is the conviction, communicated by every word, that his mind is contemplating a whole and inflamed by the contemplation of the whole, and that the words and sentences uttered by him, however admirable, fall from him as unregarded parts of that terrible whole which he sees, and which he means that you shall see.  Add to this concentration a certain regnant calmness, which, in all the tumult, never utters a premature syllable, but keeps the secret of its means and method; and the orator stands before the people as a demoniacal power to whose miracles they have no key.  This terrible earnestness makes good the ancient superstition of the hunter, that the bullet will hit its mark, which is first dipped in the marksman’s blood.

Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest narrative.  Afterwards, it may warm itself until it exhales symbols of every kind and color, speaks only through the most poetic forms; but, first and last, it must still be at bottom a biblical statement of fact.  The orator is thereby an orator, that he keeps his feet ever on a fact.  Thus only is he invincible.  No gifts, no graces, no power of wit or learning or illustration will make any amends for want of this.  All audiences are just to this point.  Fame of voice or of rhetoric will carry people a few times to hear a speaker, but they soon begin to ask, “What is he driving at?” and if this man does not stand for anything, he will be deserted.  A good upholder of anything which they believe, a fact-speaker of any kind, they will long follow; but a pause in the speaker’s own character is very properly a loss of attraction.  The preacher enumerates his classes of men, and I do not find my place therein; I suspect, then, that no man does.  Every thing is my cousin, and whilst he speaks things, I feel that he is touching some of my relations, and I am uneasy; but whilst he deals in words, we are released from attention.  If you would lift me, you must be on higher ground.  If you would liberate me, you must be free.  If you would correct my false view of facts,—­hold up to me the same facts in the true order of thought, and I cannot go back from the new conviction.

The power of Chatham, of Pericles, of Luther, rested on this strength of character, which, because it did not and could not fear anybody, made nothing of their antagonists, and became sometimes exquisitely provoking and sometimes terrific to these.

We are slenderly furnished with anecdotes of these men, nor can we help ourselves by those heavy books in which their discourses are reported.  Some of them were writers, like Burke; but most of them were not, and no record at all adequate to their fame remains.  Besides, what is best is lost, the fiery life of the moment.  But the conditions for eloquence always exist.  It is always dying out of famous places, and appearing in corners.  Wherever the polarities meet, wherever the fresh moral sentiment, the instinct of freedom and duty, come in direct opposition