A Study of Sustained Power

10.  Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back with me to the commencement of the century, and select what statesman you please.  Let him be either American or European; let him have a brain the result of six generations of culture; let him have the ripest training of university routine; let him add to it the better education of practical life; crown his temples with the silver locks of seventy years, and show me the man of Saxon lineage for whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel, rich as embittered foes have placed on the brow of this negro,—­rare military skill, profound knowledge of human nature, content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust a state to the blood of its sons,—­anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking his station by the side of Roger Williams, before any Englishman or American had won the right; and yet this is the record which the history of rival states makes up for this inspired black of St. Domingo.—­Toussaint L’Ouverture: WENDELL PHILLIPS.

Study in Beauty of Language

11.  He faced his audience with a tranquil mien and a beaming aspect that was never dimmed.  He spoke, and in the measured cadence of his quiet voice there was intense feeling, but no declamation, no passionate appeal, no superficial and feigned emotion.  It was simple colloquy—­a gentleman conversing.  Unconsciously and surely the ear and heart were charmed.  How was it done?—­Ah! how did Mozart do it, how Raffael?

The secret of the rose’s sweetness, of the bird’s ecstacy, of the sunset’s glory—­that is the secret of genius and of eloquence.  What was heard, what was seen, was the form of noble manhood, the courteous and self-possest tone, the flow of modulated speech, sparkling with matchless richness of illustration, with apt allusion and happy anecdote and historic parallel, with wit and pitiless invective, with melodious pathos, with stinging satire, with crackling epigram and limpid humor, like the bright ripples that play around the sure and steady prow of the resistless ship.  Like an illuminated vase of odors, he glowed with concentrated and perfumed fire.  The divine energy of his conviction utterly possest him, and his

     “Pure and eloquent blood
     Spoke in his cheek, and so distinctly wrought,
     That one might almost say his body thought.”

Was it Pericles swaying the Athenian multitude?  Was it Apollo breathing the music of the morning from his lips?—­No, no!  It was an American patriot, a modern son of liberty, with a soul as firm and as true as was ever consecrated to unselfish duty, pleading with the American conscience for the chained and speechless victims of American inhumanity.—­Eulogy of Wendell Phillips: GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

A Study in Powerful Delivery