I was also a passionate admirer of orators. I studied them with the
presentiment of a man who would one day have to speak to the deaf
multitude, and who would strike the chords of human auditors. I studied
Demosthenes, Cicero, Mirabeau, and especially Lord Chatham,--more
striking to my mind than all the rest, because his inspired and lyrical
eloquence seems more like a cry than like a voice. It soars above his
limited audience and the passions of the day, on the loftiest wings of
poetry, to the immutable regions of eternal truth and of eternal
feeling. Chatham receives truth from the hand of God; and with him it
becomes, not only the light, but also the thunder of the debate.
Unfortunately, as in the case of Phidias at the Parthenon, we have only
fragments, heads, arms, and mutilated trunks left of him. But when in
thought we reassemble these remains, we produce marvels and divinities
of eloquence. I pictured to myself times, events, and passions, like
those which upraised these great men, a forum such as that they filled;
and like Demosthenes addressing the billows of the sea, I spoke
inwardly to the phantoms of my imagination.