ion which
calls them forth. In Bacon's phrase, the speech of Fox shows "small
matter, and infinite agitation of wit"; in Burke's, we discern large
matter with an abundance of "wit" proper to the discussion of the
matter, but nothing which suggests the idea of mere "agitation." Fox, in
his speeches, subordinated every thing to the immediate impression he
might make on the House of Commons. He deliberately gave it as his
opinion, that a speech that read well must be a bad speech; and, in a
literary sense, the House of Commons, which he entered before he was
twenty, may be called both the cradle and the grave of his fame. It has
been said that he was a debater whose speeches should be studied by
every man who wishes "to learn the science of logical defence"; that he
alone, among English orators, resembles Demosthenes, inasmuch as his
reasoning is "penetrated and made red-hot by passion"; and that nothing
could excel the effect of his delivery when "he was in the full paroxysm
of inspiration, foaming, screaming, choked by the rushing multitude of
his words." But not one of his speeches, not even that on the East India
Bill, or on the Westminster Scrutiny, or on the Russian Armament, or on
Parliamentary Reform, or on Mr. Pitt's Rejection of Bonaparte's
Overtures for Peace, has obtained an abiding place in the literature of
Great Britain. It would be no disparagement to an educated man, if it
were said that he had never read these speeches; but it would be a
serious bar to his claim to be considered an English scholar, if he
confessed to be ignorant of the great speeches of Burke; for such a
confession would be like admitting that he had never read the first book
of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Bacon's Essays and Advancement of
Learning, Milton's Areopagitica, Butler's Analogy, and Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations.

When we reflect on the enormous number of American speeches which, when
they were first delivered, were confidently predicted, by appreciating
friends, to insure to the orators a fame which would be immortal, one
wonders a little at the quiet persistence of the speeches of Webster in
refusing to die with the abrupt suddenness of other orations, which, at
the time of their delivery, seemed to have an equal chance of renown.
The lifeless remains of such unfortunate failures are now entombed in
that dreariest of all mausoleums, the dingy quarto volumes, hateful to
all human eyes, which are lettered on the back with