s, therefore popular, pouring forth the pure waters of
moderation, strong in their copiousness. Delicious and rapturous effects
are to be produced in the flood of a Liberal oration by a chance infusion
of the fierier spirit, a flavour of Radicalism. That is the thing to set
an audience bounding and quirking. Whereas if you commence by tilling a
Triton pitcher full of the neat liquor upon them, 'you have to resort to
the natural element for the orator's art of variation, you are
diluted--and that's bathos, to quote Mr. Timothy. It was a fine piece of
discernment in him. Let Liberalism be your feast, Radicalism your spice.
And now and then, off and on, for a change, for diversion, for a new
emotion, just for half an hour or so-now and then the Sunday coat of
Toryism will give you an air. You have only to complain of the fit, to
release your shoulders in a trice. Mr. Timothy felt for his art as poets
do for theirs, and considered what was best adapted to speaking, purely
to speaking. Upon no creature did he look with such contempt as upon Dr.
Shrapnel, whose loose disjunct audiences he was conscious he could,
giving the doctor any start he liked, whirl away from him and have
compact, enchained, at his first flourish; yea, though they were composed
of 'the poor man,' with a stomach for the political distillery fit to
drain relishingly every private bogside or mountain-side tap in old
Ireland in its best days--the illicit, you understand.

Further, to quote Mr. Timothy's points of view, the Radical orator has
but two notes, and one is the drawling pathetic, and the other is the
ultra-furious; and the effect of the former we liken to the English
working man's wife's hob-set queasy brew of well-meant villany, that she
calls by the innocent name of tea; and the latter is to be blown, asks to
be blown, and never should be blown without at least seeming to be blown,
with an accompaniment of a house on fire. Sir, we must adapt ourselves to
our times. Perhaps a spark or two does lurk about our house, but we have
vigilant watchmen in plenty, and the house has been pretty fairly
insured. Shrieking in it is an annoyance to the inmates, nonsensical;
weeping is a sickly business. The times are against Radicalism to the
full as much as great oratory is opposed to extremes. These drag the
orator too near to the matter. So it is that one Radical speech is
amazingly like another--they all have the earth-spots. They smell, too;
they smell of