nce to the end. [Greek: Me thoryzeite]--'Gentlemen
of Athens! for the love of God, do not make an uproar at what I am
going to say! Gentlemen of Athens! humbly I beseech you to let me
finish my sentence!' Such are his continual appeals to the better
feelings of his audience. Now, it is very evident that, in such
circumstances, no man could do justice to any subject. At least, when
speaking not before a tribunal of justice, but before the people in
council assembled--that is, in effect, on his greatest stage of
all--Demosthenes (however bold at times, and restive in a matter which
he held to be paramount) was required to bend, and did bend, to the
local genius of democracy, reinforced by a most mercurial
temperament. The very air of Attica, combined with great political
power, kept its natives in a state of habitual intoxication; and even
wise men would have had some difficulty in mastering, as it affected
themselves, the permanent bias towards caprice and insolence.

Is this state of things at all taken into account in our modern
critiques upon Demosthenes? The upshot of what I can find in most
modern lecturers upon rhetoric and style, French or English, when
speaking of Demosthenes, is this notable simile, by way of
representing the final effect of his eloquence--'that, like a mountain
torrent, swollen by melting snow, or by rain, it carries all things
before it.' Prodigiously original! and exceedingly discriminative! As
if such an illustration would not equally represent the effect of a
lyrical poem, of Mozart's music, of a stormy chorus, or any other form
whatever of impassioned vehemence. Meantime, I suspect grievously that
not one of these critics has ever read a paragraph of Demosthenes.
Nothing do you ever find quoted but a few notorious passages about
Philip of Macedon, and the too-famous oath, by the manes of those that
died at Marathon. I call it too famous, because (like Addison's
comparison of Marlborough, at Blenheim, to the angel in the storm--of
which a schoolmaster then living said, that nine out of every ten boys
would have hit upon it in a school exercise) it has no peculiar
boldness, and must have occurred to every Athenian, of any
sensibility, every day of his life. Hear, on the other hand, a modern
oath, and (what is most remarkable) an oath sworn in the pulpit. A
dissenting clergyman (I believe, a Baptist), preaching at Cambridge,
and having occasion to affirm or to deny something or other, upon hi