not unworthy of the fourth ara in the progress of the art. The disadvantage of writing in a dead language, and the barbarous imperfection of all the systems of speech which were then in use in Europe, for a while hindered that printed ELOQUENCE from rising to the perfection which it might have, otherwise, at once obtained. But these unfavourable circumstances have been surmounted, by the gradual refine. ment of the Italian, the Spanish, the French, the English, and the German languages: And authors are the great orators of modern times: And the press is the rostrum from which the forum of the public is now the most powerfully addressed.

Ir was, however, impossible, that, amid the general increase of human intelligence, and the augmented frequency of social converse, there should not arise occasions for the renewed cultivation of the best forms of oral ELOQUENCE. Even the reformation of religion, however, did not immediately create, in this province, any thing in ELOQUENCE worthy to be compared with the compositions of the orators of Greece and Rome. The Protestant preachers of France, Germany, and England, long joined, in their pulpit discourses, the barbarous and fantastic art of the second period, with the simplicity of the third, and sometimes with a small portion of the genuine fire of the first, without attaining to that tincture of the force of nature, with the best skill of art, which belongs to the ELOQUENCE of the fourth period alone. It was gradually improved,-in no instance, however, to an equality with the ELOQUENCE of the ancients, in which composition was so happily associated with all the best advantages of voice, gesture, and looks. At the Court of France, indeed, the ambition of the fame of ELOQUENCE, an industrious imitation of the models of that of antiquity, a consciousness of high ccclesiastical autho

rity,

rity, and the knowledge that pulpit ELOQUENCE, would procure every envied advantage to those who excelled in it. -produced, from the Roman Catholic Clergy, many efforts in this art, about the beginning of the eighteenth century,in which a considerable approach appears to have been made to the best excellence of Roman ELOQUENCE in the age-not, indeed, of Cicero--but of Pliny. In Britain,

the ELOQUENCE of the pulpit, has never been other than— either that merely of printed composition,-or of an uncouth mixture of the species of the first, second, and third æras of the art. It begins at present to decline, in consequence of the general neglect of religion, and of the frivolity of the minds, and the scantipess of the knowledge of those, by whom it is chiefly exercised. The very same causes corrupted and destroyed the ELOQUENCE of the ancient Romans, in the reigns of their Emperors.

THE existence of laws and stable governments likewise produced necessities and encouragements which, in the general circumstances of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, were adapted to create, in the pleadings before courts of justice, an ELOQUENCE, perhaps, not unworthy of that of the orators of Greece and Rome. The causes of litigation arose out of all the conditions and affairs of social life. The market for the sale of this ELOQUENCE was as wide as the range of litigation: almost all the wealth of the community was at its command: its power was bounded only by the integrity of judges, the stability of government, and the clearness and rectitude of the laws. The persons who were to exercise this art, had previous opportunity to study the best models of the ELOQUENCE of ancient and modern times. In Italy, in France, in Germany, in Scot land, England, Ireland, and America, specimens have hence been exhibited of an ELOQUENCE of judicial pleading,

which, however defective in many of the best qualities of true oratory, approaches nearer than any thing else of modern times, to the character of the pleadings before the graver and more solemn courts of antiquity.

IN popular governments, there is an incessant and open contest of mind labouring to predominate over mind in the direction of the general policy of the State. The highest emoluments and honours are usually to be found in the guiding of the public will and force. To this, all are permitted to aspire: and the ambition of attaining it, produces the greatest efforts of human talents, whether in ELOQUENCE or in military exertion. Hence, principally, came the perfection of the ELOQUENCE of Greece and Rome. But, in modern times, first the barbarism and ignorance of the feudal ages, and afterwards, in most European countries, the establishment of governments excluding the generous competition of ELOQUENCE,-have hindered this best of all the schools for this art-from being generally opened. In Britain alone, the feudal parliaments were formed, at last, into numerous deliberative assemblies, in which there was scope for the exercise of the noblest species of the ELOQUENCE of the fourth period. From the reign of Charles the First to this close of the eighteenth century, specimens of such ELOQUENCE have been-not regularly, but occasionally-exhibited, particularly in the English or in the British House of Commons. Whenever the Government has enjoyed great strength and stability, this ELOQUENCE has been less conspicuously exercised. At the beginning of the regicide war against Charles the First; in the contests relative to the Exclusion-bill, in the last years of the reign of Charles the Second; in the contentions of the Whigs with the Toriesunder King William-and towards the end of the reign of Queen Anne; in the discussions which preceded, by a few VOL. I.

*d

years,

years, the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole; in the contests for the overthrow of the Aristocratical Whigs, from the beginning of the present reign to the close of the American war; in the contention relative to the regency; and, perhaps, also about the beginning of the present war; the English-the British House of Commons, and, at times, also the House of Lords, have been the scenes of some of the most admirable efforts of ELOQUENCE.-The Scottish Parliament was not less so, in the debates of a few of its sessions immediately previous to the completion of the Union. -The moment when genuine ELOQUENCE predominated in the Parliament of Ireland, was, when that Parliament effected its emancipation from legislative subserviency to the Parliament of Great Britain. It does not appear, that the efforts of genuine ELOQUENCE in the debates of the Parliament of Ireland, relative to that Union with Great Britain which has just been accomplished, were adequate, either to the dignity of the occasion, or to the fierce collision of angry passions which it produced.

THE printed compositions of the moderns, addressed to the public, in the three last centuries, have been already observed to comprehend one grand subdivision of the ELOQUENCE of this fourth period. The ELOQUENCE of judicial pleadings, is by its essential nature, little capable of being exercised with advantage, through the channel of the press. But, whatever is addressed to influence public opinion in general, especially in matters which either are, or may become, the subjects of legislative regulation, is in the highest degree, susceptible of being transmitted with the effect of populat ELOQUENCE, through the press. Where the liberty of the press is under the controul of arbitrary governments, it cannot be used as a medium for the communication of popular ELOQUENCE to those on whom it is

intended

intended to operate. In Britain, however, that liberty has seldom been oppressively controuled: and the press, much more than the discussions of the senate, has consequently become the grand engine for acting on public opinion, in matters of politics, in the same manner as a Cleon, a Demosthenes, a Gracchus, and a Cicero acted upon it, in Athens and in Rome. ALL WRITERS on the comparative merits of ancient and modern ELOQUENCE, have invariably overlooked the operation of that of the moderns in this channel: Yet it is, in truth, through the press only, that popular ELOQUENCE can be, in modern times, extensively and effectually exercised. In Britain almost alone, has it been thus employed for the regulation of government, in forms worthy of the fairest period in the history of the art. Since the reign of Elizabeth to the present time, the political ELOQUENCE of the press has produce, in this country, effects transcending, beyond what is easily to be conceived, the most surprising and splendid instances of the power of ELOQUENCE in any different form, or any prior age. In the contentions which formed the prelude to the civil wars in the last century, it acted, for the first time, in England, with mighty power. From the commencement of that troublesome period, to the very æra of the Restoration, it continued to be employed with the utmost earnestness and success. The papers which were mutually published between Charles and his parliament, as representations to the people, were, many instances, composed in a strain of ELOQUENCE, the most impressive. The noble Defensio pro Populo Anglicano by Milton, was, notwithstanding the disadvantages of a dead language, an extraordinary effort of this sort of ELOQUENCE. The papers of William Allen, against Cromwell, were of rare excellence and power in the same class of compositions. Throughout the reig is of Charles

in

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