had so kindly and fully described them, Providence, of course, having had nothing to do with it, but that he ventured," etc., etc. His look of imperturbable apathy was far more aggravating than any sign or sound of irritation, and when he yawned in the midst of a speech of vehement denunciation from Mr. Gladstone, and that illustrious statesman seemed as though he would like to jump down his throat, he put his hand upon the broad table which separated them, and afterwards expressed his gratitude for such a barrier to protect him from the fury of his adversary. He had been laughed at by the members of the House when he made his first speech; he had vowed, with that true courage which learns to conquer from defeat, and rides harder after a fall, that one day he would make them hear him, and now that he was master of the situation, he took care to let them know it. But very rare is this brave spirit, which "learns to labour and to wait," and therefore it is easy to answer the question I propose now to consider.

XIII.

WHY ARE SPEAKERS SO MANY AND ORATORS SO FEW?

Vain excuses-No effort of preparation-Daunted by failureEarnestness the indispensable element of success-Cor paratum -The speaker must be master of his subject, and must make a clear plan of his argument-Utterance and manner.

THERE is no real effort. Men essay to speak without a thoughtful preparation, and when they fail, they plead that eloquence is a natural gift, and cannot be acquired such a man, they say, is a born orator, nascitur non fit.

"While yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,

He lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came."

"They have not the talent." How do they know? They have never tried to "stir up the gift." When the Irishman was asked, "whether he could play the fiddle," he answered, "that he did not know, because he had never tried;" but these men seem to have had a more robust confidence that they could succeed without previous experiment, and when they discovered that the mere approximation of the bow to

the strings only resulted in discord, they were discouraged unto despair.

Some make a small effort to succeed. They think for a few minutes, write down their thoughts, and read, if they cannot remember, them. Then, because they were a little confused, or their hearers were not deeply impressed, they too are disheartened, and

"One good deed, dying tongueless, Slaughters a thousand waiting upon that." Some seem never to find out that they are boring their audience with platitudes and vain repetitions, and their speech drags its slow length along like a ponderous barge on some sluggish, straight-cut canal, crawling, with no wind in its sails, through a desolate and barren land. Sometimes there are long pauses between sentences and words, like the intervals of a passing bell the whole process is, in short, funereal. The pace reminds one of an apology, which Canning made to his hostess, when he was late for dinner, that "he had been listening to a speech from Addington, and Addington, you know, always travels with his own horses."

Others, on the contrary, speak with great rapidity, but, as Sam Weller said of the rail, surrounding objects are rendered "inwisible" by extreme velocity, and their elocutions, like inferior champagne, are principally froth. Their words sound like hailstones pattering on a zinc roof. They go off like the rocket, but they come down like the stick. As Archbishop

N

Whately said, "Many a wandering discourse one hears, in which the speaker aims at nothing, and hits it." The nervous speaker is a cruel embarrassment to himself and to his hearers, with his gasps and twitches and stammerings, never reaching the purport of his mind, like the awkward rustic ascending and descending the greasy pole, but never touching the leg of mutton. Sometimes he mixes his sentences, makes a mess of his grammar, transposes his initial letters, as when the churchwarden, who, intending to speak of his clergyman as a loving shepherd, referred to him as 66 a shoving leopard;" or the candidate who, designing to address a multitude of working-men as Sons of Toil, began by congratulating himself "that he saw before him so many Tons of Soil;" recalling an addition, whispered to his neighbour by a wouldbe member of Parliament, as he sat down after an appeal to the electors-" Gentlemen, I feel confident that I could not leave my cause in better hands-or in dirtier."

I was once involved in a similar confusion, when, referring in a sermon, and by way of illustration, to the harbour lights, shining in the night as the ship, after her long voyage, nears the shore, I meant to say, "How they tell the sailor," but by an unhappy lapsus linguæ I exclaimed, "How they sell the tailor!"

What are the indispensable elements of successful public speaking? Don't think me bumptious, or given to hifalutination, for I am not a disciple of "the Big

Bow-wow School," as Sir Walter Scott terms it, saying, "I am Sir Oracle, and when I speak let no dog bark;" but I have had a certain amount of success, which I venture to hope justifies me in suggesting to others auxiliary helps and hints. First of all, the speaker must be thoroughly in earnest; he must be fully persuaded in his own mind, or he will never persuade others. "You must weep yourself to draw tears from me," says the Latin poet. "Cor paratum, my heart is fixed, therefore, Cantabo, I will sing," said the greatest singer of all. Does not common sense tell us this the experience of our daily life, our observation of others, the records of history-that nothing can be well done, that there can be no excellence, no permanent success, unless the doer puts his heart in his deed? How comes it, as a rule, that one man does his daily work better than another, whatever that work may be-work of the body or work of the mind, and whoever the workmandebating in Parliament, marshalling an army, commanding a fleet, pleading in courts of law, managing a business, writing a book, painting a picture, or engaged in the more ordinary occupations of life, doing manual labour in the factory, the warehouse, or the store, ploughing, sowing, reaping in the fields, down in dark mines, or out on glittering seas-how comes it that one man does his work so much better than another? It is not, as a rule, because he is more clever, because he has more brains in his head, or more strength in his body. We see but too many