Climate has much to do with it,—­climate and race.  Set a New Englander to describe any accident which happened in his presence.  What hesitation and reserve in his narrative!  He tells with difficulty some particulars, and gets as fast as he can to the result, and, though he cannot describe, hopes to suggest the whole scene.  Now listen to a poor Irish-woman recounting some experience of hers.  Her speech flows like a river,—­so unconsidered, so humorous, so pathetic, such justice done to all the parts!  It is a true transubstantiation,—­the fact converted into speech, all warm and colored and alive, as it fell out.  Our Southern people are almost all speakers, and have every advantage over the New England people, whose climate is so cold, that, ’tis said, we do not like to open our mouths very wide.  But neither can the Southerner in the United States, nor the Irish, compare with the lively inhabitant of the South of Europe.  The traveller in Sicily needs no gayer melodramatic exhibition than the table d’hote of his inn will afford him, in the conversation of the joyous guests.  They mimic the voice and manner of the person they describe; they crow, squeal, hiss, cackle, bark, and scream like mad, and, were it only by the physical strength exerted in telling the story, keep the table in unbounded excitement.  But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art.

But eloquence must be attractive, or it is none.  The virtue of books is to be readable, and of orators to be interesting, and this is a gift of Nature; as Demosthenes, the most laborious student in that kind, signified his sense of this necessity when he wrote, “Good Fortune,” as his motto on his shield.  As we know, the power of discourse of certain individuals amounts to fascination, though it may have no lasting effect.  Some portion of this sugar must intermingle.  The right eloquence needs no bell to call the people together, and no constable to keep them.  It draws the children from their play, the old from their arm-chairs, and the invalid from his warm chamber; it holds the hearer fast, steals away his feet, that he shall not depart,—­his memory, that he shall not remember the most pressing affairs,—­his belief, that he shall not admit any opposing considerations.  The pictures we have of it in semi-barbarous ages, when it has some advantages in the simpler habit of the people, show what it aims at.  It is said that the Khans, or story-tellers in Ispahan and other cities of the East, attain a controlling power over their audience, keeping them for many hours attentive to the most fanciful and extravagant adventures.  The whole world knows pretty well the style of these improvisators, and how fascinating they are, in our translations of the “Arabian Nights.”  Scheherzarade tells these stories to save her life, and the delight of young Europe and young America in them proves that she fairly earned it.  And who does not remember in childhood some white or black or yellow Scheherzarade, who, by that talent of telling endless feats of fairies and magicians, and kings and queens, was more dear and wonderful to a circle of children than any orator of England or America is now?  The more indolent and imaginative complexion of the Eastern nations makes them much more impressible by these appeals to the fancy.