States. Mr. Emmet, who was counsel for New York, had eloquently personified her as casting her eyes over the ocean, witnessing everywhere the triumphs of her genius, and exclaiming, in the language of Eneas:

'Quae regio in terris, nostri non plenae laboris?"

Mr. Wirt saw at once the error his opponent had committed, and giving the true sense of the word "laboris," turned the tables upon him as follows:

"Sir, it was not in the moment of triumph, nor with the feelings of triumph, that Eneas uttered that exclamation. It was when, with his faithful Achates by his side, he was surveying the works of art with which the palace of Carthage was adorned, and his attention had been caught by a representation of the battles of Troy. There he saw the sons of Atreus and Priam, and the fierce Achilles. The whole extent of his fortunes; the loss and desolation of his friends; the fall of his beloved country; rushed upon his recollection:

'Constitit et lachrymans, quis jam locus, inquit, Achate,
Quae regio in terris, nostri non plenae laboris?'

"Sir, the passage may hereafter have a closer application to the cause than my eloquent and classical friend intended. For if the state of things which has already commenced, is to go on; if the spirit of hostility which already exists in three of our states, is to catch by contagion, and spread among the rest, as, from the progress of the human passions, and the unavoidable conflict of interests, it will too surely do; what are we to expect? Civil wars, arising from far inferior causes, have desolated some of the fairest provinces of the earth. It is the high province of this court to interpose its benign and mediatorial influence. . . . If, sir, you do not interpose your friendly hand, and extirpate the seeds of anarchy which New York has sown, you will have civil war. The war of legislation, which has already commenced, will, according to its usual course, become a war of blows. Your country will be shaken with civil strife. Your republican institutions will perish in the conflict. Your constitution will fall. The last hope of nations will be gone. And what will be the effect upon the rest of the world? Look abroad at the scenes now passing upon our globe, and judge of that effect. The friends of free government throughout the earth, who have been heretofore animated by our example, and have cheerfully cast their glance to it, as to their polar star, to guide them through the stormy seas of revolution, will witness our fall with dismay and despair. The arm that is every where lifted in the cause of liberty, will drop unnerved by the warrior's side. Despotism will have its day of triumph, and will accomplish the pur pose at which it too certainly aims. It will cover the earth with the mantle of mourning. Then, sir, when New York shall look upon this scene of ruin. if she have the generous feelings which I believe her to have, it will not be with her head aloft, in the pride of conscious triumph, her rapt soul sitting in her eyes.' No, sir, no! Dejected with shame and confusion, drooping

under the weight of her sorrow, with a voice suffocated with despair, well may she then exclaim,

Quis jam locus,

Quae regio in terris, nostri non plenae laboris ?'"*

At the present day, with the exception of Gladstone, who introduces a new bit of Virgil into every fresh speech, no English or American orator adorns his speeches with jewels from the ancient classics. The late Lord Palmerston startled the public a few years ago with a morceau from Seneca; but the practice has nearly passed away. The explanation of the change is, that the age is intensely practical. In the early stages of civilization oratory and literature are apt to be confounded; but, as society advances, the distinction between them becomes more and more broadly marked. Oratory ceases to talk; writing ceases to be speech-like. The world, in these prosaic, utilitarian times, is becoming every day more impatient of pedantry, of rhetorical display, of everything that favors or savors of long-windedness; and parliamentary and forensic orators, knowing this fact, try to speak tersely and to the point, avoiding everything that is merely ornamental. It is said by a traveler that the wild Indian hunter will sometimes address a bear in a strain of eloquence, and make a visible impression on him; but whatever may be the taste of Indians and bears, it is certain that civilized men, in proportion as they increase in culture, will avoid whatever is high-flown in oratory, study brevity and plainness, and keep to the subject before them.

*Mr. Wirt was a constant student of the Latin classics, and often quoted them, with great felicity, in the court-room. "In the company of men of letters," he used to say, "there is no higher accomplishment than that of readily making an apt quotation from the classics; and before such a body as the Supreme Court these quotations are not only appropriate, but constitute a beautiful aid to argument. They mark the scholar,- which is always agreeable to a bench that is composed of scholars."

OF

CHAPTER III.

QUALIFICATIONS OF THE ORATOR.

F all the efforts of the human mind, there is no one which demands for its success so rare a union of mental gifts as eloquence. For its ordinary displays the prerequisites are clear perception, memory, power of statement, logic, imagination, force of will, and passion; but, for its loftiest flights, it demands a combination of the most exalted powers,- a union of the rarest faculties. Unite in one man the most varied and dissimilar gifts,--a strong and masculine understanding with a brilliant imagination; a nimble wit with a solid judgment; a prompt and tenacious memory with a lively and fertile fancy; an eye for the beauties of nature with a knowledge of the realities of life; a brain stored with the hived wisdom of the ages, and a heart swelling with emotion,—and you have the moral elements of a great orator. But even these qualifications, so seldom harmonized in one man, are not all. Eloquence is a physical as well as an intellectual product; it has to do with the body as well as with the mind. It is not a cold and voiceless enunciation of abstract truth; it is truth warm and palpitating,-reason "permeated and made red-hot with passion." It demands, therefore, a trained, penetrating, and sympathetic voice, ranging through all the keys in the scale, by which all the motions and agitations, all the shudderings and throbbings of the heart, no less than the subtlest acts, the nimblest operations of the

mind, in fine, all the modifications of the moral life,may find a tone, an accent. The eye as well as the lips, the heaving chest and the swaying arm, the whole frame quivering with emotion, have a part; and the speech that thrills, melts, or persuades, is the result of them all combined. The orator needs, therefore, a stout bodily frame, especially as his calling is one that rapidly wears the nerves, and exhausts the vital energy.

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The

A man may have the bow of Ulysses, but of what use is it, if he has not strength to bend it to his will? His arrows may be of silver, and gold-tipped; they may be winged with the feathers of the very bird of Paradise; but if he cannot draw them to the head, and send them home to the mark, of what value are they to him? most potent speakers, in all ages, have been distinguished for bodily stamina. They have been, with a few remarkable exceptions, men of brawny frame, with powerful digestive organs, and lungs of great aerating capacity. They have been men I who, while they had a sufficient thought-power to create all the material needed, had preeminently the explosive power by which they could thrust their materials out at men. They were catapults, and men went down before them." Burke and Fox were men of stalwart frame. Mirabeau had the neck of a bull, and a prodigious chest out of which issued that voice of thunder before which the French chamber quailed in awe. Brougham had a constitution of lignum-vitæ, which stood the wear and tear of ceaseless activity for more than eighty years. Daniel Webster's physique was so extraordinary that it drew all eyes upon him; and Sydney Smith could describe him only as 'a steam-engine in breeches." Chalmers had a large frame,

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with a ponderous brain, and a general massiveness of countenance which suggested great reserved strength, and reminded those who watched it in repose of one of Landseer's or Thorwaldsen's lions. Even those orators who have not had giant frames, have had, at least, closely-knit ones, the bodily activity and quickness of the athlete. It was said of Lord Erskine that his action sometimes reminded one of a blood-horse. When urging a plea with passionate fervor, his eye flashed, the nostril distended, he threw back his head, "his neck was clothed with thunder." There was in him the magnificent animal, as well as the proud and fiery intellect, and the whole frame quivered with pent-up excitement. Curran could rise before a jury, after a session of sixteen hours, with a brief intermission, and make one of the most memorable arguments of his life. The massive frames of O'Connell and John Bright, England's greatest living orator, are familiar to all.

Besides all these qualifications, there are others hardly less essential to the ideal orator. He must have the continuity of thought which is requisite for a prolonged. argument, and the ready wit which can seize and turn. to use any incident which may occur in the course of its delivery. Last, but not least, is demanded that commanding will, which, as it is one of the most valuable mental gifts, is also one of the rarest, and is still more rarely found in union with the brilliant and dazzling qualities that are the soul of every art which is to subdue or captivate mankind.

In view of the extraordinary qualifications required. for the highest eloquence, it is not strange that it is so uncommon. A great orator,-one who has perfectly