scholarly, when they speak, whether they have papers about them or not, neither read nor declaim, but talk fluently and eloquently. No man can sustain a claim to oratory, except of a mushroom and stumporator sort, who is not a practiced and critical writer; and such as set up that unfounded claim would probably blush to see their own oratory on paper, unless too destitute of scholarship to discover its inelegancies, repetitions, and redundancies.

A young man, with some brilliant parts, while he has the freshness and vivacity of youth, with a good voice and good personal appearance, may win from an unlearned and unthinking audience praise for oratory without this solid foundation for it; but, alas! it will be like the morning cloud and early dew, and he will soon sink to his real level, which is that of the thoughtless and senseless crowd about him, and the sun of his fame and prospects will set at noon. Such is the short and sad record of many a young orator of hot-house growth, whose natural talents, with proper training and patient practice, would have carried him high in the list of fame.

K.-See page 107.

On the preparation and delivery of an extemporaneous sermon, we are allowed by the generous publisher, Charles Scribner, 124 Grandstreet, New York, to make the following brief extracts from a late publication of his: "ART OF EXTEMPORE SPEAKING. HINTS FOR THE PULPIT, THE SENATE, AND THE BAR;" a work which we most cordially recommend to all our readers.

"In every discourse, if it have life, there is a parent idea or fertile germ, and all the parts of the discourse are like the principal organs and the members of an animated body. The propositions, expressions, and words resemble those secondary organs which connect the principal, as the nerves, muscles, vessels, and tissues attaching them to one another, and rendering them copartners in life and death. Then amid this animate and organic mass there is the spirit of life, which is in the blood, and is everywhere diffused with the blood from the heart, life's center, to the epidermis. So in eloquence, there is the spirit of the words, the soul of the orator, inspired by the subject, his intelligence illumined with mental light, which circulates through the whole body of the discourse, and pours therein brightness, heat, and life. A discourse without a parent idea is a stream without a fountain, a plant without a root, a body without a soul; empty phrases, sounds which beat the air, or a tinkling cymbal.

"He who wishes to speak in public must, above all, see clearly on what he has to speak, and rightly conceive what he has to say. The precise determination of the subject, and the idea of the discourse, these are the two first stages of the preparation.

"It is not so easy as it seems to know upon what one is to speak; many orators, at least, seem to be ignorant of it, or to forget it in the course of their address; for it is sometimes their case to speak of all things except those which would best relate to the occasion. This exact determination of the subject is still more needful in extemporization; for there many more chances of discursiveness exist. The address not being sustained by the memory or notes, the mind is more exposed to the influences of the moment; and nothing is required but the failure or inexactitude of the word, the suggestion of a new thought, a little inattention, to lure it from the subject, and throw it into some crossroad which takes it far away. Add the necessity of continuing when once a speech is begun, because to stop is embarrassing, to withdraw a disgrace Therefore, in order to lead and sustain the progress of a discourse, one must clearly know whence one starts, and whither one goes, and never lose sight of either the point of departure or the destination. But to effect this the road must be measured beforehand, and the principal distance marks must have been placed. There is a risk also of losing one's way, and then, either one arrives at no end, even after much fatigue, productive of interminable discourses leading to nothing; or if one at last reaches the destination, it is after an infinity of turns and circuits, which have wearied the hearer as well as the speaker, without profit or pleasure for anybody.

A question well stated is half solved.

"It is necessary that the orator before speaking should be collected; he should be wholly absorbed in his ideas, and proof against the interruptions and impressions which surround him. The slightest distraction to which he yields may break the chain of his thoughts, mar his plan, and even sponge out of his mind the very remembrance of his subject itself. This appears incredible, and I would not believe it myself had I not experienced it.

"All who extemporize have had the misfortune some time or other, to fall into digressions, prolixities, and appendages, which cause the main object to be lost to view, and wear out or render languid the attention of the audience. In the warmth of exposition a man is not always master of his own words, and when new thoughts arise, they may lead a long way from the subject, to which there is sometimes a difficulty in returning. If he does not hold with a firm hand the.

thread of his thoughts he will never come to speak in an endurable manner; and though by his fine passages he may surprise, amuse, and dazzle the hearer, he will not suggest one idea to his mind, nor instill a single feeling into his ear, because there will be neither order nor unity, and therefore no life in his discourse.

"Most orators spoil their speeches by lengthiness, and prolixity is the principal disadvantage of extemporaneous speaking. In it, more than in any other, one wants time to be brief, and there is a perpetual risk of being carried away by the movement of the thoughts or the expressions.

"It sometimes happens, unfortunately, that you are barely into your subject when you should end; and then, with a confused feeling of all that you have omitted, and a sense of what you might still say, you are anxious to recover lost ground in some degree, and you begin some new development when you ought to be concluding. This tardy and unseasonable, yet crude aftergrowth has the very worst effect upon the audience, which, already fatigued, becomes impatient and listens no longer. The speaker loses his words and his trouble, and everything which he adds by way of elucidating or corroborating what he has said, spoils what has gone before, destroying the impression of it. He repeats himself unconsciously, and those who still listen follow him with uneasiness, as men watch from shore a bark which seeks to make port and cannot. It is a less evil to turn short round and finish abruptly than thus to tack incessantly without advancing; for the greatest of a speaker's misfortunes is that he should bore.

"They who have not learned first to write, generally speak badly and with difficulty, unless indeed they have that fatal facility, a thousand times worse than hesitation or than silence, which drowns thought in floods of words or in a torrent of copiousness, sweeping away good earth and leaving behind sand and stones alone. Heaven keep us from those interminable talkers, such as are often to be found in Southern countries, who deluge you relatively to anything and to nothing with a shower of dissertation, and a down-pouring of their eloquence! During nine tenths of the time there is not one rational thought in the whole of this twaddle, carrying along in its course every kind of rubbish and platitude. The class of speakers who produce a speech so easily, and who are ready at the shortest moment to extemporize a speech, a dissertation, or a homily, know not how to compose a tolerable sentence; and I repeat, that, with such exceptions as defy all rule, he who has not learned how to write, will never know how to speak.

"Nor must he rely on the notes which he may carry in his hand to

help him in the exposition and save him from breaking down. Doubtless they may have their utility, especially in business-speaking, as at the bar, at the council board, or in a deliberative assembly. They are the material part, the baggage of the orator, of which he should disencumber himself to the utmost of his power. They are the most utterly worthless when they seem the most necessary. In the most fervid moments of extemporaneous speaking, when light teems, and the sacred fire burns, when the mind is hurried along upon the tide of thought, everything should proceed from within. Then nothing so thoroughly freezes the oratorical flow as to consult these wretched notes."

SACRED ELOQUENCE: THE BRITISH PULPIT.*

ABOUT fifteen years ago our readers were presented with a critique on "French Sermons," concluding with an intimation that at some future period the subject would be resumed, with a special reference to the British pulpit. In that article surprise was expressed that there should be so small a proportion of sermons destined to live; that out of the million and upward preached annually throughout the empire there should be so very few that are remembered three whole days after they are delivered; fewer still that are committed to the press; scarcely one that is not in a few years absolutely forgotten. "If any one," it was added, “were for the first time informed what preaching was; if, for example, one of the ancient critics had been told that the time would come when vast multitudes of persons should assemble regularly to be addressed, in the midst of their devotions, upon the most sacred truths of a religion sublime beyond all the speculations of philosophers, yet in all its most important points simple and of the easiest apprehen

* Edinburgh Review, October, 1840.-Sermons to a Country Congregation. By AUGUSTUS WILLIAM HARE, late Fellow of New College, and Rector of Alton Barnes. 2 vols., 8vo.; London, 1839.

No. LXXXIX, pp. 147, 148.