may be taught by the analytical, or by the synthetical process. These terms and the ideas, annexed to them, may not be perfectly clear to the minds of some of you. But you will perceive by the derivation of the words themselves, which is from the Greek language, that analysis is the process, which takes to pieces; and synthesis is that, which puts together. Thus in

the dialogues de oratore, Cicero has analyzed, and exhibited separately the various qualifications, which contribute to the formation of an eloquent speaker. In the orator he has combined and embodied the same precepts, to show how they are to be brought into action. The dialogues give a dissection of the art into its constituent parts; the orator gathers the parts, and connects them into an organized body. The dialogues are a delineation of the talent; the orator is a portrait of the speaker.

The Grecian philosophers first conceived, and Plato has largely expatiated upon, what they call the beautiful, and the good, in the abstract. Beauty and goodness are properties, and, as to any object perceptible to the senses, neither of them can exist without some substance, in which they may exist. A good man, or a beautiful woman, is perceptible to the eye and to the reason of us all; but the qualities themselves we cannot readily discern, without the aid of imagination. But as imperfection is stamped upon every work of nature, the imagination is able to conceive of goodness and beauty more perfect, than they can be found in any of the works of nature, or of man. This creature of the imagination Plato designates

by the name of the good and fair. That is, goodness and beauty, purified from all the dross of natural imperfection. And then, by one step more of the imagination, we are required to personify these sublime abstractions, and call up to the eye of fancy images, in which goodness and beauty would appear, if they could assume a human shape. This principle was applied to the fine arts, as well as to morals; and the painters and sculptors, in imitating the productions of nature, improved upon them by these ideal images, and created those wonders of art, which still excite the astonishment of every beholder. The antique statues of the Apollo and Venus have thus been considered, for nearly three thousand years, the perfect models of human beauty. Such exquisite proportions, such an assemblage of features was never found in any human form. But the idea was in the mind of the artist, and his chisel has given it a local habitation in the minds of others. It was the conception and the pursuit of this ideal beauty, which produced all the wonders of Grecian art. Cicero applied it to eloquence. It appears to have been the study of his whole life to form an idea of a perfect orator, and of exhibiting his image to the world. In this treatise he has

concentrated the result of all his observation, experience, and reflection. It is the idealized image of a speaker, in the mind of Cicero; what a speaker should be; what no speaker ever will be; but what every speaker should devote the labors of his life to approximate.

Let it be remembered, that this inflexible, unremitting pursuit of ideal and unattainable excellence is the source of all the real excellence, which the world has ever seen. It is the foundation of every thing great and good, of which man can boast, It is one of the proofs, that the soul of man is immortal; and it is at the foundation of the whole doctrine of christianity. It is the root of all real excellence in religion, in morals, and in taste. It was so congenial to the mind of Cicero, that in the treatise, of which I am now speaking, he took the most elaborate pains, and the most exquisite pleasure, in setting it forth. He addressed it to his friend Brutus, at whose desire it was written; and in one of the familiar epistles Cicero declares, that he wishes this work to be considered, as the test of his capacity; that it contains the quintessence of all his faculties.

The principal difficulty of the subject was to settle a standard of eloquence; for the original

controversy between the rival Asiatic and Attic schools, which I have mentioned, was so far from being decided, that it had given rise to a third system, partaking of both the others, and usually known by the name of the Rhodian manner. Cicero therefore determines, that there are subjects, peculiarly fitted to each of these three modes of speaking, and that the perfection of the orator consists in the proper use and variation of them all, according to the occasion. The most re

markable example of which, he thinks, is to be found in the famous oration of Demosthenes for Ctesiphon; commonly called the oration for the crown. In the distinction, which he draws between the schools of Isocrates and of Aristotle, we find the true criterion for judging their respective pretensions. The first he pronounces to have been the cradle of eloquence. Its florid

colors, its dazzling splendors, its studied and laborious decorations, he thinks peculiarly adapted to representation, and not to action; to the first essays of youth, and not to the serious labors of manhood. But it is in judicial controversies, where the conflict of rights must be decided by the conflict of talents, that the manhood, the highest energies of the art, must be exerted. Here