The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1869-06-11
A sketch Of Castelar,.

The Madrid correspondent of the Lon ion
Times gives the following sketch of the great
Republican orator of Spain: sa 1
scarcely hope to make you familiar with
the manner Of Castelar's oratory. 1t cannot
be compared to anything you have in Eng
land, and it transceuds all the merits and
faults of the late Brofferio in Italy, with
whose style of eloquence 1t has, so far as
can judge, the nearest resemblance. Senior
CASTELAR, has, without contradiction, the
mightiest lungs, the finest voice, the frmest
faith, the stoutest assurance, the freshest
memory, the most discursive erudition. the
most elegant rhetoric, the most perverse losic,
that ever were given to mortal speaker. He
begins and ends and goes through his address
always at the top OF his voice. The iow is
incessant; the vehemence unfagging; the
thread of argument, such as 1t Is, never lost.
You have heard of men chopping logic; Cas-
telar's power lies in chopping history. He is,
and has been Tor years, historical pro-
lessor at the University. He must have
hundreds of his most polished lectures by
heart; apropos to anything and aprop0s to
nothing, down come the records OF the past
to illustrate the present. 1t is q tumble OF
facts and inferences perfectly bewildering.-
OF course some of the illusions are exceed
ingly ingenious, some extremely far-fetched
some wondrously commonplace and clap
trap. 1t CASTELAR, gave you time to con-
tradict him, you would be at little pains to
prove him the most wrong-headed reasoner
that ever was but the fact Is, he gives you no
such time. His imagination flies and f1trers
before you like Millo'the- Wisp, aIluring
as it beguiles you, delighting as It provokes
you, till you give yourself up, bound hand
and foot, over head and ears in love with the
orator, content, for the while, to rave and
blunder with him, to distort facts and to out
rage common sense with, him. This is,
however, only Castelar's argument; you
must wait for the peroration. Castelar's
forte is passion; he relies for success on SYM
pathy, and there is that in his earnestness,
candor, and genuine uprightness Of ends and
means, which makes him perfectly irresisti-
Bile. He has the noblest heart under the big
gest, If not, perhaps, the soundest, head.
There is a good deal Of the believer, OF the
seer, in the man; there is that which awes
where it fails to convince, which satisfies you
as something not to be reduced to the ordina-
ry human standard, something to be taken
with discretion, and, as it were, under protest,
but not to be carped at or quarreIed with
aan apocalypse, !" as he himself calls it, which
may have something in 1t and may turn out
true. Add to this the most surprising varie-
ty and liveliness, flashes of the readiest wit
and sarcasm, the most unexceptionable good
breeding, good nature, and good taste, the
most unerring hits with the least possible Of
tense. Castelar, is Incompatible as a gentle
man, however unripe as scholar and absurd
as politician. And. mind, l have never seen
or heard him otherwise than in public. ]
have neither friendship nor antipathy to bias
my Judgment, and think it Is worth mans
wghile to travel all the way from London to
nlaAiriu yn'y 70 hear him.