Swee. My wife a fiend among The rest? It cannot, no, it cannot be ! She is a lingering angel, watching o'er me. Em. Be calm, be calm, there's nothing here but me. Why am I thus in hell, on earth? Oh God! Em. Be quiet, husband, you will soon be better. Swee. No, never, no, 't is liquor's last result. And I am lost in hell! They come they come ! Their hissing serpents come, to coil around me, And dray me, throttled, down to hell. The pledge will yet restore you; - mind and body. Swee. Such sights of hell, and they will come upon me! Where is the pledge? Give me the pledge! I'll write My name in human blood, that gushes from My heart. Em. This way, I'll lead you to the pledge. Heaven, have mercy on his sinking soul! Swee. The pledge, the pledge! quick, quick! Unless these devils hedge me from the pledge. SCENE IV. Interior of a Hall. [Exeunt L. Audience, including Doctor CALMLY, SQUIRE FAVOR, Gentlemen, Ladies, and MICHAEL TURNTOO. Lecturer on rostrum. Hawkingson.* Enter SWEETFORD and EMMA, R. Swee. The pledge! the pledge! give me the pledge! I'll write My name upon the pledge! Hau. This way, this way! Em. Here, husband, is the pen! There, sign your name. [He Heaven be praised! signs. Swee. Almighty God, protect me! *The speech will be found on page 7, No. 1, of the Orator. In representing this play, it may either be introduced or omitted, as suits the director. THE PASSIONS. WE do not here intend to present our readers with a minute dissertation on the passions of our nature. It would require no little time and study; and, after all, the labor bestowed would be useless and uninteresting to the student of oratory. The emotions of the passions are what are valuable to the Orator, and he should know how to delineate them all, individually, and swayed by the inherent affection, or propensities, to the very life, as they evince themselves upon our corporeal beings. Their modulation and action (for they display every branch of oratory in their development,) should be so acquired by the student of oratory, as to be pure as nature, to all hearers and beholders. With these remarks, we shall only have reference to the ruling passions, unswayed by the affections: and we will here digress, and endeavor to illustrate our definition of the Affections, as we may be found to differ from the general application of the term. Still, as relates to the field of oratory, we shall endeavor to be explicit. What we regard the affections, are the governing instincts of our natures. Were we speaking to a Phrenologist, we should say, governing organs, or propensities; and perhaps to all, these latter terms are intelligible- we know of no other words that would render us more so to our readers. There is one truth evident to every observer of natural action, which illustrates our views; and we must here call it to our aid. At the first percussion of Joy, Sorrow, Fear, Anger, (which we shall only consider the pure passions ;) every person is controlled by the same emotions; but, the moment the governing organs are called into exercise, we see a great variety in modulation and action. It will be our aim to keep this distinction in view, through all our remarks upon the passions. By the passions, we would be understood those perturbations of the mind which are aroused by impressions, pleasing and winning, hateful and disgusting, which have an emotional sway over our corporeal being-shivering the nerves, and controlling the body to whatever degree the mind may be stimulated, driving the victim forward, regardless of all sober judgment. Before we enter upon a description of the delineation of the emotions, CALMNESS-night of the passions-demands portraiture; for as passion is the turbulent ocean, so is calmness, the unruffled sea of life. It always presents an open and unruffled countenance. The corporeal frame is composed, or moves with that mildness which is the index of that happiness and position, which true oratorical dignity demands, and so necessary to the scientific lecturer. In the delivery of Calmness, but few gestures are required, and when any are displayed, they should be moderate. The modulation should be colloquial, but versatile; the posture erect and dignified. The following selection when correctly delivered, will illustrate our views on the delivery of Calmness: (TO BE CONTINUED.) TRUE AND ACQUIRED ORATORY. The orator must feel his subject, to insure his power over the feeling of others. As the warm feelings of a mind, duly cultivated, will always suggest a train of ideas and expressions correspondent with its peculiar state, thus, in some degree, feeling is highly necessary for a successful imitation. If the rhetorician, or orator, be totally destitute of sensibility, there will be such an artifice in his style and manner, as can alone deceive those who are ignorant that artifice exists. It is, however, acknowledged, that by constant practice, or in other words, by being hackneyed in their profession, both language and manner may become the result of habit, and may be employed with effect, when the feelings which gave them their original energy are obtunded. Veteran actors have been known to imitate various emotions, in a just and forcible manner, long after they had lost their sensibility. The retained counsellor has been known to imitate that pathos in a bad cause, which a good cause alone could have at first inspired: and the corrupt senator may, in his degenerate state, counterfeit all that zeal and energy, which was genuine at the commencement of his political career. But so true is nature to itself, that it absolutely demands the passions and emotions to be perfectly represented. Defect diffuses a languor, excess produces disgust. The eloquence dictated by an unfeeling heart, mistakes bombast for sublimity, rant for strong feelings, the cant and whine of a mendicant for the pathetic. It confounds or misapplies every trope and figure which it has collected from systems of rhetoric. It is loquacious where it ought to be concise; amuses itself with drawing of pictures and gathering of flowers, when it should have been borne down with a torrent of rapid thought and diction. In a word, it presents us with every indication that the author has been merely employing his head, and playing with his imagination, without making any attempts to warm his own heart. It is, therefore, impossible that he should succed in warming the hearts of others. He may excite the admiration of some, the contempt of many, but the genuine feelings of none. "False eloquence, like the prismatic glass, EULOGY OF MR. BURLINGAME, ON MR. SUMNER AND HIS GREAT SPEECH. Delivered iN THE HOUSE of REPRESENTATIVES, JUNE 2D, 1856. This extract is a specimen of eloquence which should be studied by the students of oratory. MR. CHAIRMAN: On the 19th of May, it was announced that Mr. Sumner would address the Senate upon the Kansas question. The floor of the Senate, the galleries and avenues leading thereto, were thronged with an expectant audience; and many of us left our places on this floor, to hear the Massachusetts orator. To say that we were pleased-delighted with the speech we heard, would but faintly express the deep emotions of our hearts awakened by it. I need not speak of its language, nor of the nobility of its sentiments. It was heard by many, it has been read by millions. There has been no such speech made in the Senate since the days when those Titans of American eloquence, the Websters and Haynes, contended with each other for the mastery. It was made in the face of a hostile Senate. It continued through the greater portion of two days; and yet, during that time, the speaker was not once called to order. This fact is conclusive as to the personal and parliamentary decorum of the speech. He had provocation enough. His state has been called "hypocritical." He himself has been called a "puppy," a "fool," a "fanatic," a "dishonest man." Yet he was parliamentary, from the beginning to the end of his speech. No man knew better than he did the proprieties of the place; for he had always observed them. No man knew better than he did parliamentary law; because he had made it the study of his life. No man saw more clearly than he did the flaming sword of the Constitution turning every way at all the avenues of the Senate. But he was not thinking of these things; he was not thinking, then, of the privileges of the Senate, nor of the guarantees of the Constitution. He was there to denounce tyranny and crime—and he did it. He was there to speak for the rights of an empire; and he did it bravely and grandly. So much for the occasion of the speech. A word—and I shall be pardoned—about the speaker himself. He is my friend. For many and many a year, I have looked to him for guidance and light, and I never looked in vain. He never had a personal enemy in his life. His character is as pure as the snow that falls upon his native hills. His heart overflows with kindness for every being having the upright form of man. He is a ripe scholar, and a chivalric gentleman. He sat at the feet of Channing, and drank in the sentiments of that noble soul. He bathed himself in the learning and undying lore of the great jurist, Story, and the hand of Jackson, with its honors and its offices, sought him early in life; but he shrank from them with an instinctive modesty. Sir, he is the pride of Massachusetts. His mother commonwealth found him adorning the highest walks of literature and law, and she bid him go and grace somewhat the rough character of political life. The people of Massachusetts, the old, and the young, and the middle-aged, now pay their full homage to the beauty of his public and private life. Such is Charles Sumner. On the 22d day of May, when the Senate and the House had clothed themselves in mourning for a brother fallen in the battle of life in the distant state of Missouri, the Senator from Massachusetts sat, in the silence of the Senate Chamber, engaged in employments appertaining to his office, when a member from this House, who had taken an oath to sustain the Constitution, stole into the Senate that place which had hitherto been held sacred against violence and smote him as Cain smote his brother. One blow was enough; but it did not satiate the wrath of that spirit which had pursued him through two days. Again, and again, and again, quicker and faster, fell the leaden blows, until he was torn away from his victim, when the Senator from Massachusetts fell into the arms of his friends, and his blood ran down the Senate floor. Sir, the act was brief, and my comments on it shall be brief, also. I denounce it in the name of the Constitution it violated; I denounce it in the name of the sovereignty of Massachusetts, which was stricken down by the blow; I denounce it in the name of humanity; I denounce it in the name of civilization, which it outraged; I denounce it in the name of that fair play which bullies and prizefighters respect. THE INSTABILITY OF SUCCESSFUL CRIME. M. KOSSUTH. EXTRACT FROM HIS RECENT SPEECH AT EDINBURGH. SIR, I do not believe in the stability of successful crime. I will venture to contrast my own humble lot with the brilliant one of that potentate, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. I eat with my children the bitter bread of hopelessness: I am staggering joyless towards an obscure grave. For inheritance, my children may get a legacy of sorrow, yet of devotion to their country's cause. Such is my lot; but, whatever may be my faults, my errors, or even my sins, never have I broken oaths, never have I deceived nations, never trifled with the duties of an honest patriot. Bonaparte, on the contrary, sits high in power, dazzling the eyes of short-sighted men with the lustre of his propitious star. Still I do not believe in the stability of successful crime. From the depths of my desolation, I turn my eyes to the universe, and from the stars in the firmament down to the atom of dust at my feet, I see creation crying out aloud that there is a God. The feeble spark of His eternal spirit glimmering in my brain, my reason revolts against the thought that it should lie at the mercy of adventurous crime to break the eternal chain of moral laws, which, by the sovereign decree of an omnipotent and self-consistent will, have ruled the world since creation dawned, and |