an orator, but as a wise ruler, a large-hearted statesman, a great chief magistrate, whose name finds fit association with that of Washington; but he was one of the greatest orators this country ever produced; and if you want a proof of this, you will find it in the debate between Lincoln and Douglas in the Illinois contest for the United States Senatorship in 1858; a debate in which you will see, not one, but two intellectual giants struggling for the mastery.

For free, natural, spontaneous eloquence; for strong argument and matchless fascination of manner, commend me to Robert G. Ingersoll-I do not know any living orator to equal him. Such a continuous stream of free-flowing, living thought, of bold, noble sentiments, expressed in strong, every-day English, is not found in any other speaker of our day. O, that the sons of Toil could capture him, convert him to their faith, and make him the expounder and defender of their cause! They would then have an orator who would make their cause as popular, as interesting, as surely victorious as Wendell Phillips made the antislavery cause. Ingersoll's Cooper Institute speech in favor of Garfield, in the Garfield-Hancock campaign, is the finest political oration I ever heard or read in my life. What forcible, convincing, consummate arguments! What marvellously rich illustrations! and what an accumulation of proofs in support of his argument! What enthusiastic good feeling he aroused, and how completely and easily he carried his audience along with him! What a crowning triumph to pronounce a speech that is accompanied by one round of enthusiastic and re-echoing applause from beginning to end!

Webster's power as an orator was founded on great natural ability, developed by a liberal education, and strengthened and ennobled by constant and varied study. Nothing came amiss to him; like all great men, he drew upon all sources to improve and enlarge the powers of his mind. His language, his images, his whole style has something of classic purity about it; his figures and illustrations are drawn from the noblest sources; his sentences are strong, forcible, polished; his manner is highly dignified and impressive; and his power of seizing and disposing of the salient points in an argument unequalled. For great mental power, sound logical reasoning, and classic purity of style, Webster stands unrivalled. It was his large literary culture that enabled him to give such noble expression to those patriotic sentiments which have rendered his speeches the admiration of every citizen and the favorite declamation of every student of oratory. While Calhoun dealt in cool logical syllogisms, which none but lawyers could fully appreciate, Webster appealed to those warm and generous sentiments which all can appreciate love of country, pride in its honor and prosperity, and anxiety for its preservation-sentiments which find an echo in every true American heart.

The only orator of modern times who can at all be compared to him is Edmund Burke; yet Burke's scholarly, richly suggestive and philosophic speeches had often the effect, unlike Webster's, of emptying the halls of legislation in which they were delivered. Burke seems to have soared above the heads of his audience; Webster attracted his hearers, lifted them up to his region of thought, and carried them along with him.

"Does it read well? If it does, it is a bad speech!"

said Charles James Fox concerning a recently delivered speech. Measured by this standard, Webster was inferior to Clay, whose speeches do not read so well as the former's. Clay, however, had such a marvellously winning way with him, that few could withstand his appeals; and I have no doubt that his speeches were even more effective than those of the great expounder of the Constitution.

"Of narrow education," says a writer in The Voice, "bred in no very polished society, and never much given to reading, Henry Clay's culture was gathered chiefly from the society of the people with whom he came in contact, and from the enterprises in which he was engaged. We shall look in vain, in his reported speeches, for scholastic beauties or literary gems; in vain for affluent imagery or polished periods. No; his eloquence was fed from other fountains. His words were picked up from a few books and from many men; some of them good, some bad, like the variety of human nature which he had fallen in with. He shook hands with the hunters of the West and the scholars of the East; with wagon-boys from Ohio and presidents from Virginia; and from them all he had gathered and garnered up his common but copious vocabulary. He spoke as the battle of debate demanded: instant, fervid, to the very point of the moment. He had no time for preparation, for choice diction, for culled periods. His power lay hidden in his lofty and Roman-like character, and in his fervid sensibility; and his appeals were always to the nobler thoughts and the loftier passions of men."

Frenchmen and Spaniards have more of the whirlwind in their speeches than Englishmen or Americans;

consequently their orators surpass all others in rapidity, vehemence, and sublimity of utterance. Just listen to Mr. John Hay's admirable description of the eloquence of Castelar :

"Whatever may be said of his enduring influence upon legislation, there can be no difference of opinion in regard to his transcendent gifts as an orator. There is something almost superhuman in his delivery. He is the only man I have ever seen who produces, in very truth, those astounding effects which I have always thought the inventions of poets and the exaggerations of biographers. When you have heard Castelar, the 'torrent of Demosthenes' and 'the conflagration of Tully' cease to be unmeaning metaphors. His speech is like a torrent in its inconceivable fluency, like a raging fire in its brilliancy of color and terrible energy of passion. Never for an instant is the wonderful current of declamation checked by the pauses, the hesitations, the deliberations that mark all Anglo-Saxon debate. An entire oration will be delivered with precisely the fluent energy which a veteran actor exhibits in his most passionate scenes; and when you consider that this is not conned beforehand, but is struck off instantly, in the very heat and spasm of utterance, it seems little short of inspiration. And yet so perfect is his diction, that the most fastidious rhetorician could not produce periods of more exquisite harmony, antitheses more sharp and shining, metaphors more neatly fitting, all uttered with a distinct rapidity that makes the despair of stenographers. His memory, which is under perfect discipline, is prodigious, and he has the world's history at his tongue's end. No fact is too insignificant to be retained nor too stale to do service."

CHAPTER XIII.

T

DEBATE AND DEBATING SOCIETIES.

a young man seeking intellectual development and the power of persuasive speech, there is perhaps no more profitable exercise than that of debate, and no more excellent school than a debating society. Such a society is usually composed of young men who are desirous of cultivating and strengthening their intellectual powers by friendly contact with other minds, by the free exchange of ideas in conversation, by rational discussion and literary exercises. Now all the exercises of a debating society, the interchange of thought on the questions of the day, the exciting debate on special subjects, the quick reply and the flashing retort, the spirited declamation, the animated dialogue, and the pointed enforcement of parliamentary rules-all these have a most salutary effect on the mind, rousing ambition to excel, kindling the mind into a blaze of generous enthusiasm, and exciting a love of study, of literature and eloquence, such as no other exercises can excite. When I hear of a young man joining a debating society, I know that to him the period of mental awakening has come, and that his further intellectual development, be his opportunities what they may, is only a question of time.