The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-10-04
GLApsroNE,s oRAroRY.
His Manner and Methods-ComparisOn
with Other Great Speakers.

His Manner and acknowledgements
with Other Great Speakers.
G. W. smalley S, London Letter
The effect he produces does not owe much to
gesture. There is gesture but it often lacks eX'
presSiVenesS. The arms are used pretty con
stantly but the same movement of the same
muscles is made to signify, or meant to signify,
very different things. 1t wants what on the
French stage is called largeness or amplitude,
and it is sometimes violent sometimes deficient
in the grace and suavity which the admirable
smoothness of voice leads you to expect. The
shoulders rise and fall with what am afraid
must at times be described as jerkiness-indeed
at such moments the voice itself sometimes
loses its purity, and harsh notes are heard. The
rather frequent passage of the right forefnger
across the lips, and the curious touch of the
thumb on particular spot at the summit of the
broad arch OF the forehead, are pecuarites
which mention only for the sake of fidelity
and with every apology to the orator for taking
note OF such specks upon the general splendor Of
his delivery. So of the quick bend
ing and Strengthening of the knees
exceptional things is but momentary
they are accidents due to the overmastering
intensity of thought and aim-nature in her
cruder moods getting the better of the consum-
mate art which is the prevailing and all but con
tnuous condition with the orator. If there be
any deficiencies of this sort you will hardly OBJ
serve them unless after long familiarity with the
speaker. 1t is the face which will rivet your
gaze; the play of features, alike delicate and
powerful. and the ever-restless. far-searchng
glance. Never was such a tel-tale countenance.
Expression after expression sweeps across it,
the thought pictures itself to you almost before
it is uttered, and if your eyes by chance meet
mis-, it is blaze of sunlight which dazzles YOU
Nor do the little blemishes really matter. What
matters, what impresses you, and what you will
carry away with you as a permanent and pre-
cious memory. is above all other things the no.
bleness OF presence the beautiful dignity, the
statellness of bearing, the immense sincerity
which are visible to the eyes oil the most care
less spectator, and which fill the hall with their
influence and place the great multitude wholly
at the mercy of the one fellow-being who stands
before them.
have been asked often enough by my own
countrymen if any American was like Mr., Glad
stone. l know of none, nor of any European
either. In appearance, the late Mr. Daniel Web
ster was slightly, very slightly like Mr. Glad
stone, but the massive features and form had an
addition of coarse robustness of which in Mr.
Gladstone there is none | once saw and heard
Webster in Worcester when he spoke from the
step to the gate leading into the front door-yard
of the late Governor Lincoln, of Massachusetts,
beneath lantern, the rays from which fell
straight on his face. He almost exactly realized
what Emerson had in mind when he said that if
Webster were first revealed to him by a flash of
lightning he should not DO sure whether an angel
or a demon We're standing before him. Well, it
is no compliment to Mr. Gladstone to say that
nobody would take him for a demon, beneath Il
flash of lightning or otherwise. | hope | am not
dealing in compliments at all My sole aim is to
be descriptive. But Webster was of the earth.
Mr. Gladstone has light on his face that
seems to come from the upper air.
Webster was speaker of extraordinary
powers of mind. AS Theodore Parker
said of him, he could state a case better than
any man in America. He was occasionally AN
orator 1t is but seldom that Mr. Gladstone is
not. [ should like to draw much more minute
comparison between Mr., Gladstone and Wendell
Phillips for it would, l think, be much more
illustrative though [ should begin by saying
that neither Mr.. Gladstone nor anybody else
had that Apollo-like beauty of presence, or that
voice of gold, or that genius for conciliating OF
controlling hostile audience which were
among Philips's many incompatible gifts But
/ cannot do that. | have heard CASTELAR, address
5000 Spaniards at Prices Circus, in Madrid, in
his all too coplous CaStiian supple, sympathetic
sinuous, an orator to the tips of his fingers l
have heard Bismarck, when in the white uniform
of the cuirassiers of whom he was major, and
booted to the knee, he gave his orders with mill
tary directness to the Parliament of Prussia l
heard Gambetta in the greatest effort of his life
when in 1877 he closed four days debate in
the Chamber at Versailles with what |
am disposed to think the greatest single
effort of oratory ever listened to in Europe
and he, too, had great deal in common with
Mr. Gladstone. Both had the same miraculous
feXibility of mind and ineXhaustible abundance
of various dlctlon. Mr.. Bright the one English
man living whose greatest speeches might be
proitably studied side by side with Mr. Glad
stones would be more profitable for contrast
than for comparison. The lucid flow of Nh.
Brights simply-constructed sentences, always
direct, always the best word in the best place,
always effective out of all proportion to any
machinery of rhetoric, evident to the eye
scanning them in print-nothing could be more
unlike the method of Mr.. Gladstone and nothing
could be more instructive than full statement
of the secret of each But, on the whole, not
much is to be gained by these brief "reminiscences
of great contemporaries, for the most part SO
essentially unlike Mr. Gladstone, and it is time
to get back to the matter in hand, and, above
all, time to have done with it,