ch a vast subject, no one author is
deemed adequate to a full exposition, and as, moreover, a great portion
of the information occurs, apart from systems, in detached memoirs or
monographs,--the only mode of unifying and holding together the
aggregate, is to reduce all the statements to a common form and order,
by help of the pre-acquired plan. The progress of study may amend the
plan, as well as add to the particular information; but absolute
perfection in the scheme is not so essential as strict adherence to it
through all the details. To work without a plan at all, is not merely to
tax the memory beyond its powers, but probably also to misconceive and
jumble the facts.

* * * * *

To enhance the illustration of the two main heads of the Art of Study,
I will so far deviate from the idea of the essay, as to take up a special
branch of education, which, more than any other, has been reduced to
form and rule, I mean the great accomplishment of Oratory, or the Art of
Persuasion. The practical Science of Rhetoric, cultivated both by
ancients and by moderns, has especially occupied itself with directions
for acquiring this great engine of influencing mankind.

It was emphatically averred by the ancient teachers of the Oratorical
art, that it must be grounded on a wide basis of general information.
I do not here discuss the exact scope of this preparatory study, as my
purpose is to narrow the illustration to what is special to the faculty
of persuasion. I must even omit all those points relating to delivery or
elocution, on which so much depends; and also the consideration of how
to attain readiness or fluency in spoken address, except in so far as
that follows from abundant oratorical resources. We thus sink the
difference between spoken oratory, and persuasion through the press.

Even as thus limited, oratory is still too wide for a pointed
illustration: and, so, I propose farther to confine my references to the
department of Political Oratory; coupling with that, however, the
Forensic branch--which has much in common with the other, and has given
birth to some of our most splendid examples of the art of persuasion.

While declining to enter on the wide field of the general education of
the orator, I may not improperly advert to the more immediate
preparation for the political orator, by a familiar acquaintance with
History and Political Philosophy, howsoever obtained. Then, on the other