The Press. — London, England, 1858-07-17 00:00:00

affection for him who speaks, and puts you instinctively on his side, so that his words find an echo in the mind, repeat ing there what he says, and reptoducing it easily in the un derstanding and the heart. A sympathetio voice singularly helps the .effect of the diEcourse, and is, besides, the best, the most insinuating of exordiums (introductions). It is a defect in this work, as in other treatises on the art of speaking, that the author does not supply hints for those who aim at a lower style than flights of eloquence. Men of business, suddenly thrust into public situations, do not know how to introduce their subject. Their facts will not amine themselves, and in their anxiety to put out all their knowledge, they become confused. All such persons should learn that it is well to arrange their facts under two or three heads, and deliver what they have to say in sequence. Lucidua ordo ' • a clear and conse cutive arrangement, is particularly necessary in all statements of facts,- and the raw speaker should be taught that all the facts cannot be told in a speech : there must be selection of topics and points, and it is only the important ones that should be dwelt upon. Before speaking it is imperative that a man should know what he is going to say, and he should sketch it out either on paper or mentally. M. Bautain gives plans and methods of arrange ment, which would be very useful to speakers of high class, who wish to make what is good still better, and to advance again beyond the com parative degree. But novices in public speaking, of mature years, could not acquire much from this essay. His description of the trials of an orator are very good, and we shall conclude with one or two impressive passages. Of fast and flippant talkers, cursed with a "fatal facility," he says : Woe to him wha experiences no fear before:speaking in public! It shows him to be unconscious of the importance of the fanction which he is about to discharge,—that he does not understand what truth is, whose apostle he himself should be, or that he little cares, and that he is not anima ted by that sacred fire which comes down from heaven to burn in the soul. I except altogether the Prophets, the Apostles of Jeans Christ, all who speak under supernatural inspiration, and who have been told that they must not pre. pare what they shall say when they shall stand before the powerful and the arbiters of the world, for that all they should say shall be given to them at the time itself. It is not for men like these that we write. The Almighty, whose instruments they are, and who fills them with His Spirit, makes them act and speak as He pleases, and to them the resources of human experience are entirely un• necessary. They never are afraid, because He who is truth and light is with them, and speaks by them. But others are not afraid because their enlightenment is small and their self-assurance great. They are unconscious of the sacredness of their task and of their ministry, and they go forward like children who, knowing not what they do, play with some terrible weapon, and with danger itself. The meet valiant troops always feel some emotion at the first cannon-shot, and I have heard it stated that one of the most celebrated generals of the empire,—who was even called " the bravest of the brave," was always obliged to dismount from his horse at that solemn moment; after which he rushed like a lion into the battle. Braggarts, on the contrary, are inn of assurance before the engagement, and give way during the action. He utters his caution, however, against a person entertaining a nervous fear, and falling into the other extreme : Nevertheless, there is an illusion against which you must be on your guard; it is that of thinking yourself ill when you have to speak in public, and to mistake for inability the often very feasible indisposition which you experience when called upon for a discourse, either through the indo• lence which is deterred by labour and fatigue, or on account of the extreme emotion which is felt at the thought of appearing in public, an emotion which produces on the body, and on the bowels especially, an effect reacting all ever you. Your arms and legs hang dead, you can hardly drag yourself along, or even stand upright. There is an op. pression of the respiration, a weight on the chest, and a, man experiences, in a fashion sometimes very burdensome• what was felt by the bravest of the brave at the first cannon shot. Many a time do I remember having found myself in this state at the moment for mounting the pulpit anti while waiting for my summons. Could I have only fled away without shame, moat assuredly I should have made off, and I envied the lot of those poor creatures who think of nothing or of no great matter, and who know not these agonies and lacerations. They who have not the strength to overcome these temptations and discouraoecnents will never know how to speak. They will not even have the courage to expose themselves to such trials. 1 may as wellsay it, they amount occasionally to such a torture that a man involuntarily compares himself to a convict dragged to the gallows. Those who have known this state and triumphed over it are aware that I do not exaggerate. • • • • I know hut one effectual remedy for this fear,—the remedy l have already indicated ; it is never to mount platform or pulpit, save on the call of conscience alone, — to fulfil a duty, and to put aside whatever is merely personal—glory, reputation, public opinion— wh never 'elates to self. A man then goes forward as a victim of THE PRESS, JULY 17, 1858. duty, resigned to the sacrifice and seeking only the glory of Him to whom the sacrifice is offered. Yon never succeed better than under these conditions, and everybody is a gainer ; the speaker, in calmness, dign;ty, and simplicity, —the audience, in a lof►ier and more penetrating address, because it is untainted by self►shness and almost above what is merely human. Some persons calculate upon giving themselves eowage by stimulating drinks or by a generous nuerishment. A strange sort of courage that ! In war, where physical force predominates, I can conceive such a thing—end it is a resource not to be disdained before a battle ; but as our bu siness is a battle of eloquence, that is of the subtlest, most intelligent, and most mental element that can be imagined, there is need of another spirit rather than the spirit of alcohol or of wine to stimulate the faculties and warm the heart. Orators who have recourse to such means in order to become capable of moving their hearers, will never get beyond the sphere of the imagination and of the senses ; and if they ever have any eloquence, it will be that of the clubs, the taproom, and the crossroads,—an eloquence which has a power of its own, bat in the interest of evil passions. We have ourselves felt pleasure in the perusal of this volume, on account of its literary merit and its freshness of style ; but it is more suited to improve speakers who are already partly formed, than to encourage novices. Of all arts, there is none in which practice so conduces to improve ment as public speaking, up to a given point ; but a man will not advance beyond that point unless he be either an original genius, or unless he has recourse to the critical text-writers who have elaborately treated of the art of oratory. Will He Marry Her ? By John Lang. London : Routledge. Tun two novels which Mr. Lang originally pub lished in Fraser's Magazine acquired for him a reputation which his subsequent works have hardly tended to sustain. lie has never, indeed, evinced the skill necessary for the construction of a good plot ; but in " The Wetherbys," which was a photograph of certain phases of Indian life, and in " The Forger's Wife," where the same vivid feeling of reality was perceptible, he showed that kind of power which draws the reader on from scene to scene, and impresses him with the truth of each separately, however inconsequent or improbable the whole may eventually prove. This effect seems to be attained by the employ ment of a studiously matter-of-fact style, and by a circumstantiality in relating the most ordinary occurrences, which at first produces an impression of humorous quaintness, but ultimately of extreme triviality. The realism of his style frequently reminds us of Mrs. Crowe, whose ingenuity, how ever, in the mechanism of her stones he cannot be said to rival, as he seems to consider the slen derest thread of narrative sufficient for connecting his situations and adventures. Whether his vein was exhausted by the production of his second novel, or whether he has ceased to take pains, it is impossible to say, but we can hardly imagine that either " Too Much Alike " or " Too Clever by Half" would have found admittance to the PT;of Fraser. present tale is concerned with Indian matters, and turns on the attachment of an European for an " Eurasian" damsel; the Indian portion serving as a peg whereon to hang divers episodes of military life. Mr. Lang has a memory copiously stored with anecdote, and some of his stories connected with the Sikh war are amusing enough; nor will the sketches of prominent characters, such as Lord Avalanche and Sir Edward Ferret, fail to interest many readers. But the fitults we have noticed are more perceptible than ever; and though the main conception of the plot is not without dramatic power, it is nullified by the pointlessness of the conclusion. A novelist should be a kind of little Providence to his imaginary world, and connect the fortunes of his characters in some manner with their previous actions; not necessarily as a moralist, but at any rate as a philosopher who can recognize cause and effect. But in Mr. Lang's present volume, character is displayed, and hints of its tendency are given, all of which lead to nothing. The hero, though a courageous gentleman, is a silly and garrulous fellow, but his faults have no effect but that of making the story swerve a little, as it were, from its direct course, while his virtues cannot save him from the ultimate catastrophe which is the result of pure accident. There is a mysterious English, and an equally obscure, not to say dark, Oriental trentleman,—a marvellous ring, and a malignant Eastern prince (a sort of young Nana Sahib)— , all capital materials for something tragic and 681 romantic, but which "fog off," as gardeners say, into nothingness, and leave the fate of the hero and heroine to be determined by causes over which nobody could possibly have had any con trol whatever. A German critic would probably be led by these abortive preparations to the con clusion that Mr. Lang, like Homer, was of the plural number, and that :the different Cyclic individuals composing him had failed to fuse their materials into a consistent whole. But Homer nods, and Mr. Lang's dreams have perhaps been a little incoherent. If he had omitted some of the earlier and more matter-of-fact portions of this book, and had worked up some of the threads to which we have alluded into a firmer web, he might have produced a good story ; as it is, we fear it can only be classed with the tribe of rail way novels we reviewed a fortnight since, the value of whose contents is in an inverse ratio to the brilliancy of their outward aspect. Among REPaorrs we have from Mr. Bentley a cheap and convenient edition of " The Initials" —one of the most charming novels that was ever written. No one who begins this book can fail to be fascinated by the freshness of the style, the novelty of the manners depicted, and the keen observation of character which pervades every part. We have re-read it—after we fear to say how many previous perusals—with renewed pleasure. - - - Messrs. Smith and Elder have issued a hand somely printed and cloth-bound edition of " Wutherm,g Heights " and " Agnes Grey—com pleting the Brontii series. Messrs. Chapman and Hall send a cheap and readable edition of " Agatha's Husband —a novel, but not so good as some later works good the same authoress. It turns a little too much on those perverse and improbable misun derstandings which the female novelists of the day love to paint, and with which they have by this time thoroughly nauseated most sensible readers ; but it is among the least flagrant of such offenders. The Quarterly Review. London: Murray. WE have just received the July number of this Review. We have, as yet, only had time to glance at three or four of the articles, relating to subjects of more or less immediate interest. All these, however, seem to us to po ss ess very high merit indeed, and to give us reason for asserting that this is one of the best numbers of the Review that has appeared for many quarters. We are especially glad to notice an uncom monly brisk and witty onslaught upon that Daniel Lambert of literature, Mr. Buckle. It is high time that this gentleman's inflated reputa tion was reduced to its proper limits. And it is surprising to see what a few judicious pricks from the Quarterly pen have done towards this de sirable consummation. The article upon Blake is interesting and well timed, and on a lhture occasion we hope to give some picturesque quotations from it. The tone adopted towards the Puritans we cannot altoge ther approve in the pages of the Quarterly ; not because we do not fully believe all that the writer here says of their moral worth, and the mistaken odium under which they have hitherto laboured, but because obviously, cateris pari bus, which he himself admits to have been the case, it was every sailor's duty, as a king's servant, to have adhered to the King. While the notion that the fleet, while, sweeping . the Channel and intercepting succour from their lawful sovereign, were playing a neu tral part and " keeping the ring," is an assertion which, we think, the author of this article will without much reflection admit to have been pre cipitate. But in every other respect the paper is very good, and one of the best in the number. The article on Wycliffe—being a review of " Faaciculi Zizaniorum Magistri Johannis Wyclif " cum Tritico. Ascribed to Thomas Netter, of " Walden, Provincial of the Carmelite Order in " England, and Confessor to Henry V. Edited "by the Rev. Walter Waddington Shirley, " Tutor and late Fellow of Wadham College, " Oxford. Published by the Authority of the " Lords Commissioners of her Majesty's Tree " sury, under the direction of the Master of the " Rolls "—is perhaps the piece de resistance of the present issue. We shall recur to it in a future notice. In the meantime, we give A