The essential element in oratory is simply the ability to talk to the heart of the hearer. In one form or another this is the secret of success in all literary art; but it is peculiarly so in oratory. Yet in oratory especially we are liable to overlook this element, since in the great orations of history the declamatory eloquence alone remains, the audience, the occasion, and even our knowledge of the occasion having passed away. We therefore read great speeches without feeling that the orator is trying to persuade us, or any one, or in fact is doing anything more than displaying his skill. This is especially true of oratory of the Ciceronian type. It forms a special reason why we should try to study Demosthenian types, since they are so simple, and so obviously an appeal to the audience to do something, and the glittering rhetoric which distracts our attention is absent.

Truly great oratory is the result only of a great occasion. The occasion which called forth the oration "On the Crown," spoken of as the world's greatest, was the most important that could be found in the life of any man, and the difficulties to be overcome were the most serious. Demosthenes spoke for his life and his reputation; he spoke in the face of battles lost and a country ruined, which seemed to say with awful voice, "You have failed!" He knew that he had not failed; but certainly appearances were against him. To speak of himself without egotism or offence was equally a great difficulty.

Only the exercise of his utmost skill, the employment of his most consummate art, could save him. He played the game of oratory against his opponent, and won a most striking victory.

Cicero deliberately undertook to drive Catiline from Rome by his speech; and he succeeded. A still greater triumph, perhaps, was that of his speeches against Verres, for they drove the Governor of Sicily to seek an asylum in Marseilles even before they were delivered. And Verres himself thought he was fortunate; for had he waited for the delivery of the speeches, the mob would have torn him in pieces. In the hands of a master like Cicero, glittering rhetoric became a weapon to accomplish his purposes, not a thing for show on public occasions, as it often is in the case of our modern orators who speak to entertain, rather than to win some great battle for the truth.

It is true that the greatest oratory has not always been successful in accomplishing precisely the concrete end in view, as, for example, the great speech of Chatham on taxing America. It did not prevent the taxation then and there; but in a larger sense it is recognized as one of the forces that freed America; and it will ring through American history to all time.

of Irish

Grattan's famous "Declaration Rights" really paved the way for Irish freedom, and secured a gift of money from his grateful countrymen a substantial testimonial to the power of his eloquence.

When the great occasion is wanting, the enchantment of the audience by brilliant rhetoric (such, for example, as that of Ingersoll in his Decoration-day oration) is the only thing that can be accomplished. But even that success results directly from talking straight to the heart of the audience.

No man who has not a liking for his audience, a faith in it, a deep sympathy with it, can ever succeed as an orator; and his success will be in proportion to his sympathetic understanding of that audience. And since knowledge of life comes only with experience, the greatest orations have usually been spoken when the orator was in the fulness of his powers, if not actually old. Chatham's great speeches were all spoken in his old age; Mirabeau's great speech came almost at the end of his life; Demosthenes's greatest oration was his last; Burke was forty-five when the first of his great speeches was delivered, and nearly sixty at the time of the speeches impeaching Warren Hastings. The only, speech in the present collection delivered in the early life of the orator is that of Grattan, spoken when he was thirty-four, and that age can hardly be called "youth." At these ages, youthful exuberance and florid language have passed away. The orator speaks as the father to his children. Only when the greatness of the occasion rouses him and them to such a pitch that sublimity of language alone

will express their mutual feelings does the great orator indulge those "flowers of oratory which the young so love to affect.

We may now read with intelligent understanding Webster's definition of true eloquence. Says he,

"When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable in speech, farther than it is connected with high intellectual and moral attainments.

"Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it. They cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments, and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men when their own lives, and the lives of their wives and children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then, words have lost their power. Rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contempt

ible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued as in the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent. Then, self-devotion is eloquent.

"The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward to his object,

this, this is eloquence, or rather it is something greater and higher than eloquence; it is action, noble, sublime, God-like action."

II

WHILE it is true, as Webster says, that art will not make an orator, it is equally true that no orator was ever made without art. The most painstaking and persistent training have invariably been necessary to great success.

What, then, should be the training of the orator? What will fit the great man to meet the great occasion when it shall come, and to speak with power to the heart of a great audience? There are three important elements voice, gesture, and words.

Undoubtedly the music of the voice, the tone filled with sweetness and intelligence, is the first thing that catches the ear of the audience. The development and management of the voice is a