at once to assume any feeling which was suited to his ends." With matchless perfection of voice, intonation, pause, gesture, attitude, and indescribable play of countenance he united a taste that never permitted him to use an expression that was not instantly recognized as nature itself. But more than all was the intense earnestness of feeling which lay back of every word, the tremendous power of sincerity which made ordinary expressions weighty with a new meaning. His were no ordinary expressions on extraordinary occasions, as we know from such reports of his speeches as have come down to us through the imperfect stenography of the time. Neither do these latter days understand how great an orator sprung up in the revolutionary period of our history. As in the case of illustrious orators before him the record of what he said is not equal to the testimony of the manner of its saying and the ethical power of a mighty man. He lived, to be sure, in stirring times, and was both their product and exponent. He was one of a group of wise thinkers and orators of no mean attainments, viewed apart from each other; but he was easily the foremost, gifted from above with transcendental powers and with a character that gave weight to expression that in itself was most effective. Just, upright, and godly, humane, genial, and beneficent, willing to serve yet not coveting office, strong in his views of right and in his sense of duty unswerving, he stands as the everlasting memorial of righteousness in a time when men were driven hither and thither by conflicting interests and emotions. It was around such a man that men loved to rally, or against him to contend with all their

might. But he lived to see his principles largely prevail and their success assured in the new nation whose character he did so much to shape.

There were other men who were with justice and propriety considered orators in the stormy period of the Revolution. For instance in the great debate upon the Stamp Act Richard Henry Lee of Virginia supported the resolutions of Patrick Henry with such ability and eloquence that the people knew not which most to admire, the overwhelming might of Henry or the resistless persuasion of Lee. Other famous speakers in the South were William Henry Drayton, John Rutledge, Edmund Randolph, the successor of Patrick Henry as governor of Virginia, a lawyer whom clients beset on his way from office to court with their papers in one hand and their guineas in the other, and crowded his office on his return. As a natural consequence he came to be first Washington's attorney-general and afterward secretary of state. Then there were speakers of no mean attainments, whose statesmanship so surpassed their oratory that the real excellence of this is forgotten in the greater splendor of their legislative, administrative, and even military renown. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, John Adams, James Madison, Josiah Quincy, Robert Livingston, Charles Pinckney, Gouverneur Morris, Harrison Gray Otis, De Witt Clinton, and others in the grand peerage of the colonial, revolutionary, and reconstruction periods were all men of strong intellects, able to maintain their views before the world with pen and voice, and with sword if need required. It was a group created by the stirring times, which in turn they

themselves inspired and guided to a fortunate termination. Viewed together it was an assemblage of wisdom and courage and eloquence such as had not appeared since the days of the Greek and Roman republics, and in many respects surpassing them, as indeed they ought to have surpassed them with the advantage of eighteen Christian centuries of history intervening. They had the inheritance of the ages and they profited by it.

XXV.

CONGRESSIONAL ORATORY.

HE above title may be applied to the efforts of a

body of men who found a field of the noblest activity in the legislative halls of the nation, as distinguished from what may be called the provincial oratory of colonial days. Out of the diversity of political opinions a union and a constitution had been established; but old faiths still remained, and old prejudices survived which now and then would come to the surface to be maintained or attacked by turns. Preeminently the doctrine of states-rights would periodically appear, like an uneasy ghost, to disquiet its opponents and stir the blood of its Southern defenders. It was this dogma that made famous the successor of Patrick Henry and the predecessor of Calhoun, the man who may be regarded as the link between two generations of orators, JOHN RANDOLPH, of Roanoake. A proud Virginian, full of ambition and eccentricity, sometimes a slave to intemperance and always erratic in mind, bitter, self-conscious, and wretched, he nevertheless was a man whose reputation for eloquence will not readily perish. Of an ancient and wealthy family, having in his veins the Indian blood of Pocahontas he was a singular product of aristocratic and aboriginal life. All his days he was, as

Hildreth says, "in opposition to the exercise of authority by anybody but himself."

His entrance into Congress in the year 1800 may be taken as a convenient dividing line between the earlier and later oratory of the country, coincident as it is with the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. His career in Congress is marked by violent and acrimonious utterances. In his first debate he spoke of the officers of the army as a "handful of ragamuffins," and followed the speech by a violent letter demanding their punishment for resenting his insulting words, but was in the end censured himself. He quarreled with one administration after another, was alternately retired and reëlected. Still, during his lifetime his speeches were more generally read than those of any other member of Congress. Full of invective and sarcasm, delivered in a voice shrill and piping but under perfect command and musical in its lower tones, they recalled at times the peculiar eloquence of the earlier period. "His unquestioned courage, the cutting force of his sarcastic words, the malediction of his outstretched finger made Congress listen when he spoke and crowded the Virginia hustings wherever he appeared." His defence of slavery, to which he was opposed on principle as Patrick Henry had been before him, was rather the outcome of states-rights doctrine than something to be desired and perpetuated for the good of the South. This defence was also more after the fire-breathing-dragon order than solid or logical. Narrow and mistaken as were many of his utterances he foresaw with singular acumen the nullifi