We bring more or less aptitude to the study of an art, but every profession demands a period more or less prolonged.  We must not count upon natural advantages; none are perfect by nature.  Humanity is crippled; beauty exists only in fragments.  Perfect beauty is nowhere to be found; the artist must create it by synthetic work.

You have a fine voice, but be certain it has its defects.  Your articulation is vicious, and the gestures upon which you pride yourself, are, in most cases, unnatural.  Do not rely upon the fire of momentary inspiration.  Nothing is more deceptive.  The great Garrick said:  “I do not depend upon that inspiration which idle mediocrity awaits.”  Talma declared that he absolutely calculated all effects, leaving nothing to chance.  While he recited the scene between Augustus and Cinna, he was also performing an arithmetical operation.  When he said: 

    “Take a chair, Cinna, and in everything
    Closely observe the law I bid you heed”—­

he made his audience shudder.

The orator should not even think of what he is doing.  The thing should have been so much studied, that all would seem to flow of itself from the fountain.

But where find this square, this intellectual compass, that traces for us with mathematical precision, that line of gestures beyond which the orator must not pass?  I have sought it for a long time, but in vain.  Here and there one meets with advice, sometimes good but very often bad.  For example, you are told that the greater the emotion, the stronger should be the voice.  Nothing is more false.  In violent emotion the heart seems to fill the larynx and the voice is stifled.  In all such counsels it behooves us to search out their foundation, the reason that is in them, to ask if there is a type in nature which serves as their measure.

We hear a celebrated orator.  We seek to recall, to imitate his inflections and gestures.  We adopt his mannerisms, and that is all.  We see these mannerisms everywhere, but the true type is nowhere.

After much unavailing search, I at last had the good fortune to meet a genuine master of eloquence.  After giving much study to the masterpieces of painting and sculpture, after observing the living man in all his moods and expressions, he has known how to sum up these details and reduce them to laws.  This great artist, this unrivaled master, was the pious, the amiable, the lamented Delsarte.

There certainly was pleasure and profit in hearing this master of eloquence, for he excelled in applying his principles to himself.  Still from his teachings, even from the dead letter of them, breaks forth a light which reveals horizons hitherto unknown.

This work might have been entitled:  Philosophy of Oratorical Art, for one cannot treat of eloquence without entering the domain of the highest philosophy.