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power of this kind of oratory, effecting what elocutionary rules, with all their art, have never done, and can never accomplish. Nature alone makes man eloquent-art is scarcely varnish. Truly, you may create it in the speaker by study, but nature must instruct the student of oratory.

I will illustrate this by the famous reply which Tecumseh, the Indian warrior, made, when at Washington negotiating a treaty, on being requested to sit down, as did his white fathers: "The sun is my father, the earth, my mother; and on her bosom I will repose "—and he sat upon the floor.

The same short and pathetic oratorical beauties are to be found in the poems of Ossian, and in the prose translations of Homer; and they are what give beauty to all poetical productions, and are striking examples that common words and short sentences are better calculated to arouse oratorical emotion, than far-fetched and uncommon words, or labored sentences, which, although sanctioned by usage, are far from natural.

That nature makes man eloquent in oratory, is no less proven by the spontaneous and thrilling specimens of heart-beating oratory which have been handed down to us from the vindications of our American Revolution, in language that still makes the blood stand in your veins. And why? This unstudied rhetoric came from the heart. The same instructor tutored the master orators of ancient Greece and Rome.

Kossuth is a noble specimen of this school, even in our own time; and, although his "voice has died away, like the evening breeze among the grass of the rocks," it has left behind, specimens of almost momentary eloquence, which will not easily be forgotten.

From the observation of nature alone, such representatives of character as Betterton and Garick, and every other nice delineator of his fellow-men, tempered their delicate skill; and the successful divine must picture to the heart.

Cast your eyes for one moment over the vast volume of nature. Whatever is truly grand and pathetic, tragical or comical, that is of nature learned.

"Engraven are her rules, so nice and true,

That all who turn with care an eye to read,
Will find instruction, such as they may need."

It is not there to the eye of the collegiate alone; but only to that mind which reads from observation of his fellow-men, those intonations and expressions, gestures and postures, which touch the

delicate and subtle chords of passion, which, once vibrated, always move the heart. To become skilled in oratory, we must become skilled in the portraiture of nature.

If, by the skill of oratorical delivery, we would touch the heart, (and what is it without that power,) if we would display that ingenuity which arouses to action the unsatisfied mind, awaken in that heart its slumbering vigor, and win it to our aid, the pictures of animated emotion must be displayed to nature true. If we would, with any ingenuity or success, supplicate for a friend in danger, or arouse against an enemy a brother foe, we must appear as if the affections of our nature were fully enlisted in the cause - as if it was the vibration of the heart, which never fails to win the cause for which such labor is engaged. And where, but from the book of nature, can we derive such information, of the pure principles of oratory? become familiar with the emotional variations of the voice, the thousand intonations, nice as the vibrations of the Eolian harp? all of which must be transmitted true to nature, in order to win' the ear - that nice and subtle sentinel of the heart.

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There must be displayed, in our delivery, actions which seem more spontaneous than imitations those unfeeling representations, that can not fail to sicken the judicious judge-but, on the other hand, those significant and comprehensive movements, nice portraitures of a delicate and cultivated mind, and natural delineation those postures and attitudes which strike the eye, even as the noble sculpture, or the artist's studied disposition of his characters upon the canvas. Nor less essential those masterly expressions of the countenance which have power to rend the heartthe watery eye, the ghastly visage, the haggard brow-all-all speak with "a miraculous organ."

We can not excel in oratory, unless we first acquire a thorough knowledge of the heart of man-its inward affections and visible emotions. We should become as familiar with their representations, as the words, by which we express our earnest wishes, are to the organs of speech. They are a part of our inherent nature, and no more than we can learn, by observation, from our fellow-men. Examine the book of nature, page by page, and you will find upon every leaf, recorded, all that is sublimely eloquent :

"That all the movings of mankind are there,

And, pictured to the mind which reads with care,

A truer mirror sure will never rise,

A purer picture of our joys and sighs;

Where actions are not studied for a show,
Spontaneous, original, they flow."

-D. T. S.

!

THE FIGHT OF PASO DEL MAR.

BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

THE following poem is well calculated for oratorical exercise Its peculiar versification is almost faultless to the ear; while the incidents related in the course of the story are calculated to deeply interest; and many points are susceptible of awakening much emotion, if ingeniously represented.

Gusty and raw was the morning;
A fog hung over the seas;
And its gray skirts rolling inland,.
Were torn by the mountain trees.
No sound was heard but the dashing
Of waves on the sandy bar,
When Pablo, of San Diego,

Rode down the Paso del Mar.

The passador, out in his shallop,
Gathering his harvest so wide,
Sees the dim bulk of the headland,

Loom over the waste of the tide :
He sees like a white thread, the pathway,
Wind round on the terrible wall,
Where the faint moving speck of the rider,
Seems hovering, close to its fall.

Stout Pablo, of San Diego,

Rode down from the walls behind,
With the bells on his gray mule tinkling,
He sang through the fog and the wind.
Under his thick misted eyebrows,

Twinkled his eyes like a star;

And fierce he sung, as the sea-winds
Drove cold o'er the Paso del Mar.

Now Bernal, the herdsman of Corral,

Had traveled the shores since dawn,

Leaving the ranches behind him :

Good reason had he to be gone.

The blood was still red on his dagger,
The fury was hot in his brain;

And the chill driving scuds of the breakers,

Beat thick on his forehead in vain.

With his blanket wrap'd gloomily round him,
He mounted the dizzying road;

And the chasms and steeps of the headland,
Were slip'ry and wet as he trode.
Wild swept the wind of the mountain,
Rolling the fog from afar,

When near him a mule bell came tinkling,
Midway on the Paso del Mar.

"Back!" shouted Bernal, full fiercely,
And "Back!" shouted Pablo, in wrath,
As his mule halted, startled and shrinking,
On the perilous line of the path.
The roar of the devouring surges,

Came up from the breakers harsh war; And "Back, or you perish!" cried Bernal, "I turn not on Paso del Mar."

The gray mule stood firm as the headland;
He clutched at the gingleing rein,
When Pablo rose up in his saddle,

And smote till he drop'd it again.
A wild oath of passion swore Bernal;
And brandished his dagger, still red;
While fiercely stout Pablo leaned forward,
And fought o'er his trusty mule's head.

They fought 'til the black wall below them
Shone red through the misty blast;
Stout Pablo then struck, leaning forward,
The broad breast of Bernal at last,
And frenzied with pain, the swart herdsman
Closed round him, with dreadful clasp;
And jerked him, despite of his struggles,
Down from his mule in his grasp.

They grappled in desperate madness,
On the slippery edge of the wall;
They swayed on the brink, and together
Reel'd out to the rush of the fall.
A cry of the wildest death anguish
Rung faint through the mist afar;
And the riderless mule went homeward,
From the fight of Paso del Mar.

FANATICISM.

AN EXTRACT FROM THE SPEech of Charles Sumner, delivered IN THE SENATE, MAY 19, 1856.

As a specimen of true eloquence, this extract will speak for itself. We shall make no excuses on account of the opinions of its author. Our selections, it will be borne in mind, are made, alone, for the oratorical beauty they contain, not for the sentiments which they may promulgate, further than relates to morality.

"To the charge of fanaticism, I reply. Sir fanaticism is found in an enthusiasm or exaggeration of opinions, particularly on religious subjects; but there may be a fanaticism for evil as well as for good. Now, I will not deny that there are persons among us loving Liberty too well for their personal good, in a selfish generation. Such there may be, and, for the sake of their example, would that there were more! In calling them 'fanatics,' you cast contumely upon the noble army of martyrs, from the earliest day down to this hour; upon the great tribunes of human rights, by whom life, liberty, and happiness, on earth, were secured; upon the long line of devoted patriots, who, throughout history, have truly loved their country; and upon all who, in noble aspirations for the general good, and in forgetfulness of self, have stood out before their age, and gathered into their generous bosoms the shafts of tyranny and wrong, in order to make a pathway for Truth; you discredit Luther, when alone he nailed his articles to the door of the church at Wittenberg, and then, to the imperial demand that he should retract, firmly replied, "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God!" you discredit Hampden, when, alone, he refused to pay the few shillings of ship-money, and shook the throne of Charles I.; you discredit Milton, when, amidst the corruptions of a heartless Court, he lived on, the lofty friend of Liberty, above question or suspicion; you discredit Russell and Sidney, when, for the sake of their country, they calmly turned from family and friends, to tread the narrow steps of the scaffold; you discredit the early founders of American institutions, who preferred the hardships of a wilderness, surrounded by a savage foe, to injustice on beds of ease; you discredit our later fathers, who, few in numbers and weak in resources, yet strong in their cause, did not hestitate to brave the mighty power of England, already encircling the globe with her morning drum-beats. Yes, sir, of such are the fanatics of history, according to the Senator But I tell that Senator, that there are characters badly eminent, of whose fanaticism there can be no question. Such were the ancient Egyptians, who worshipped divinities in brutish forms; the Druids, who darkened the forests of oak in which they lived, by sacrifices of blood; the Mexicans, who surrendered countless victims to the propitiation of their obscene idols; the Spaniards, who, under Alva, sought the Inquisition upon Holland, by a tyranny kindred to that now employed to force slavery upon Kansas; and

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