of the list would be more suitable for a beginning than Macaulay’s Reform Speeches.  These are no mere displays of a brilliant imagination:  they are known to have influenced thousands of minds otherwise averse to political change.  The reader finds in them an immense repository of historical facts as well as of doctrines; but facts and doctrines, by themselves, do not make oratory.  It is the use made of these, that gives us the instruction we are now in quest of.  In a first or second reading, however, matter and form equally captivate the mind.  It would be impossible, at that early stage, to make an abstract such as would separate the oratorical from the non-oratorical merits.  Only when, by help of our scheme, we have made a critical distinction between the two kinds of excellence, are we able to arrive at an approach to a pure oratorical lesson; and, for a long time, we shall fail to make the desired isolation.  We have to learn not to expect too much from any one speech:  to pass over in Macaulay, what is more conspicuously shown, say in Fox, or in Erskine.  If our political and historical education has made some progress, the mere thoughts and facts do not detain us; their employment for the end of persuasion is what we have to take account of.

[COMPREHENSIVE PRINCIPLE OF ORATORY.]

It is impossible here to indicate, except in a very general way, the successive steps of the operation.  The one summary consideration in the Rhetoric of Oratory, from which flows the entire array of details, is the regard to the dispositions and state of mind of the audience; the presenting of topics and considerations that chime in with these dispositions, and the avoiding of everything that would conflict with them.  To grasp this comprehensive view, and to follow it out in some of the chief circumstantials of persuasive address—­the leading forms of argument, and the appeals to the more prominent feelings,—­would soon provide a touchstone to a great oration, and lead us to distinguish the materials of oratory from the use made of them.

Take the circumstance of negative tact; by which is meant the careful avoidance of whatever might grate on the minds of those addressed.  Forensic oratory in general, and the oratory of Parliamentary leaders in particular, will show this in perfection; and, for a first study of it, there is probably nothing to surpass the Erskine Speeches above cited.  It could, however, be found in Macaulay; although in a different proportion to the other merits.

The Macaulay Speeches have the abundance of matter, and the powers of style, that minister to oratory, although not constituting its distinctive feature.  In these speeches, we may note how he guages the minds of the men of rank and property, in and out of Parliament, who constituted the opposition to Reform; how tenderly he deals with their prejudices and class interests; how he shapes and adduces his arguments so as to gain those very feelings to the side he advocates; how he brings his accumulated store of historical illustrations to his aid, under the guidance of both the positive and the negative tact of the orator; saying everything to gain, and nothing to alienate the dispositions that he has carefully measured.