examples
mutually act and re-act: the better the scheme, the more rapidly will
the examples fructify; and the scheme will, in its turn, profit by the
mastery of the details.

[NECESSITY OF AN ORATORICAL ANALYSIS.]

One great use of an oratorical analysis, as supplied by the teachers of
Rhetoric, is to part off the different merits of a perfect oration; and
to show which are to be extracted from the various exemplary orators.
One man excels in forcible arguments, another in the lucid array of
facts; one is impressive and impassioned, another is quiet but
circumspect. Now, the benefit of studying on principle, instead of
working at random, is, that we concentrate attention on each one's
strong points, and disregard the rest. But it needs a preparatory
analysis, in order to make the discrimination. All that the uninstructed
reader or hearer of a great oration knows is, that the oration is great:
this may be enough for the persons to be moved; it is insufficient for
an oratorical disciple.

In the hazardous task of pursuing the illustration by naming the
examples of oratory most suitable to commence with, I shall pass over
living men, and choose from the past orators of our own country. Without
discussing minutely the respective merits of individuals, I am safe in
selecting, as in every way suitable for our purpose, Burke, Fox,
Erskine, Canning, Brougham, and Macaulay. Burke's Speeches on America;
Fox on the Westminster Scrutiny; Erskine on Stockdale, and on Hardy,
Tooke, &c.; Canning on the Slave Trade; Brougham, Lyndhurst, and Denman
in the Queen's Trial; Macaulay on the Reform Bill,--would comprise, in a
moderate compass, a considerable range of oratorical excellence. I doubt
if any member of the list would be more suitable for a beginning than
Macaulay's Reform Speeches. These are no mere displays of a brilliant
imagination: they are known to have influenced thousands of minds
otherwise averse to political change. The reader finds in them an
immense repository of historical facts as well as of doctrines; but
facts and doctrines, by themselves, do not make oratory. It is the use
made of these, that gives us the instruction we are now in quest of. In
a first or second reading, however, matter and form equally captivate
the mind. It would be impossible, at that early stage, to make an
abstract such as would separate the oratorical from the non-oratorical
merits. Only when, by help of our scheme, we have made a critical