Burke's speeches and political pamphlets compose by far the most valuable body of lessons in eloquence which our language possesses. They instruct us sometimes by those failures into which the orator was betrayed by his teeming, imaginative, and exciteable genius; but they teach us at least as often by examples of the most signal and splendid success. As Burke, more than any other of our statesmen, nourished the ambition of rivalling ancient eloquence, so his works, in the variety of their oratorical qualities, and in the finish which they frequently exhibit, do unquestionably come nearer than any others to the ancient character. They are, it is true, in their prevailing manner, more like to the ornate and redundant elocution of Cicero, than to the severe simplicity of the great Athenian; but some of their happiest images and thoughts are derived from Demosthenes, and some equally happy are not unworthy of him. Burke's style, while it is highly argumentative, is distinguished, beyond that of any other political writer or speaker, for the continual distrust which it exhibits in the hearers' ability or willingness to follow trains of pure argument: the imagination is constantly excited by illustration and imagery: and, to use our rhetorical terminology, the favourite argument is the example, instances real and fictitious being crowded upon each other, as if the speaker were resolutely determined to appropriate one to every individual who listened to him; and the argument being at length usually closed by a strongly worded aphorism, sometimes true and as often erroneous, very seldom logically proved by the arguments which have preceded it, but always strikingly illustrated by them, and exhibited in the most conciliating and attractive light. Perhaps Burke's oratorical skill and genius are

not anywhere displayed so remarkably as in his Reflections on the Revolution of France, in which the writer, besides the prejudice to which he exposed himself by his sudden change of party, had another and stronger disadvantage in his own mind; namely, that of defending and representing as paramount a series of principles in politics and legislation, which, if he had not substantively denied their truth, he had at least, in common with his party, always represented as subordinate to other principles which it was now his task to decry. But the man of genius did not shrink from the undertaking, and the powers of his remarkable mind bore him triumphantly through it; for no discourse could have been more skilfully conducted, or better calculated to make a strong impression. He even labours again and again to enlist in his new cause those feelings in favour of constitutional freedom, which he had so long been accustomed to rally round him; but he rests his hopes of success mainly on the excitement of other ideas and feelings, which he paints to the fancy in colours as bright as any in which his pencil was ever dipped. The horror of bloodshed, attachment to order, and fear of anarchy, now hold in the writer's mind that prevailing place which had formerly belonged to the hatred of despotism and the love of freedom: the sentiment of chivalrous devotion to kings and ladies is aroused by that beautifully and pathetically romantic picture of the Queen of France as the morning star: the departure of the ancient days of knightly strength and honour is seriously and warmly deplored; their very vices, it is declared, have given place to others worse, and their religious superstition is boldly preferred to the philosophical superstition of the modern sceptics. Among Burke's speeches, the masterpieces

are admittedly those on the impeachment of Warren Hastings, which compose a field too wide to be here surveyed. Of the minor speeches there is scarcely one that is not both characteristic and highly instructive. None of them possesses greater variety than the speech of 1775 for Conciliation with America, the beauties of which it is not easy to select-the vision of the guardian angel, who, drawing aside a curtain, displays the glories of Britain in sunshine, darkened but by one faint and distant spot (an image which, like many others of the same speaker, hovers on the very verge of poetry, and can scarcely have been successful in the House of Commons); the picturesque description of the kingdom of the backwoodsmen; the animated appeals to English freedom and free habits, like that in which he tells his hearers, that if they preach unconstitutional doctrines to the Americans, their English speech will betray them; the bold figures by which he introduces the resolutions which he was to move; and the classical image of the temple of peace, with which the oration closes. The speech of 1780, on Economical Reform, is at once manly, practical, and well reasoned, and full of the most happilyconceived ridicule. The celebrated speech at Bristol, and that on Fox's East India Bill, although possessing high oratorical merit, and abounding with fine passages, are yet less valuable to the student than to the politician. The speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts exhibits Burke at once in his full strength, and with much of his weakness; it is full of pertinent inferences from granted facts; rich in picturesque oriental imagery; and adorned by a profusion of oratorical figures, varying in character and success from the grand image of Hyder Ali and the cloud (borrowed from one or

more classical models), down to the familiar one which represents the minister as sowing corruption broadcast, and the disgusting one in which a disliked adversary is compared to the most unclean of animals.

Of Canning we mean to say very little, besides recommending his speeches to the student as exceedingly instructive lessons. They are in the hands, and familiar to the recollection, of every one; and no estimate of their merits could be complete which should not analyse, by way of comparison, the oratory of one or more of his rivals who have not yet quitted the scene. In Canning's speeches, the orator seldom rises into strong passion himself, and never elevates the audience along with him: the loftiest atmosphere in which he ever moves is that of noble and generous feeling, expressed with warmth enough to kindle its glow in the breasts of others, but never so warmly as to deprive either them or the speaker of perfect self-possession. The direct and ultimate appeal to the imagination is practised much oftener and more boldly, and, in many beautiful and poetical pictures, is conducted with singular taste and success: a keen and playful wit, now veiled in irony, now half disguised in bitter sarcasm, and now shedding a fiery shower of open invective, is everywhere present, and almost everywhere holds a prominent place; and the oration, considered as an address to the understanding, is always clear and well reasoned, generally close and pointed, and often, in dealing with difficult materials, distinguished by consummate rhetorical skill. Of Canning's ingenuity in debating a delicate and hazardous question, we can desire no better instance than his eloquent and most skilful argument against Parlia

mentary Reform, delivered at the election-dinner at Liverpool in 1818. The most passionate specimens of his eloquence are contained in some of his speeches on Catholic Emancipation; and his genius probably nowhere displayed its powers so commandingly as in two of its latest efforts, the speech and reply on the projected invasion of Portugal by Spain, delivered in December 1826.

THE END.