is sentiment; a flame of affection or delight in the heart, burning up
suddenly for its object,--as the love of the mother for her child; of
the child for its mate; of the youth for his friend; of the scholar for
his pursuit; of the boy for sea-life, or for painting, or in the passion
for his country; or in the tender-hearted philanthropist to spend and be
spent for some romantic charity, as Howard for the prisoner, or John
Brown for the slave. No matter what the object is, so it be good, this
flame of desire makes life sweet and tolerable. It reinforces the heart
that feels it, makes all its acts and words gracious and interesting.
Now society in towns is infested by persons who, seeing that the
sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call
sentimentalists,--talkers who mistake the description for the thing,
saying for having. They have, they tell you, an intense love of nature;
poetry,--O, they adore poetry, and roses, and the moon, and the cavalry
regiment, and the governor; they love liberty, "dear liberty!" they
worship virtue, "dear virtue!" Yes, they adopt whatever merit is in good
repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their
expressions, the colder we feel; we shiver with cold. A little
experience acquaints us with the unconvertibility of the sentimentalist,
the soul that is lost by mimicking soul. Cure the drunkard, heal the
insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can
be devised for the debauchee of sentiment? Was ever one converted? The
innocence and ignorance of the patient is the first difficulty: he
believes his disease is blooming health. A rough realist, or a phalanx
of realists, would be prescribed; but that is like proposing to mend
your bad road with diamonds. Then poverty, famine, war, imprisonment,
might be tried. Another cure would be to fight fire with fire, to match
a sentimentalist with a sentimentalist. I think each might begin to
suspect that something was wrong.
Would we codify the laws that should reign in households, and whose
daily transgression annoys and mortifies us, and degrades our household
life--we must learn to adorn every day with sacrifices. Good manners are
made up of petty sacrifices. Temperance, courage, love, are made up of
the same jewels. Listen to every prompting of honor. "As soon as
sacrifice becomes a duty and necessity to the man, I see no limit to the
horizon which opens before me."[4]
Of course those people, and no others, interest us who believe in their
thought, who are absorbed, if you please to say so, in their own dream.
They only can give the key and leading to better society: those who
delight in each other only because both delight in the eternal laws; who
forgive nothing to each other; who, by their joy and homage to these,
are made incapable of conceit, which destroys almost all the fine wits.
Any other affection between men than this geometric one of relation to
the same thing, is a mere mush of materialism.
These are the bases of civil and polite society; namely, manners,
conversation, lucrative labor, and public action, whether political, or
in the leading of social institutions. We have much to regret, much to
mend, in our society; but I believe that with all liberal and hopeful
men there is a firm faith in the beneficent results which we really
enjoy; that intelligence, manly enterprise, good education, virtuous
life, and elegant manners have been and are found here, and, we hope, in
the next generation will still more abound.
[Footnote 4: Ernest Renan.]
ELOQUENCE.
ELOQUENCE.
I DO not know any kind of history, except the event of a battle, to
which people listen with more interest than to any anecdote of
eloquence; and the wise think it better than a battle. It is a triumph
of pure power, and it has a beautiful and prodigious surprise in it. For
all can see and understand the means by which a battle is gained: they
count the armies, they see the cannon, the musketry, the cavalry, and
the character and advantages of the ground, so that the result is often
predicted by the observer with great certainty before the charge is
sounded. Not so in a court of law, or in a legislature. Who knows before
the debate begins what the preparation, or what the means are of the
combatants? The facts, the reasons, the logic,--above all, the flame of
passion and the continuous energy of will which is presently to be let
loose on this bench of judges, or on this miscellaneous assembly
gathered from the streets,--are all invisible and unknown. Indeed, much
power is to be exhibited which is not yet called into existence, but is
to be suggested on the spot by the unexpected turn things may take,--at
the appearance of new evidence, or by the exhibition of an unlooked-for
bias in the judges, or in the audience. It is eminently the art which
only flourishes in free countries. It is an old proverb, that "Every
people has its prophet"; and every class of the people has. Our
community runs through a long scale of mental power, from the highest
refinement to the borders of savage ignorance and rudeness. There are
not only the wants of the intellectual and learned and poetic men and
women to be met, but also the vast interests of property, public and
private, of mining, of manufactures, of trade, of railroads, etc. These
must have their advocates of each improvement and each interest. Then
the political questions, which agitate millions, find or form a class of
men by nature and habit fit to discuss and deal with these measures, and
make them intelligible and acceptable to the electors. So of education,
of art, of philanthropy.
Eloquence shows the power and possibility of man. There is one of whom
we took no note, but on a certain occasion it appears that he has a
secret virtue never suspected,--that he can paint what has occurred, and
what must occur, with such clearness to a company, as if they saw it
done before their eyes. By leading their thought he leads their will,
and can make them do gladly what an hour ago they would not believe that
they could be led to do at all: he makes them glad or angry or penitent
at his pleasure; of enemies makes friends, and fills desponding men with
hope and joy. After Sheridan's speech in the trial of Warren Hastings,
Mr. Pitt moved an adjournment, that the House might recover from the
overpowering effect of Sheridan's oratory. Then recall the delight that
sudden eloquence gives,--the surprise that the moment is so rich. The
orator is the physician. Whether he speaks in the Capitol or on a cart,
he is the benefactor that lifts men above themselves, and creates a
higher appetite than he satisfies. The orator is he whom every man is
seeking when he goes into the courts, into the conventions, into any
popular assembly,--though often disappointed, yet never giving over the
hope. He finds himself perhaps in the Senate, when the forest has cast
out some wild, black-browed bantling to show the same energy in the
crowd of officials which he had learned in driving cattle to the hills,
or in scrambling through thickets in a winter forest, or through the
swamp and river for his game. In the folds of his brow, in the majesty
of his mien, Nature has marked her son; and in that artificial and
perhaps unworthy place and company shall remind you of the lessons
taught him in earlier days by the torrent in the gloom of the
pine-woods, when he was the companion of the mountain cattle, of jays
and foxes, and a hunter of the bear. Or you may find him in some lowly
Bethel, by the seaside, where a hard-featured, scarred, and wrinkled
Methodist becomes the poet of the sailor and the fisherman, whilst he
pours out the abundant streams of his thought through a language all
glittering and fiery with imagination,--a man who never knew the
looking-glass or the critic,--a man whom college drill or patronage
never made, and whom praise cannot spoil,--a man who conquers his
audience by infusing his soul into them, and speaks by the right of
being the person in the assembly who has the most to say, and so makes
all other speakers appear little and cowardly before his face. For the
time, his exceeding life throws all other gifts into shade,--philosophy
speculating on its own breath, taste, learning, and all,--and yet how
every listener gladly consents to be nothing in his presence, and to
share this surprising emanation, and be steeped and ennobled in the new
wine of this eloquence! It instructs in the power of man over men; that
a man is a mover; to the extent of his being, a power; and, in contrast
with the efficiency he suggests, our actual life and society appears a
dormitory. Who can wonder at its influence on young and ardent minds?
Uncommon boys follow uncommon men; and I think every one of us can
remember when our first experiences made us for a time the victim and
worshipper of the first master of this art whom we happened to hear in
the court-house or in the caucus. We reckon the bar, the senate,
journalism, and the pulpit, peaceful professions; but you cannot escape
the demand for courage in these, and certainly there is no true orator
who is not a hero. His attitude in the rostrum, on the platform,
requires that he counterbalance his auditory. He is challenger, and must
answer all comers. The orator must ever stand with forward foot, in the
attitude of advancing. His speech must be just ahead of the
assembly,--ahead of the whole human race,--or it is superfluous. His
speech is not to be distinguished from action. It is the electricity of
action. It is action, as the general's word of command, or chart of
battle, is action. I must feel that the speaker compromises himself to
his auditory, comes for something,--it is a cry on the perilous edge of
the fight,--or let him be silent. You go to a town-meeting where the
people are called to some disagreeable duty,--such as, for example,
often occurred during the war, at the occasion of a new draft. They come
unwillingly: they have spent their money once or twice very freely. They
have sent their best men: the young and ardent, those of a martial
temper, went at the first draft, or the second, and it is not easy to
see who else can be spared, or can be induced to go. The silence and
coldness after the meeting is opened, and the purpose of it stated, are
not encouraging. When a good man rises in the cold and malicious
assembly, you think, Well, sir, it would be more prudent to be silent;
why not rest, sir, on your good record? Nobody doubts your talent and
power; but for the present business, we know all about it, and are tired
of being pushed into patriotism by people who stay at home. But he,
taking no counsel of past things, but only of the inspiration of his
to-day's feeling, surprises them with his tidings, with his better
knowledge, his larger view, his steady gaze at the new and future event,
whereof they had not thought, and they are interested, like so many
children, and carried off out of all recollection of their malignant
considerations, and he gains his victory by prophecy, where they
expected repetition. He knew very well beforehand that they were looking
behind and that he was looking ahead, and therefore it was wise to
speak. Then the observer says, What a godsend is this manner of man to a
town! and he, what a faculty! He is put together like a Waltham watch,
or like a locomotive just finished at the Tredegar works.
No act indicates more universal health than eloquence. The special
ingredients of this force are: clear perceptions; memory; power of
statement; logic; imagination, or the skill to clothe your thought in
natural images; passion, which is the _heat_; and then a grand will,
which, when legitimate and abiding, we call _character_, the height of
manhood. As soon as a man shows rare power of expression, like Chatham,
Erskine, Patrick Henry, Webster, or Phillips, all the great interests,
whether of state or of property, crowd to him to be their spokesman, so
that he is at once a potentate, a ruler of men. A worthy gentleman, Mr.
Alexander, listening to the debates of the General Assembly of the
Scottish Kirk, in Edinburgh, and eager to speak to the questions, but
utterly failing in his endeavors,--delighted with the talent shown by
Dr. Hugh Blair, went to him, and offered him one thousand pounds
sterling if he would teach him to speak with propriety in public. If the
performance of the advocate reaches any high success, it is paid in
England with dignities in the professions, and in the state with seats
in the cabinet, earldoms, and woolsacks. And it is easy to see that the
great and daily growing interests at stake in this country must pay
proportional prices to their spokesmen and defenders. It does not
surprise us, then, to learn from Plutarch what great sums were paid at
Athens to the teachers of rhetoric; and if the pupils got what they paid
for, the lessons were cheap.
But this power which so fascinates and astonishes and commands is only
the exaggeration of a talent which is universal. All men are competitors
in this art. We have all attended meetings called for some object in
which no one had beforehand any warm interest. Every speaker rose
unwillingly, and even his speech was a bad excuse; but it is only the
first plunge which is formidable, and deep interest or sympathy thaws
the ice, loosens the tongue, and will carry the cold and fearful
presently into self-possession, and possession of the audience. Go into
an assembly well excited, some angry political meeting on the eve of a
crisis. Then it appears that eloquence is as natural as swimming,--an
art which all men might learn, though so few do. It only needs that they
should be once well pushed off into the water, overhead, without corks,
and, after a mad struggle or two, they find their poise and the use of
their arms, and henceforward they possess this new and wonderful
element.
The most hard-fisted, disagreeably restless, thought-paralyzing
companion sometimes turns out in a public assembly to be a fluent,
various, and effective orator. Now you find what all that excess of
power which so chafed and fretted you in a _tête-à-tête_ with him was
for. What is peculiar in it is a certain creative heat, which, a man
attains to perhaps only once in his life. Those whom we admire--the
great orators--have some _habit_ of heat, and, moreover, a certain
control of it, an art of husbanding it,--as if their hand was on the
organ-stop, and could now use it temperately, and now let out all the
length and breadth of the power. I remember that Jenny Lind, when in
this country, complained of concert-rooms and town-halls, that they did
not give her room enough to unroll her voice, and exulted in the
opportunity given her in the great halls she found sometimes built over
a railroad depot. And this is quite as true of the action of the mind
itself, that a man of this talent sometimes finds himself cold and slow
in private company, and perhaps a heavy companion; but give him a
commanding occasion, and the inspiration of a great multitude, and he
surprises by new and unlooked-for powers. Before, he was out of place,
and unfitted as a cannon in a parlor. To be sure there are physical
advantages,--some eminently leading to this art. I mentioned Jenny
Lind's voice. A good voice has a charm in speech as in song; sometimes
of itself enchains attention, and indicates a rare sensibility,
especially when trained to wield all its powers. The voice, like the
face, betrays the nature and disposition, and soon indicates what is the
range of the speaker's mind. Many people have no ear for music, but
every one has an ear for skilful reading. Every one of us has at some
time been the victim of a well-toned and cunning voice, and perhaps been
repelled once for all by a harsh, mechanical speaker. The voice, indeed,
is a delicate index of the state of mind. I have heard an eminent
preacher say, that he learns from the first tones of his voice on a
Sunday morning whether he is to have a successful day. A singer cares
little for the words of the song; he will make any words glorious. I
think the like rule holds of the good reader. In the church I call him
only a good reader who can read sense and poetry into any hymn in the
hymn-book. Plutarch, in his enumeration of the ten Greek orators, is
careful to mention their excellent voices, and the pains bestowed by
some of them in training these. What character, what infinite variety,
belong to the voice! sometimes it is a flute, sometimes a trip-hammer;
what range of force! In moments of clearer thought or deeper sympathy,
the voice will attain a music and penetration which surprises the
speaker as much as the auditor; he also is a sharer of the higher wind
that blows over his strings. I believe that some orators go to the
assembly as to a closet where to find their best thoughts. The Persian
poet Saadi tells us that a person with a disagreeable voice was reading
the Koran aloud, when a holy man, passing by, asked what was his monthly
stipend. He answered, "Nothing at all." "But why then do you take so
much trouble?" He replied, "I read for the sake of God." The other
rejoined, "For God's sake, do not read; for if you read the Koran in
this manner you will destroy the splendor of Islamism." Then there are
persons of natural fascination, with certain frankness, winning manners,
almost endearments in their style; like Bouillon, who could almost
persuade you that a quartan ague was wholesome; like Louis XI. of
France, whom Commines praises for "the gift of managing all minds by his
accent and the caresses of his speech"; like Galiani, Voltaire, Robert
Burns, Barclay, Fox, and Henry Clay. What must have been the discourse
of St. Bernard, when mothers hid their sons, wives their husbands,
companions their friends, lest they should be led by his eloquence to
join the monastery.
It is said that one of the best readers in his time was the late
President John Quincy Adams. I have heard that no man could read the
Bible with such powerful effect. I can easily believe it, though I never
heard him speak in public until his fine voice was much broken by age.
But the wonders he could achieve with that cracked and disobedient organ
showed what power might have belonged to it in early manhood. If
"indignation makes good verses," as Horace says, it is not less true
that a good indignation makes an excellent speech. In the early years of
this century, Mr. Adams, at that time a member of the United States
Senate at Washington, was elected Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in
Harvard College. When he read his first lectures in 1806, not only the
students heard him with delight, but the hall was crowded by the
Professors and by unusual visitors. I remember when, long after, I
entered college, hearing the story of the numbers of coaches in which
his friends came from Boston to hear him. On his return in the winter to
the Senate at Washington, he took such ground in the debates of the
following session as to lose the sympathy of many of his constituents in
Boston. When, on his return from Washington, he resumed his lectures in
Cambridge, his class attended, but the coaches from Boston did not come,
and, indeed, many of his political friends deserted him. In 1809 he was
appointed Minister to Russia, and resigned his chair in the University.
His last lecture, in taking leave of his class, contained some nervous
allusions to the treatment he had received from his old friends, which
showed how much it had stung him, and which made a profound impression
on the class. Here is the concluding paragraph, which long resounded in
Cambridge:--
"At no hour of your life will the love of letters ever oppress you as a
burden, or fail you as a resource. In the vain and foolish exultation of
the heart, which the brighter prospects of life will sometimes excite,
the pensive portress of Science shall call you to the sober pleasures of
her holy cell. In the mortifications of disappointment, her soothing
voice shall whisper serenity and peace. In social converse with the
mighty dead of ancient days, you will never smart under the galling
sense of dependence upon the mighty living of the present age. And in
your struggles with the world, should a crisis ever occur, when even
friendship may deem it prudent to desert you, when even your country may
seem ready to abandon herself and you, when priest and Levite shall come
and look on you and pass by on the other side, seek refuge, my
_un_failing friends, and be assured you shall find it, in the friendship
of Lælius and Scipio, in the patriotism of Cicero, Demosthenes, and
Burke, as well as in the precepts and example of Him whose law is love,
and who taught us to remember injuries only to forgive them."
The orator must command the whole scale of the language, from the most
elegant to the most low and vile. Every one has felt how superior in
force is the language of the street to that of the academy. The street
must be one of his schools. Ought not the scholar to be able to convey
his meaning in terms as short and strong as the porter or truckman uses
to convey his? And Lord Chesterfield thought "that without being
instructed in the dialect of the _Halles_ no man could be a complete
master of French." The speech of the man in the street is invariably
strong, nor can you mend it by making it what you call parliamentary.
You say, "if he could only express himself"; but he does already better
than any one can for him,--can always get the ear of an audience to the
exclusion of everybody else. Well, this is an example in point. That
something which each man was created to say and do, he only or he best
can tell you, and has a right to supreme attention so far. The power of
their speech is, that it is perfectly understood by all; and I believe
it to be true, that when any orator at the bar or in the Senate rises in
his thought, he descends in his language,--that is, when he rises to any
height of thought or of passion he comes down to a language level with
the ear of all his audience. It is the merit of John Brown and of
Abraham Lincoln--one at Charlestown, one at Gettysburg--in the two best
specimens of eloquence we have had in this country. And observe that all
poetry is written in the oldest and simplest English words. Dr. Johnson
said, "There is in every nation a style which never becomes obsolete, a
certain mode of phraseology so consonant to the analogy and principles
of its respective language as to remain settled and unaltered. This
style is to be sought in the common intercourse of life among those who
speak only to be understood, without ambition of elegance. The polite
are always catching modish innovations, and the learned forsake the
vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above
grossness and below refinement, where propriety resides."