Cayuga, St. John went on leisurely with a story which is scarce
remarkable enough to merit a repetition. He believed himself the natural
son of a western hunter, but only knew that he had passed his early
youth on the borders of civilization, between whites and Indians, and
that he had been more particularly indebted for protection to the father
of Nunu. Mingled ambition and curiosity had led him eastward while still
a lad, and a year or two of the most vagabond life in the different
cities, had taught him the caution and bitterness for which he was so
remarkable. A fortunate experiment in lotteries supplied him with the
means of education, and with singular application in a youth of such
wandering habits, he had applied himself to study under a private
master, fitted himself for the university in half the usual time, and
cultivated in addition the literary taste which I have remarked upon.
"This," he said, smiling at my look of astonishment, "brings me up to
the time when we met. I came to college at the age of eighteen, with a
few hundred dollars in my pocket, some pregnant experience of the rough
side of the world, great confidence in myself and distrust of others,
and, I believe, a kind of instinct of good manners, which made me
ambitious of shining in society. You were a witness of my _debut_. Miss
Temple was the first highly educated woman I had ever known, and you saw
the effect on me!"
"And since we parted?"
"Oh, since we parted, my life has been vulgar enough. I have ransacked
civilized life to the bottom, and found it a heap of unredeemed
falsehoods. I do not say it from common disappointment, for I may say I
succeeded in every thing I undertook."
"Except Miss Temple," I said, interrupting, at the hazard of wounding
him.
"No. She was a coquette, and I pursued her till I had my turn. You see
me in my new character now. But a month ago, I was the Apollo of
Saratoga, playing my own game with Miss Temple. I left her for a woman
worth ten thousand of her--but here she is."
As Nunu came up the companionway from the cabin, I thought I had never
seen a breathing creature so exquisitely lovely. With the exception of a
pair of brilliant moccasins on her feet, she was dressed in the usual
manner, but with the most absolute simplicity. She had changed in those
five years from the child to the woman, and, with a round and
well-developed figure, additional height, and manners at once gracious
and dignified, she walked and looked the chieftan's daughter. St. John
took her hand, and gazed on her with moisture in his eyes.
"That I could ever put a creature like this," he said, "into comparison
with the dolls of civilization!"
We parted at Buffalo--St. John with his wife and the chiefs to pursue
their way westward by Lake Erie, and I to go moralizing on my way to
Niagara.
GRECIAN AND ROMAN ELOQUENCE.
By Ashur Ware.
In the flourishing periods of the Grecian and Roman commonwealths, the
forms of their governments, the state of society, and the passions and
manners of the times, were more favorable to the developement of great
talents, than have existed in any other age, or among any other people.
In Athens and Rome, every citizen was a public man. The great powers of
government were exercised by the people themselves in their primary
assemblies. The practice of delegating the higher attributes of
sovereignty to a small number of persons periodically elected is one of
the greatest improvements, which the lights of modern experience have
introduced into the constitutions of free governments. The advantages
which are gained by this system in favor of internal tranquillity, the
steadiness and permanency of political institutions and the security of
private rights, can scarcely be estimated too highly, or purchased at
too great a price. But nearly in the same proportion as this improvement
contributes to the general tranquillity and the personal security of the
citizen, does it narrow the field for the operation of great talents.
The individual power of each man is hardly felt in the harmonious
working of the great machine of government, and its character soon comes
to depend much more on the system than on the genius of those by whom it
is conducted. Precedents, fixed opinions, long established policy and
constitutional maxims, throw an invisible net work over those, who are
at the head of affairs, which a giant's strength cannot break through.
An ordinary share of talent, enlightened by experience, is found to be
about as useful in the regular movement of the system, as the highest
gifts of genius.
But it was otherwise in the republics of Athens and Rome. There the
power of the system was nothing, and the genius of the individual every
thing. In the agitations of these popular commonwealths, the great
actors on the stage were driven to a life of unremitted exertion. The
revolutions of popular favor were sudden and appalling, and always
liable to be carried to great extremes. A decisive moment lost might be
fatal to the hopes of a whole life. Their powers were, therefore,
constantly wound up to the utmost intensity of action. Second rate men,
who are abundantly able to go through with the regular and quiet routine
of official duty in our modern bureaus, would be quickly blown down by
the storms which shook the tribunes of those turbulent democracies. The
very imperfections in their political systems contributed to develope
the genius of their statesmen, and necessarily called into action every
faculty of the mind.
In all free and popular governments, eloquence is one of the principal
instruments of power, and the fairest field is presented for its
operations where the general powers of government are put in motion by
the immediate agency of the mass of the people. In all the nations of
modern Europe, where the semblance of deliberative assemblies is
preserved, these are composed of a small and select number of persons;
and in these small bodies, when a reasonable space is allowed for the
coercive power of party training, for the operation of the subtle and
diffusive poison of executive influence, and in some cases, for the
gross and palpable application of direct corruption, the province of
eloquence will be found to be greatly narrowed. Her most persuasive
accents fall on ears that are spellbound by a mightier power, and on the
most important questions, the votes are often counted, before
deliberation commences. But this complicated machinery cannot be brought
to bear with the same effect on the whole body of the citizens. If their
movements are more irregular, and liable to greater excesses, they have
their origin in the purer and more noble impulses of the heart. The
natural love of equity, the instinctive principles of disinterestedness
and generosity, originally implanted in the heart of man by the author
of our being, cannot easily be extinguished in a whole people. After the
tools of faction, and the minions of power, have exhausted the arts of
corruption, these holier elements of our nature will kindle into
spontaneous enthusiasm, when lofty and generous sentiments are brought
home to the bosom in the accents of a manly and pathetic eloquence. The
great and unsophisticated springs of human action are always touched
with most effect in large assemblies. In these the prevailing tone of
feeling, when highly exalted, spreads through the whole by a secret
sympathy, with the rapidity of the electric fluid.
It was before such an audience that eloquence uttered her voice in
ancient times. The orators of Greece and Rome brought their genius to
bear directly on the popular mind. The public assemblies which were then
held were for actual deliberation. It was not a mockery of consultation
on matters upon which all opinions were definitely made up. They came
together to be instructed, and were open to the seductive arts of their
orators even to a fault. The objects of deliberation also were of the
greatest moment, the fortunes of a province or a kingdom, the safety of
the republic, the honor, or perhaps the life of the orator himself or
his nearest friends. Every motive which hope or fear or pride or party
could suggest, to animate the passions, was brought to act on the
speaker's mind, and all depended on a doubtful decision, which was to be
made on the spot, and before the separation of the assembly. These
contests were not of rare occurrence. They were coming up continually.
They were upon the most magnificent theatre in the world, and before
judges who united a most refined and discriminating taste with an
extraordinary degree of susceptibility to all the charms of a passionate
and harmonious eloquence. The orators, therefore, were kept in constant
training. Their faculties had no time to cool.
They had no intervals for luxurious repose. The dignities to which they
had risen were watched by powerful and jealous rivals, always ready to
wrest from them their honors, and they could be retained only by the
same efforts by which they were won.
In these ancient republics eloquence was substantial and effective power
and led to the highest dignities, which the most aspiring genius could
hope to attain. It was cultivated with an assiduity bearing a just
proportion to the honors with which it was crowned. The education of the
orator commenced in his cradle, and did not terminate until he had
reached the full maturity of manhood; or, to speak more correctly, it
comprised the whole business of his life. All his studies were made
subservient to the art of speaking, and the course of instruction
descended into the most minute details which could improve him in his
action or elocution. It was this entire devotion to a favorite and
honored art, which raised it to a height of perfection, which it has
never since been able to reach, and which produced those prodigies in
the oratorical art, which have been the admiration and the despair of
succeeding ages.
In the most brilliant period of antiquity there were two styles of
eloquence cultivated by the different orators. One, calm, subtle and
elegant, addressed almost exclusively to the understanding. In the time
of Cicero this was called the Attic style, and those who belonged to
this school assumed no little credit on the supposed purity of their
Attic taste. The other affected a style of greater warmth and
brilliancy, and intermingled with the scrupulous dialectics of the
former, frequent appeals to the passions, and adorned their discourses
with all the beauties which could captivate the imagination. What was
then denominated the Attic style, forms the prevailing characteristic of
modern oratory. It is cool and didactic. It relies almost wholly on the
powers of a cultivated logic and seldom attempts to reach the
understanding through the medium of the heart. It requires little
reflection to determine which of these styles would bear away the palm
before a popular audience. The former leaves one half the faculties of
the hearer dormant, while the latter addresses itself to all the powers
of man, the moral as well as the intellectual, instructs the reason
while it agitates the passions, and gives at the same time one powerful
and impetuous movement to the whole man. But if any one doubts upon
this matter let him go to the pages of Demosthenes and especially to
that most perfect of all his orations, in which he was contending with
his great rival for the glory of a whole life in the presence of all
that was most illustrious in Greece,--his oration for the crown. He will
find from the beginning to the end, a clear and exact logic. But it is
logic raised into enthusiasm by the dignity and elevation of sentiment
by which it is surrounded. He will not find a metaphor or an observation
introduced merely for the purposes of ornament. It is a continued stream
of clear, rapid and convincing argument. But it is argument enveloped in
a torrent of earnestness and exaggeration, environed with a blaze of
anger and disdain and passion--it is argument clothed in thunder, which
could no more be listened to with a composed and tranquil mind than the
flashes of lightning could be viewed with an unblinking eye. Strip
Demosthenes of these accompaniments, of these accessories, if you please
to call them so, and you will leave enough perhaps to satisfy our modern
Attics, but this residue will be no more like the living Demosthenes who
"fulmined over Greece," than the unformed block of marble is like the
Belvidere Apollo, or a naked skeleton like a living man.
It is said that the state of manners in modern society would not bear
those bold appeals to the passions which abound in the ancient orators.
We are ingenious in taking to ourselves credit even for our inferiority,
and it is contended that our understandings are more cultivated and our
passions more under the dominion of reason. If there be any foundation
for this opinion it must be received with many qualifications. It has
become a fashion of late to decry the manners and morals of the
republics of antiquity. That their manners differed in many respects
from the modes of fashion established in what is called good society in
modern times is admitted, but it does not follow that the advantage is
on our side. There is still less foundation for the opinion that in
their intellectual powers the Greeks and Romans were less cultivated
than the most polished nations of our times. There never existed a
nation in which the intellectual education of the whole body of the
people was carried to so high a pitch as in Athens. However extravagant
the assertion may be thought, it is indisputably true that the "mob of
Athens," as the people of that renowned commonwealth are affectedly
called, were of a more refined, severe and critical taste in every thing
that pertains to the beauties of eloquence than the members of the
British House of Commons have been, at any period of its existence, from
the first meeting of the Wittenagemote to the present day. They would
allow, says Cicero, in their orators no violation of purity or elegance
of language. _Eorum religioni cum serviret orator, nullum verbum
insolens, nullum odiosum ponere audebat._ Many a speech has been cheered
by the "_hear hims_" of the Treasury Bench in that house, which would
have shocked the discriminating and critical ears, _aures teretes ac
religiosas_, of that extraordinary people. The whole testimony of
antiquity concurs in proving their extreme delicacy and fastidiousness
in every thing which belongs to taste in letters and the arts.
There was another peculiarity in the circumstances of these ancient
republics which favored the cultivation of eloquence. The press, that
great engine by which public opinion is moved in modern times, was then
unknown. Addresses in the assemblies of the people were not only the
ordinary but almost the sole mode by which public men could influence or
enlighten public opinion. All political discussion assumed this form and
these popular harangues composed a very large portion of the literature
of the times. The language of oral communication naturally assumes a
tone of greater vivacity and passion than that of the closet. The
predominance of this species of composition must have had a powerful
influence in forming the national taste and would naturally impart its
prevailing tone to every other species. Such seems to have been the
fact. The philosophers and historians caught something of the animated
and rhetorical manner of their public speakers, and in that species of
eloquence which is suited to the nature of their subjects, surpass the
moderns nearly as much as their orators do. Plato stands as far above
all rivals in this particular, as his countryman and disciple
Demosthenes. The easy and graceful movement of his dialogue, the
splendid amplification and harmonious numbers of his declamation and the
warm and animated glow of moral enthusiasm, which he has thrown over his
mystical speculations, render his works the most perfect specimen of
philosophical eloquence ever yet produced. His example will also show
what importance was attached to style alone by the teachers of ancient
wisdom. The last labors of a long life, which had been devoted to the
most sublime philosophy of the age, were employed in retouching and
remodelling the inimitable graces of his rich and flowing periods;
_musæo contingens cuncta lepore_.
A superiority scarcely less imposing in this respect will be found in
their historians. Their genius was also kindled by a coal from the altar
of the orators. I am ready to acknowledge the great merit of the classic
historians of modern times. I am not insensible to the calm and
sustained dignity of Roberston, to the melody of his full and flowing
style, though it sometimes fills the ear without filling the mind. He
must be a much more morose critic who is not delighted with the simple
and unaffected elegance of Hume, and with that admirable facility with
which he intermingles the most profound reflections in a narration
always easy, copious and graceful. Nor can the historian of the Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire be forgotten in an enumeration of those who
have done honor to this branch of literature. After all that has been
said and written against him, he has left a work which the world will
not willingly suffer to die. The Randolphs and Taylors and Chelsums by
whom he was assailed, have passed into an easy oblivion, but the great
work of the historian will always find a place in every library and a
reader in every well educated man. The pomp and stateliness of his style
sometimes bordering on the turgid may provoke a sneer from those who
look only to the surface, but he had a mind enriched by various and
extensive learning, which he has exuberantly and tastefully displayed in
every page of his work. It may also be admitted that in modern times
history has in its general character received something more of a
philosophical tone. But what it has gained on the side of philosophy it
has more than lost on that of eloquence.
Compare the triumvirate of English historians in this respect with the
inestimable remains of antiquity, and there is a disparity as striking
as it is difficult to be accounted for. In this, as in every other
department of literature, the Romans were the imitators of the Greeks;
but in history while they imitated they surpassed their masters. The two
great historians of Rome stand above all that preceded as well as all
that followed them. The history of the rise of the Roman republic, from
a small band of outlaws to the uncontrolled mastery of the world, is the
most extraordinary chapter in the history of the human race. The annals
of mankind present nothing that resembles it. A splendid or an affecting
story may be degraded or belittled by being told in an unworthy style.
But the style of Livy never falls below the dignity of his subject. His
eloquence is as magnificent as the fortunes of the eternal city. In
splendor of language, in glowing and picturesque description, in warmth
and brilliancy and boldness of coloring, and in the dignified and
majestic movement of his whole narrative, there is nothing in the
literature of any country which will bear a comparison with the Decads
of Livy. He is always on the borders of oratory and poetry, without ever
passing the soberness of history. _Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter
habet._
The golden age of letters in Rome was as short as it was brilliant. It
scarcely surpassed in duration the ordinary term of human life.
Commencing with Cicero, it closed with the generation who were his
cotemporaries, the last who breathed the free air of the republic. But
in the universal corruption of taste and morals that followed the
extinction of liberty, there arose one man, Tacitus, whose genius
belonged to a happier age. In his own, it has been remarked with as
much truth as beauty, he stands like a column in the midst of ruins. It
has been said that the secret of his style belongs to the circumstances
of his life, as well as to the peculiar temperament of the man. He wrote
the history of his own times, and they presented but few bright spots on
which the eye could repose with pleasure. But he paints the features of
that dark and fearful peace, of that awful and portentous silence of
despotism, convulsed as it was by internal dissensions and agitated by
all the vices of a profligate populace and an abandoned nobility, in
words of enchantment. While they seem to express every thing that is
terrible in tragedy, they suggest to the imagination more than meets the
ear. No man could have described those scenes as he has done but one who
had seen and felt them. His vivid and graphic pictures speak at once to
the eye, to the imagination, and to the heart; and without any of the
parade or ostentation of eloquence, he impresses on the mind of the
reader all the feelings which seem to prevail in his own.
The current of fashion has for some time been setting strongly against
classical learning. In an age of so much intellectual activity as the
present, all sorts of new opinions are received with favor. The most
extravagant have their hour of triumph until they are chased from the
stage by some new absurdity, or until the restless love of change is
drawn off to some more startling paradox. This insatiable thirst for
novelty is carried into literature as well as other things. But the
principles of good taste are unchangeable. They have their foundations
deeply laid in nature and truth, and the tide of time which sweeps into
oblivion the sickly illusions of distempered imaginations, passes over
these unhurt. The Bavii and Maevii of former ages, who like those of
later times enjoyed for their hour the sunshine of fashionable
celebrity, have been long ago gathered to their long home, but the
beauties of Homer and Virgil are as fresh now as they were at the
beginning. Independent of the arguments commonly used in favor of
classical learning, there are two considerations which recommend these
studies to peculiar favor in this country. I advert to them the more
willingly, because they have not been usually urged in proportion to
their importance.
The first is addressed to our literary ambition. If there be any
department of elegant literature in which we may hope to surpass our
European ancestors and cotemporaries, it is in eloquence. It is the
fairest and most hopeful field which now remains for literary
distinction. In every other the moderns, if they have not equalled, are
not far behind the ancients. Their poetry can scarcely claim an
advantage over that of the moderns, except what it owes directly to the
superiority of the ancient languages. But if we except some of the
finest productions of the French pulpit in the reign of Louis XIV. there
is nothing in modern literature which approaches the eloquence of
antiquity. The most accomplished of our forensic and parliamentary
speakers are at an immeasurable distance from the perfection of the
ancient orators. If there be any modern nation, which may hope to
emulate them with some prospect of success, it is our own. In our free
institutions and in the free genius of our countrymen we have all that
is necessary. The soil is prepared and we are already a nation of
debaters. But if we would add to the faculty of fluent speaking the
gifts of eloquence, these must be sought where the ancients found them,
in a patient and persevering devotion to the art. We must be made
sensible both of its dignity and its difficulty, and nothing can so
effectually give us this knowledge as a familiar acquaintance with the
inimitable remains of the orators of Greece and Rome.