"In this Episcopal city, containing six churches independently of the cathedral, not a single bell announced the departure of the magnanimous spirit of the most injured of Queens, the most persecuted of women. Thus the brutal enmity of those who embittered her mortal existence pursues her in her shroud. We know not whether any actual orders were issued to prevent this customary sign of mourning; but the omission plainly indicates the kind of spirit which predominates among our clergy. Yet these men profess to be followers of Jesus Christ, to walk in his footsteps, to teach his precepts, to inculcate his spirit, to promote harmony, charity, and Christian love! Out upon such hypocrisy!"

The prosecution was conducted by Mr. Scarlett, who, in his opening speech contended that the silence of the bells might have been intended as a mark of respect,that the clergy were not so loud in their grief as others, because, perhaps, they were more sincere, and sympathized too deeply with the Queen's fate to give an open expression to their sorrow. Brougham, who led the defense, saw at once the fearful blunder, and "pounced upon it as the falcon pounces upon its prey":

"That you may understand the meaning of this passage, it is necessary for me to set before you the picture my learned friend was pleased to draw of the clergy of the diocese of Durham, and I shall recall it to your minds almost in his own words. According to him they stand in a peculiarly unfortunate situation; they are, in truth, the most injured of men. They all, it seems, entertained the same generous sentiments with the rest of their countrymen, though they did not express them in the old, free, English manner, by openly condemning the proceedings against the late Queen; and after her glorious but unhappy life had closed, the venerable the clergy of Durham, I am now told for the first time, though less forward in giving vent to their feelings than the rest of their fellow-citizens, though not vehement in their indignation at the matchless and unmanly persecution of the Queen, though not so unbridled in their joy at her immortal triumph, nor so loud in their lamentations over her mournful and untimely end, did, nevertheless, in reality, all the while, deeply sympathize in her sufferings, in the bottom of their reverend hearts!

When all the resources of the most ingenious cruelty hurried her to a fate without parallel, if not so clamorous, they did not feel the least of all the members of the community; their grief was in truth too deep for utterance, sorrow clung round their bosoms, weighed upon their tongues, stifled every sound; and when all the rest of mankind, of all sects and of all nations, freely gave vent to the feelings of our common nature, THEIR silence, the contrast which THEY displayed to the rest of their species, proceeded from the greater depth of their affliction; they said the less because they felt the more! Oh! talk of hypocrisy after this! Most consummate of all the hypocrites! After instructing your chosen, official advocate to stand forward with such a defence

such an exposition of your motives-to dare utter the word hypocrisy, and complain of those who charged you with it! This is indeed to insult common sense, and outrage the feelings of the whole human race! If you were hypocrites before, you were downright, frank, honest hypocrites to what you have now made yourselves, and surely, for all you have ever done, or ever been charged with, your worst enemies must be satiated with the humiliation of this day, its just atonement, and ample retribution!"

In his opening speech Mr. Scarlett had expressed his regret that the clergy had not the power of defending themselves through the public press. To this Brougham replied that they had, in fact, largely used it, and "scurrilously and foully libelled" the defendant:

"Not that they wound deeply or injure much; but that is no fault of theirs: without hurting, they give trouble and discomfort. The insect brought into life by corruption, and nestled in filth, though its flight be lowly and its sting puny, can swarm and buzz and irritate the skin and offend the nostril, and altogether give us nearly as much annoyance as the wasp, whose nobler nature it aspires to emulate. These reverend slanderers, these pious backbiters,- devoid of force to wield the sword, snatch the dagger; and destitute of wit to point or to barb it, and make it rankle in the wound, steep it in venom to make it fester in the scratch."

To give an adequate account of Brougham in a few passages is like trying to compress the Amazon into a tea-cup. In one session of Parliament he made two hundred and thirty speeches, of which he says in an epitaph which he wrote upon himself,

66 Here, reader, turn your weeping eyes,

My fate a useful moral teaches;

The hole in which my body lies,

Would not contain one-half my speeches."

In this, as in many other things, he was an exception to the ordinary and recognized laws of success; and, as one contemplates his marvellous and meteoric career, he is tempted, in spite of its brilliancy,—even in spite of his magnificent achievements in behalf of liberty, education, and charity,—to exclaim: "Non equidem invideo, miror magis."

CHAPTER X.

POLITICAL ORATORS: IRISH.

G

REATER as a thinker than Chatham or Fox, but in

ferior as an orator, was EDMUND BURKE, who, in the 173 variety and extent of his powers, surpassed every other orator of ancient or modern times. He was what he called Charles Townshend, "a prodigy," and ranks not merely with the eloquent speakers of the world, but with the Bacons, Newtons, and Shakspeares. His speeches and pamphlets are saturated with thought; they absolutely swarm, like an ant-hill, with ideas, and, in their teeming profusion, remind one of the "myriad - minded" author of Hamlet. To the broadest sweep of intellect, he added the most surprising subtlety, and his almost oriental imagination was fed by a vast and varied knowledge, the stores of a memory that held everything in its grasp. The only man who, according to Adam Smith, at once comprehended the total revolution the latter proposed in political economy, he was at the same time the best judge of a picture that Sir Joshua Reynolds ever knew; and while his knowledge was thus boundless, his vocabulary was as extensive as his knowledge. Probably no orator ever lived on whose lips language was more plastic and ductile. The materials of his style were gathered from the accumulated spoils of many tongues and of all ages; and it has been said that even the technicalities and appro

priated phraseology of almost all sciences and arts, professions and modes of life, were familiar to him, and were ready to express in the most emphatic manner the exhaustless metaphors which his imagination supplied from these sources.

It is told among the miracles of Mahomet that he enabled his followers for days, not only to subsist, but to grow fat on the sticks and stones of the desert; and, in like manner, the imagination of Burke could find nutriment in statistics, the veriest dry-bones of finance and fact. "It could busy itself with the fate of an empire, or with the condition of the king's kitchen. It brought before him the Catholic who groaned in the bogs of Tipperary, and the African who rotted in the slave factories of Guinea. It entered the royal buttery, and in a moment the dry details of cooks and turnspits are wrought into a scene that might have provoked the envy of Sheridan." A burning enthusiasm for whatever object engaged his sympathies was one of his leading qualities; and hence vehemence, passionate earnestness, and declamatory energy are among the most salient qualities of his speeches. When his passions were asleep, he was one of the most sagacious of men; but when his prejudices were roused, he "took his position like a fanatic and defended it like a philosopher." His mind when thus excited has been compared to the Puritan regiments of Cromwell, which moved to battle with the precision of machines, while burning with. the fiercest ardor of fanaticism.

Burke's speeches abound with examples of the most solid and brilliant eloquence, argumentative, emotional, and descriptive, while they also contain a greater number of illuminative ideas,-of pointed, poignant, and poetic

sentences, than those of any other orator. There is, indeed, hardly any species of oratorical excellence which may not be found in them in heaped profusion, and they needed only to have been less profound and reflective, and to have been delivered by a speaker with adequate physical gifts, to have produced a profound impression. Unfortunately for his influence as an orator, both his voice and his manner, his figure and his gesture, were against him. Tall, but not robust, awkward in gait and gesture; with an intellectual but severe countenance, that rarely relaxed into a smile; speaking a strong and rather ungainly Irish brogue; having a voice which was harsh when he was calm, and which, when he was excited, became often so hoarse as to be hardly intelligible; it is not wonderful that he failed to ravish his hearers, and was nicknamed "The Dinner Bell" by men who had been spellbound by the imposing figure, the eagle eye, and the passionate oratory of Chatham. But the chief cause of their weariness was his mode of handling his subject. Instead of seizing, like Fox, on the strong points of a case, by throwing away intermediate thoughts and striking at the heart of his theme, he stopped to philosophize and to instruct his hearers, and, as Goldsmith says,

"Went on refining,

And thought of convincing while they thought of dining."

Johnson tells us that his early speeches "filled the town with wonder"; but he adds that while none could deny that he spoke well, yet all granted that he spoke "too often and too long."

Oratory, it has been justly said, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; it abhors, too, above all things, prolonged philosophical discussion. The passions to which it appeals