ead, who has a masterly gift of noble
and stirring eloquence, finds it in "a certain collocation of
consonants." Why it is that a change of a single word, or
even of a single syllable, for any other which is an absolute
synonym in sense, would ruin the best line in Lycidas, or
injure terribly the noblest sentence of Webster, nobody knows.
Curtis asks how Wendell Phillips did it, and answers his own
question by asking you how Mozart did it.

When I say that I am not sure that this is not the single
gift most to be coveted by man, I may seem to have left out
the moral quality in my conception of what is excellent. But
such is the nature of man that the loftiest moral emotions
are still the overmastering emotions. The orator that does
not persuade men that righteousness is on his side will seldom
persuade them to think or act as he desires; and if he fail
in that he fails in his object; and the orator who has not
in fact righteousness on his side will in general fail so to
persuade them. And even if in rare cases he do persuade
his audience, he does not gain a permanent place in literature.
Bolingbroke's speeches, though so enthusiastically praised
by the best judges, have perished by their own worthlessness.

Although the danger of the Republic, and his own, still occupied
his thoughts, Cicero found time in his old age to record,
at the request of his brother Quintus, his opinion, _de omni
ratione dicendi._ It is not likely that the treatise "de
Oratore" or that "de Claris Oratoribus" will ever be matched
by any other writer on this fascinating subject, except the
brief and masterly fragment of Tacitus.

He begins by inquiring why it is that, when so many persons
strive to attain the gift of eloquence, and its rewards of
fame and wealth and power are so great, the number of those
who succeed as orators is so small in comparison with the
number of those who become great generals, or statesmen,
or poets. I suppose this fact, which excited the wonder
of Cicero, exists in our country and our time. There is a
foreign country which is to us as a posterity. If we reckon
those Americans only as great orators who are accepted in
England as such, or who, belonging to past generations are
so accepted now by their own countrymen, the number is very
small. A few sentences of Patrick Henry are preserved, as
a few sentences of Lord Chatham are preserved. The great
thoughts of Webster justify, in the estimation of the re