manner; we cannot regard it simply as a natural deficiency, nor express regret merely, but it must be viewed as a moral and a culpable deficiency; one is bound to observe such incompetence in one's self, and one should abandon an employment which is found to be beyond his reach: particularly as in most cases, perseverance and application would have compensated for what was lacking to him of native talent. And indeed were his native talents of the greatest, it would still and forever be impossible for him, to appreciate the habits of thought prevailing in a circle of cultivated hearers, and to adapt his own to the same, unless himself the possessor of a scientific and a learned education. This

then he is under obligation to obtain; ignorance with him is to be considered as a defect in character, and to be visited as such with reprobation. And this shows us again how in the case of the orator the activity of all his mental faculties is under a moral guidance.

In the acquisition of a learned and scientific culture, we have absolutely no limit to propose to him; let him proceed as far as he can; let him keep pace with his age or outstrip it; only let him never forget that for him as orator, learning and science are simply means, not end, and that he should not make an exhibition of these various attainments at the expense of those moral ideas which must form the staple of his discourse. This would be in itself immoral as an exhibition of vanity: it would also be to overlook the capacity of the hearer, and would lead to the introduction of topics and discussion which would fatigue the attention of the public without any good result, or would give rise to indistinct ideas instead of clear conceptions; this would be the second and as is self-evident, the equally moral error which is forbidden by the canon of fitness in reference to the capacity of the hearer.

In this adaptation of the discourse to the capacity of the hearer, which, as we have seen, is of moral origin, we discover the first means of exciting the feelings. In order to promote the hearer's interest in a train of ideas, it is absolutely necessary that the activity required of him should not be wearisome; in that case, he would soon become tired of it, and relapse into an inactivity which would render fruitless all further attempts made to interest him by the orator. And should he be disposed to pay attention to a discourse which, by its obscurity, puts his faculties on the rack, yet these extraordinary efforts of his understanding will ope rate to suppress the activity of imagina

tion and feeling, so that it will be impossible to affect them. In a similar manner, also, will attention flag, under an excessive simplicity of address, and the finer movements of the affections will ever refuse the bidding of a man who cannot satisfy even the understanding.

Here I must expect the objection, that the man who is prudent enough to make the above observations himself, needs nothing beyond this very prudence in order to act in accordance with them, and to adapt his discourse to the comprehension of the hearer-thus leaving the moral qualities of the orator entirely out of the question. We admit that, with many a demagogue in Athens and Rome, such might really have been the case: such an example, however, proves nothing for us; for there, if any one had ventured to utter any thing unintelligible, he would have been driven from the forum by the hootings of the impatient assembly. In such a situation, where the absolute necessity of following such a rule was apparent, one might, perhaps, dispense with the assistance of moral qualities, which, under other circumstances, are indispensable; but because, forsooth, a bad man is driven by constraint to adopt a particular course, it does not follow that there is nothing of a moral nature involved in it, and that, if restrictions were removed, both bad and good would succeed in it alike. Consider for a moment the pulpit orator of our day, whose relation to his hearers is far less restricted, their reaction upon him being by no means so offensive; how difficult, and, indeed, impossible it seems to be, often for men of the greatest wisdom, and not at all wanting in ability, to judge of the public, to keep their discourse at a just elevation, mounting neither too high nor descending too low for their hearers. Carried away by their own passion for scientific inquiry, they at one time imagine their hearers possessed of like interest and capacity with themselves; at another time, they sink into commonplace, and tediously repeat and prolong the discussion of points already clear to the hearer's mind: and is not the first an indication of excessive vanity, self-conceit-acknowledged offences against morality? And does not the next, as every lifeless adherence to custom, betray a want of wholesome energy of character ?

Hence it appears, that this which is a very subordinate quality of eloquence, the adaptation of the discourse to the understanding of the hearer, cannot be acquired without the possession of moral excellence. Should I succeed in creating a conviction

of the correctness of this position, I doubt not, I shall have performed no trifling service for those youths who design devoting themselves to eloquence. Science and scholarship prepare them for an office, in which science and scholarship may no longer be the chief object of their exertions, but must be made secondary to the higher object which they are to aid in reaching. But it will be exceedingly difficult for them to understand that this is a higher object, so long as they are taught in their preparatory course that science and scholarship are absolutely highest, taking precedence of every thing, not excepting religion and morality themselves. Vainly now are they admonished to exclude every thing scientific in matter and in form from their discourses; they despise this canon, which, in their view, savors of a weak spirit of compliance, and which, in truth, is habitually denounced as such by their instructors. In the lack of a professor's chair, they appropriate the pulpit to such a use, and heroically attempt to draw up the people to the elevated sphere in which they float. If at last they recover from their folly, they frequently sink dispirited into flat and insipid commonplace. Now, if this adapting of one's discourse to the comprehension of the auditors is not a mere politic compliance, but a truly moral proceeding, if the opposite course is unjustifiable, and if the question is presented in this light to a youth of noble spirit, he will readily conform to a rule which he finds instead of lowering, only dignifies and exalts him.

But the law of fitness requires not merely that the discourse should be adapted to the understanding, but also that the entire individuality of the hearer, his situation, his relations, the circumstances which affect his destiny, and which especially concern him, should be observed by the orator. And this kind of adaptedness is far more difficult to secure than the first; for this, it is necessary that we should know and keep in view the manifold elements of which the social, moral, and religious condition of man is composed, namely, the circle of his ideas and his experiences, the conceptions which are familiar or unusual with him, the images with which his imagination is mostly occupied, the more or less accurate ideal of good he has formed of social, moral, and religious perfection, his virtues and vices, his wishes and appetites, together with those special situations which are the result of rank, of wealth, of political events, of the condition of one's country and the church.

This fitness of the discourse seems to have been admitted to be a means of exciting the affections (which, indeed, in their sense mean passions) by the best masters of rhetoric; at least, I should be able to assign no other reason why Aristotle (Rhet., Lib. II., ch. 12-17) follows up his theory of the passions with a description of the moral condition of men as it is varied by their age, their rank, and their wealth, while he gives no clear account of any use which the orator is expected to make of this knowledge.

Cicero (De Orat. i. 5.), too, desires the orator to be an accomplished, sagacious man, who has comprehended the character of his hearers, their modes of thought, according to their age and rank; and he errs in this alone, that he expects from shrewdness and sagacity results which are best secured by morality. It is not at all impossible that a crafty spirit may succeed in discovering one or another weak side of a character, with the design of bringing it into leading-strings; yet, to gain an enlarged appreciation of the views, feelings, and condition of a man, so as to be able to operate with beneficent and ennobling results upon his character, something more than cunning is necessary; prudence, indeed, is necessary, but such a prudence as follows the guidance of conscientious feeling, and of a disinterested spirit which looks with a genial sympathy upon the various circumstances of men.

Nor may the knowledge thus attained of the hearer be employed to give countenance to his errors, or to flatter his passions; but it must be used in the excitement of his affections, first, negatively, in order to avoid every thing which would wound or offend the hearer, and in regard to things, which though at first view seemingly indifferent, might be disagreeable to him. Without such forethought, it is vain to think of exciting the affections. It is in vain to speak with warmth and emphasis, in vain to the hearer, himself perfectly well disposed to the truth you are presenting, if, on the road to the object which is sought to be gained, he is hindered or vexed by all sorts of annoyances, great and small. And this is not a faulty sensitiveness on his part, for the very demand I make upon him, to surrender himself up entirely to me in one respect, imposes upon me the duty of acting considerately towards him in every other respect, so far as possible. Hence it is the duty of the orator also, acting under the dictates of true moral wisdom, to circumvent all those obstacles which at the moment he

cannot overthrow-this is at once duty and wisdom. The apostle Paul, to attain his great objects the easier, practised this considerateness towards the prejudices of his contemporaries, and became all things to all men that by all means he might

save some.

The orators of antiquity, with perhaps the single exception of Demosthenes, in their ignorance of the true ground upon which this obligation of propriety is based, practised a kind of artifice and coquetry, alike unbecoming in a person of dignity, as unsuited to the attainment of their end. When Cicero assumes an inability to recall the name of Polycletus (Verrina iv. 3, Wolf ad Leptineam, p. 300) and proceeds as if it had been called out to him by some one in the crowd, he intended, without doubt, by this show of ignorance of Grecian history, to signify his assent to the opinion of the citizens, namely, that it was unworthy of a statesman to occupy himself with such matters. For my own part, I can discern in it only an excuse for that compliance which in a right degree is proper to the orator-in this instance a moral wrong. Nor can I divine what advantage he could expect to derive from such toying who knew how to put in operation the most powerful of motives. But such is the fate of all such endeavors after an object which has been too narrowly conceived of; they become a mere effort after the form, without regard to substance. And this was early the fate of ancient oratory, because its moral element was overlooked, and because it was esteemed merely an instrument in attaining ambitious ends.*

If compliance pushed to such an extreme is to be condemned, so the opposite error, namely, that of offending against existing and unalterable relations among the hearers, is to be expounded as morally wrong and as unwise. An offence of this kind ruins at once the operation of the

most powerful discourse; and we need only examine the kind of dislike that is excited, in order to see, that it is not the result of a lack of acuteness or of productive genius in the orator, but far worse, of moral feeling. Were a public too obtuse to find cause of offence in such blunders (and this is the case oftener than we are apt to suppose), it might indeed lighten the labors of the orator in one respect, while in another it would impede them; for just as the public would be insensible to improprieties in the discourse, so it would fail to appreciate its fitness. Hence we cannot but desire, for the orator, an audience so refined as to take offence at the least unsuitable expression. If such is not to be found, then he must seek to elevate his public to that standing, by manifesting a degree of respect for it which it will soon learn to prize and to understand.

What he may venture upon, and what he must withhold, is a question to be decided not according to the conjectures of a worldly wisdom, but according to the principles of good morals; the severest and the strongest, if it is but appropriate, if by his office and his calling he is required to say it, will not prove offensive; it will not weaken, it will further the operation of the discourse and promote the feeling intended to be aroused. How refined was the feeling for appropriateness among the Athenians in the days of Demosthenes, and yet never did this orator hesitate to charge upon them with the greatest force and plainness their degeneracy, their errors and their weaknesses; and I am not aware that his success was at any time hindered by this frankness, interwoven as it plainly was with his love to his country and to its existing constitution. Much

less should the pulpit orator hesitate truthfully to depict the corruption of the moral and religious nature of man, and to threaten the impenitent sinner with the

terrors of a future judgment. Whoever omits to do this for fear of estranging his hearers from him, overlooks the fact that the hearer involuntarily judges the orator by moral rules only, and grants to him to utter whatever he may utter with propriety-that the most energetic reproofs will not wound him, if he but sees that they are justified by the relation in which the speaker stands to him; indeed that in the moral and religious nature of man there exists a certain tendency closely allied with the taste for the sublime and the terrific, by reason of which the hearer is better content with an abasement of his feelings, such as may lead to an improved state of mind, than with that superficial emotion which is caused by the approaches of the flatterer. Thus the renowned orator who preached before Louis XIV. and his court,-an audience which would never have forgiven the slightest impropriety, employed all the terrors of religion, and often exercised the full judicial power of their office, and always with great effect.

While the fitness of a discourse prevents any occasion of offence which might interfere with the desired movement of the feelings, it contributes, moreover, directly to promote such a movement. For example, if the orator confines himself to such thoughts, images and allusions as calls up to the hearer's memory his own experience and his own personal observations, the discourse must operate with greatly increased power. For the truth is thus not merely rendered clear to his mind, but whilst he associates it with all which he himself has thought and felt, it takes a hold upon his entire inner nature, and creates that very ferment and agitation which we have named the affected condition. Many an expression may be appropriate to the thoughts and intelligible to the hearer; there may however be still another, by the employment of which, a region of his thoughts before covered up in obscurity, may suddenly be brought to light, and which touches upon some of the manifold threads of which the web of his feelings is composed; this expression the orator should endeavor to find, and he is enabled to do this by studying his hearer under the influence of a true zeal for his welfare. Should he prefer to this a different style, as easier and more agreeable to himself, his course would be that of an egotist, and the inoperativeness of the discourse would be his just punishment. How powerful is the impression made by the wise use of the hearers' existing feelings, may be seen in

occasional discourses. In a sermon designed for the opening of a campaign, for a victory, or an occasion of public rejoicing, the preacher can take for granted in his hearers, with far greater certainty than on ordinary occasions when the relations are not so definite, certain prevalent views and opinions, certain hopes and fears, certain sentiments of joy and thankfulness; and if he can only in the exercise of a little wisdom, draw together all their different rays, and throw these upon the truth in hand as upon a focal point, he will make it exceedingly effective in the hcarers' minds. Thus we explain why it is that the effects of discourses preached on feast days are often more decided than are those of the usual Sabbath-day sermons. It is because to the first, the hearer, however perverted he may be, nevertheless brings with him certain religious sentiments upon which the orator can easily fasten the thread of his dis

course.

It is, moreover, a part of this matter of fitness that the speaker should never suffer himself to be elevated in his expressions, turns of thought and images, above the language of social intercourse among educated persons; even, if before an audience competent to follow in such a flight, and to understand more refined modes of expression. I am constrained to refer to this on account of those who expect by poetical ornament, by words which they have collected with great research from the dust of past centuries, and by constructions which are foreign to pure prose, to give their discourses a peculiar weight and dignity. This is, however, nothing more than a cold and powerless display, if indeed, as I take for granted, power means nothing but the efficacy of the discourse in affecting the mind. In the press of active life, under circumstances of deep affliction, in the calm hours of meditation, did ever the hearer express his thoughts and feelings to himself or to others in a highly figurative language, and in far-fetched modes of speech? Assuredly not. The expression which couples itself with the quiet movements of the mind as they present themselves in our consciousness, is ever noble as it is simple; if the orator therefore would penetrate into our inner life and renew there the traces of forgotten thoughts and feelings, if he would indeed address us, let him make use of the familiar and customary words in which we are wont to hold converse with ourselves. Every strange expression, every singular turn, hurries us as it were out of ourselves

instead of turning us inward, and the stream of inner harmonies, perhaps already brought to flow, is suddenly interrupted and dispersed. To this is added the feeling of dislike to a man who decks himself out with a parade of sounding phrases, which after all it is not difficult to gather up, instead of speaking to his own as well as to my real advantage in my own familiar language. Those very rare instances in which we choose a rare expression for an unusual thought, must here, of course, be excluded; but to allow one's self, without a very peculiar intention in view, to deviate in the slightest degree from the prevailing usage in language is, in my opinion, improper, contrary to a speaker's aim, and hence liable to a moral reproach.

The employment of the language of Scripture is by no means included in this expression of disapproval; on the contrary, if the expressions and figures of Holy Writ are not introduced simply to fill up a vacant place, but if retaining a sense of their true worth and power, they are inwrought into the discourse, their frequent use is to be recommended to pulpit orators, as a highly suitable and efficacious method of exciting the hearer's affection. Highly suitable; for Scripture language can never grow old, presenting as it does so many expressions full of meaning for the manifold conditions of life and of the human spirit, not a few of which are current proverbs in the language of every-day intercourse; and though religious education and the reading of the Bible, may, to some degree, be neglected, yet the orator may count securely upon having his thought understood far sooner in a Scriptural than in a philosophical garb. But the great power of Scripture language to move the affections, consists mainly in this, that in it the expression for the understanding, and that for the feeling is not distinct, as in human modes of presenting truth, but is always one and the same; the images of which it makes such frequent use, combine with the accuracy of an abstract terminology, the advantage of interweaving the idea into the web of human relations, and of associating it with all the conceptions which have power to work upon the emotional nature of man. They are a ray of combined light and heat that passes from the spirit into the heart, and how should it not inflame the whole man? If now it should happen, as indeed is often the case, that an expression drawn from Scripture, upon first acquaintance with it, or upon succeeding occasions, has awakened a

train of pious emotions, the speaker, as often as he fittingly introduces it, is enabled to call up that movement of the feelings which has already so often been connected with it, and thus, further, the operation of the truth he is discussing. On account of this great advantage, I should deem it advisable to use Scripture language even in those cases where we cannot presuppose an acquaintance with it on the part of the hearer, and where it has never, as yet, contributed to the awakening of his inner life; for thus by employing it more frequently, that more thorough acquaintance with it, and that influence upon the emotional nature which we have described, will by degrees be effected.

But now the thing which hinders the orator in thoroughly understanding his hearer's views, is learning to speak their own language, and in exciting the feelings by the appropriateness of his style: this again is naught but moral delinquency. Especially prominent is that self-pleasing vanity which desires only the gratification of expressing itself easily and agreeably, and which shuns the difficult and often violent effort which is needful in order to come forth out of one's self and enter sympathizingly into the circle of another's individuality. From this defect it is that, among other specimens of pulpit eloquence, we have those artfully constructed and flowery discourses, which, although in consequence of their adaptedness to work upon the hearer's fancy, they often receive enthusiastic commendation (thus men generally, under the blinding influence of their own vanity, fail to judge and to punish that of others so severely as it deserves), yet their idle trifling with thoughts and words can produce only an imbecile void; never a state of feeling favorable to great and noble decisions in the mind. In the next place we mention a kind of shyness unfavorable to this active method which is to be found in noble and refined natures, which embarrass them in entering upon the relations of their hearers, in grasping their hearts with a strong hand, and so in giving to their mode of discourse a fitness such as will move the emotions. In case the speaker entirely abandons himself to the truth under discussion, unfolds it with the greatest care, but touches only superficially and in general terms upon the relations under which it should be realized, so that he hits nowhere and hurts no one, then we may assuredly suspect the existence of this timidity. Similar reprobation, if no greater is deserved, and like enervating