ELOQUENCE.

Q. What is Eloquence?

A. The Art of persuasion.

Q. What are the most essential requisites to true Eloquence?

A. Solid argument; clear method; probity in the speaker; and the various graces of style and utterance.

Q. What is the foundation of all ?

A. Good sense.

Q. How many kinds or degrees of Eloquence are there?

A. Three.

Q. What is the first?

A. That which is designed to please. Such is the eloquence of panegyrics; inaugural orations; addresses to great men.

Q. What the second?

A. That which aims not merely to please, but to inform, instruct, and convince.

the eloquence of the bar.

Q: What the third ?

Such is

A. That which is designed to rouse the passions and exert a great power over the mind. Such is the eloquence of popular assemblies and the pulpit.

Q. Of what is this last and highest kind of eloquence the offspring?

A. Passion; a state of mind agitated and fired by some object in view.

Q. Is that eloquence which gains the admi

ration of mankind, ever found without warmth or passion?

A. No.

Q. Is a man in passion, commonly eloquent ? A. Yes. Passion exalts all the powers. It renders the mind more penetrating, vigorous, and masterly than it is in its calm moments. The looks, gestures, words, and arguments of the passionate man are all persuasive.

Q. Is Eloquence a high talent and of great importance in society?

A. Yes. It has indeed been abused to evil purposes; so has reason, religion, and learning. Q. What does it require?

A. Soundness of understanding; knowledge of human nature; strong sensibility of mind; a lively imagination; correct judgment; extensive command of language; and the graces of pronunciation and delivery.

Q. Where is Eloquence chiefly to be looked for?

A. In free states, where men dare speak their sentiments.

Q. Where were the first remarkable appearances of it?

A. In the Grecian Republics.

Q. What was the character of these Republics?

A. They were a number of democratical governments animated by a high spirit of freedom, rivals, and mutually jealous of each other.

Q. When flourished their most celebrated poets, philosophers, and orators?

A. Between the battle of Marathon and the time of Alexander the Great; a period of 150 years.

Q. Which of the Republics was the most noted for Eloquence ?

A. Athens.

Q. What was the character of the Athenians?

A. They were an ingenious, quick, sprightly people, practised in business, and sharpened by frequent and sudden revolutions.

Q. How were their affairs conducted?

A. In a general convention of the citizens, by reasoning, and a skilful address to the passions and interests of a popular assembly.

Q. Was that a good school for eloquence ? A. The best the world ever knew.

Q. Who first distinguished himself, among the Athenians, by Eloquence?

A. Pisistratus, who was cotemporary with Solon. B. C. 580.

Q. Who first carried eloquence to a great height?

A. Pericles. He governed Athens 40 years, and was a great Orator, Statesman, and General.

Q. What gave power to his Eloquence ? A. The confidence which the people reposed in his integrity.

Q. What remarkable fact is recorded of him.2

A. That he was the first Athenian who composed and put into writing a discourse designed for the public.

Q. What class of Men arose after the age of Pericles?

A. The Rhetoricians or Sophists, whose business was to teach Eloquence, and give receipts for all sorts of Orations.

Q. What was the effect of their instructions? A. To degrade eloquence from its masculine. character to a trifling, sophistical art. Q. Who opposed them?

A. Socrates; who exploded their sophistry and recalled the attention of men to natural language, to sound and useful thought.

Q. What work did Aristotle compose on this subject?

A. His Institutions of Rhetoric.

Q. What was his object?

A. To direct the attention of Orators more towards convincing and affecting their hearers, than toward the musical cadence of periods. Q. Who was the Prince of Grecian Orators?

A. Demosthenes.

Q. What early efforts did he make to become an Orator?

A. He shut himself up, for study, in a cave; declaimed by the sea-shore, to accustom himself to noise; spoke with pebbles in his mouth, to correct a defect of speech; and, with a sword over his shoulder, to check an ungraceful motion.

1

Q. What are his capital Orations?
A. His Olynthiacs and Philippics.
Q. What was his object in these?

A. To rouse the indignation of his countrymen against Philip of Macedon, the public eneof the liberties of Greece.

my

Q. What was the style of his eloquence?
A. Strong, concise, and vehement.

torrent that nothing could resist.

He was

Q. What was the state of eloquence after his time?

A. It languished and expired, for Greece lost her liberty.

ROMAN AND MODERN ELOQUENCE.

Q. When was eloquence first cultivated at Kome?

A. Not until near the close of the Republic. Q. How are we to account for this?

A. The Romans were long a martial nation, altogether rude and unskilled in arts.

Q. From whom did they derive Poetry, Eloquence, and Learning?

A. From the Greeks.

Q. Did they ever equal their masters?

A. Never. They were a more grave and magnificent, but a less acute and sprightly people. What the Greeks invented, the Romans polished.

Q. Who became predominant at Rome?