which happy talent can add.
But if there be personality in the orator, the face of things changes.
The audience is thrown into the attitude of pupil, follows like a
child its preceptor, and hears what he has to say. It is as if, amidst
the king's council at Madrid, Ximenes urged that an advantage might be
gained of France, and Mendoza that Flanders might be kept down, and
Columbus, being introduced, was interrogated whether his geographical
knowledge could aid the cabinet, and he can say nothing to one party
or to the other, but he can show how all Europe can be diminished and
reduced under the king by annexing to Spain a continent as large as
six or seven Europes.

This balance between the orator and the audience is expressed in what
is called the pertinence of the speaker. There is always a rivalry
between the orator and the occasion, between the demands of the hour
and the prepossession of the individual. The emergency which has
convened the meeting is usually of more importance than anything the
debaters have in their minds, and therefore becomes imperative to
them. But if one of them have anything of commanding necessity in his
heart, how speedily he will find vent for it, and with the applause of
the assembly! This balance is observed in the privatest intercourse.
Poor Tom never knew the time when the present occurrence was so
trivial that he could tell what was passing in his mind without being
checked for unseasonable speech; but let Bacon speak, and wise men
would rather listen, though the revolution of kingdoms was on foot. I
have heard it reported of an eloquent preacher, whose voice is not yet
forgotten in this city, that, on occasions of death or tragic
disaster, which overspread the congregation with gloom, he ascended
the pulpit with more than his usual alacrity, and, turning to his
favorite lessons of devout and jubilant thankfulness, "Let us praise
the Lord," carried audience, mourners, and mourning along with him,
and swept away all the impertinence of private sorrow with his
hosannas and songs of praise. Pepys says of Lord Clarendon, with whom
"he is mad in love," on his return from a conference, "I did never
observe how much easier a man do speak when he knows all the company
to be below him, than in him; for, though he spoke indeed excellent
well, yet his manner and freedom of doing it, as if he played with it,
and was informing only all the rest of the company, was mighty
pretty." [_Diary_, I. 469