position of a despotic and revolted king, who should come with an army of Frenchmen, to conquer the position of a tyrant. But a king in this position is no longer a king." [General applause.] Mirabeau proceeds: "It is the tocsin of necessity alone which can give the signal when the moment is come for fulfilling the imprescriptable duty of resistance,—a duty always imperative whenever the Constitution is violated, always triumphant when the resistance is just and truly national. »

Are not these words the prophetic and living picture of the Revolution of July? In the same effusion and a little after, Mirabeau, in a celebrated adjuration, introduces on the stage the Abbé Sieyès: "I will not conceal," said he, "my deep regret that the man who has laid the foundations of the Constitution, that the man who has revealed to the world the true principles of representative government, who condemns himself to a silence which I deplore, which I think culpable, that the Abbé Sieyès-I ask his pardon for naming him - does not come forward to insert himself in his constitution, one of the most important springs of the social order. This occasions me the more pain that, crushed beneath a weight of labor beyond my intellectual forces, unceasingly hurried off from self-collection and meditation, which are the principal sources of mental power, I had not myself turned attention to this question of the completion of my work, accustomed as I was to repose upon that great thinker. I have pressed him, conjured, implored in the name of the friendship with which he honors me, in the name of patriotism,— that sentiment far more energetic and holy, -to endow us with the treasure of his ideas, not to leave a blank in the Constitution. He has refused me; I denounce him to you! I conjure you, in my turn, to obtain his opinion, which ought not to be a secret, to rescue, in fine, from discouragement a man whose silence and seclusion I regard as a public calamity."

I have remarked that what has raised Mirabeau incomparably beyond other orators, is the profundity and breadth of his thoughts, the solidity of his reasoning, the vehemence of his improvisations; but it is especially the unexampled felicity of his repartees. In fact, the auditors, and principally the rival orators, hold themselves on their guard against premeditated speeches. As they know that the orator has spread in advance his toils to surprise them, they prepare accordingly in advance to elude him. They search for, they divine, they discover, they dispose for themselves, with more or less of ability, the arguments which he must employ, his facts, his proofs, his insinuations, and sometimes even his figures and happiest movements. They have thus, all ready to meet him, their objections. They shut the air-and-eye holes of their helmet, they cover the weak points of their cuirass where his lance might penetrate; and when the orator crosses the barrier, and rushes impetuous to the conflict, he encounters before him an enemy armed cap-a-pie, who bars his way and disputes valiantly the victory. But a happy oratorical retort astonishes and delights even your adversaries; it produces the effect of things unexpected. It is a startling counterplot, which cuts the gordian knots of the play and precipitates the catastrophe. It is the lightning flash amid the darkness of night. It is the arm which strikes in the buckler of the enemy, who draws it instantly and returns it to pierce the bosom of him who had launched it. The repartee shakes the irresolute and floating masses of an assembly. It comes upon you, as the eagle, concealed in the hollow of a rock, makes a stoop at its prey and carries it off all palpitating in its talons, before it even has emitted a cry. It arouses, by the stimulant of its novelty, the thick-skulled, phlegmatic, and drowsy deputies who were falling asleep. It sends a sudden and softening thrill to the soul. It fires the audience to cry, To arms! to arms! It wrings from the bosom exclamations of wrath. It provokes laughter inextinguishable. It compels the adversary- offi

cer or soldier -to go hide his shame in the ranks of his company, who open them to receive him but with pity and derision. It resolves with a word the question in a debate. It signifies an event. It reveals a character. It paints a situation. It absolves, it condemns, a party. It makes a reputation, or it unmakes it. It glorifies, it stigmatizes, it dejects, it cheers, it unbinds, it reattaches, it saves, it slays. It attracts, it suspends magically, as by a golden chain, an entire assembly from the lips of a single man. It concentrates at the same time its whole attention upon a single point, for a moment produces unanimity, and may decide of a sudden the loss or the gain of a parliamentary battle.

Never did Mirabeau shrink from an objection or an adversary. He drew himself up to his full height under the menace of his enemies, and burst by sledgeblows the nail which it was intended he should draw. In the tribune he braved the prejudices, the dumb objurgations and muttering impatience of the Assembly. Immovable as a rock, he crossed his arms and awaited silence. He retorted instantly, blow after blow, upon all opponents and on all subjects, with a rapidity of action and a nicety of pertinence really surprising. He painted men and things with a manner and words entirely his own. How energetically did he describe France, "an unconstituted aggregation of disunited people." He used to say in his monarchical language: "The monarch is the perpetual representative of the people, and the deputies are the temporary representatives.» Member of the Directory of Paris, he expressed himself thus before the king: "A tall tree covers with its shade a large surface. Its roots shoot wide and deep through the soil and entwine themselves around eternal rocks. To pull it down, the earth itself must be uptorn. Such, sire, is the image of constitutional monarchy.» Assailed impertinently by M. de Faucigny, he words the reprimand in these terms: «The Assembly, satisfied with the repentance you testify, remits you, sir, the penalty which you have incurred.»

What vivacity, what actuality, what nobleness in all these repartees! what keen and chivalrous irony! what vigor!

LORD MACAULAY

(THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, BARON MACAULAY)

ACAULAY'S essay

M

(1800-1859)

"On the Athenian Orators" is the result of extensive study and the subject is one with which he was thoroughly familiar. He loved oratory as an art, and for its own sake, aside from any possible results to be achieved from it. He became, largely through such studies, one of the most celebrated orators of the first half of the nineteenth century; but a result of still greater importance was the formation of his prose style on that of Cicero. He is probably the best English representative of Cicero's method of "amplification≫ by adding clause to clause, balancing one against the other, to make cumulative the force of meaning in a sentence. It is a fact of the highest artistic and practical importance that both in Macaulay and in Cicero, such clauses have a governing impulse of rhythm under which they seek to balance each other in musical time, as do the verses of a quatrain or the sextette of a sonnet. No one ever becomes a great writer of prose without developing this subconscious faculty of perception for "quantity" in language.

What Macaulay says of Quintilian should be accepted with reserve. Conceding all that could be said of his faults of taste and judgment, Quintilian would still remain secure in his rightful place at the side of Cicero as one of the greatest essayists and critics of Rome, with a knowledge of the fundamental melodic laws of language from which the most learned and scientific of modern philologists and prosodists have yet much to borrow before they can reach an adequate idea of classical art in the handling of words in prose and verse.

THE

ON THE ATHENIAN ORATORS

To the famous orators repair,

Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence

Wielded at will that fierce democratie,

Shook the arsenal, and thundered over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.

-Milton.

HE celebrity of the great classical writers is confined within no limits, except those which separate civilized from savage man. Their works are the common property of every polished nation. They have furnished subjects for the painter, and models for the poet. In the minds of the educated classes throughout Europe, their names are indissolubly associated with the endearing

recollections of childhood,

the old schoolroom, the dog-eared grammar, the first prize, the tears so often shed and so quickly dried. So great is the veneration with which they are regarded, that even the editors and commentators, who perform the lowest menial offices to their memory are considered, like the equerries and chamberlains of sovereign princes, as entitled to a high rank in the table of literary precedence. It is, therefore, somewhat singular that their productions should so rarely have been examined on just and philosophical principles of criticism.

When they par

The ancient writers themselves afford us but little assistance. ticularize, they are commonly trivial; when they would generalize, they become indistinct. An exception must, indeed, be made in favor of Aristotle. Both in analysis and in combination, that great man was without a rival. No philosopher has ever possessed, in an equal degree, the talent either of separating established systems into their primary elements, or of connecting detached phenomena in harmonious systems. He was the great fashioner of the intellectual chaos; he changed its darkness into light, and its discord into order. He brought to literary researches the same vigor and amplitude of mind to which both physical and metaphysical science are so greatly indebted. His fundamental principles of criticism are excellent. To cite only a single instance: the doctrine which he established, that poetry is an imitative art, when justly understood, is to the critic what the compass is to the navigator. With it he may venture upon the most extensive excursions. Without it he must creep cautiously along the coast, or lose himself in a trackless expanse, and trust, at best, to the guidance of an occasional star. It is a discovery which changes a caprice into a science.

The general propositions of Aristotle are valuable. But the merit of the superstructure bears no proportion to that of the foundation. This is partly to be ascribed to the character of the philosopher, who, though qualified to do all that could be done by the resolving and combining powers of the understanding, seems not to have possessed much of sensibility or imagination. Partly, also, it may be attributed to the deficiency of materials. The great works of genius which then existed were not either sufficiently numerous or sufficiently varied to enable any man to form a perfect code of literature. To require that a critic should conceive classes of composition which had never existed, and then investigate their principles, would be as unreasonable as the demand of Nebuchadnezzar, who expected his magicians first to tell him his dream, and then to interpret it.

With all his deficiencies, Aristotle was the most enlightened and profound critic of antiquity. Dionysius was far from possessing the same exquisite subtlety, or the same vast comprehension. But he had access to a much greater number of specimens, and he had devoted himself, as it appears, more exclusively to the study of elegant literature. His particular judgments are of more value than his general principles. He is only the historian of literature. Aristotle is its philosopher.

Quintilian applied to general literature the same principles by which he had been accustomed to judge of the declamations of his pupils. He looks for nothing but rhetoric, and rhetoric not of the highest order. He speaks coldly of the incomparable works of Eschylus. He admires, beyond expression, those inexhaustible mines of commonplaces, the plays of Euripides. He bestows a few vague words on the poetical character of Homer. He then proceeds to consider him merely as an orator. An orator Homer doubtless was, and a great orator. But surely nothing is more remarkable in his admirable works than the art with which his oratorical powers are made subservient to the purposes of poetry.

Nor can I think Quintilian a great critic in his own province. Just as are many of his remarks, beautiful as are many of his illustrations, we can perpetually detect in his thoughts that flavor which the soil of despotism generally communicates to all the fruits of genius. Eloquence was, in his time, little more than a condiment which served to stimulate in a despot the jaded appetite for panegyric, an amusement for the traveled nobles and the bluestocking matrons of Rome. It is, therefore, with him rather a sport than a war; it is a contest of foils, not of swords. He appears to think more of the grace of the attitude than of the direction and vigor of the thrust. It must be acknowledged in justice to Quintilian, that this is an error to which Cicero has too often given the sanction both of his precept and his example.

Longinus seems to have had great sensibility but little discrimination. He gives us eloquent sentences, but no principles. It was happily said that Montesquieu ought to have changed the name of his book from "L'esprit de Lois" to "L'esprit sur les Lois." In the same manner the philosopher of Palmyra ought to have entitled his famous work, not "Longinus on the Sublime, » but «The Sublimities of Longinus.» The origin of the sublime is one of the most curious and interesting subjects of inquiry that can occupy the attention of a critic. In our own country it has been discussed with great ability, and, I think, with very little success, by Burke and Dugald Stewart. Longinus dispenses himself from all investigations of this nature by telling his friend Terentianus that he already knows everything that can be said upon the question. It is to be regretted that Terentianus did not impart some of his knowledge to his instructor, for from Longinus we learn only that sublimity means height, or elevation. This name, so commodiously vague, is applied indifferently to the noble prayer of Ajax in the «Iliad," and to a passage of Plato about the human body, as full of conceits as an ode of Cowley. Having no fixed standard, Longinus is right only by accident. He is rather a fancier than a critic.

Modern writers have been prevented by many causes from supplying the deficiencies of their classical predecessors. At the time of the revival of literature no man could, without great and painful labor, acquire an accurate and elegant knowledge of the ancient languages. And, unfortunately, those grammatical and philological studies, without which it was impossible to understand the great works of Athenian and Roman genius, have a tendency to contract the views and deaden the sensibility of those who follow them with extreme assiduity. A powerful mind which has been long employed in such studies, may be compared to the gigantic spirit in the Arabian tale, who was persuaded to contract himself to small dimensions in order to enter within the enchanted vessel, and, when his prison had been closed upon him, found himself unable to escape from the narrow boundaries to the measure of which he had reduced his stature. When the means have long been the objects of application, they are naturally substituted for the end. It was said by Eugene of Savoy, that the greatest generals have commonly been those who have been at once raised to command and introduced to the great operations of war without being employed in the petty calculations and manœuvres which employ the time of an inferior officer. In literature the principle is equally sound. The great tactics of criticism will, in general, be best understood by those who have not had much practice in drilling syllables and particles.

I remember to have observed among the French Anas a ludicrous instance of this. A scholar, doubtless of great learning, recommends the study of some long Latin treatise,-of which I now forget the name,- on the religion, manners, government, and language of the early Greeks. "For there," says he, "you will learn