St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1894-04-01

who read him. But as the basis Of all true
oratory, as with every other art and science,
was truth, the effect of the presentation
might be weakened in the reading, but the
truth would remain, and be all the more per-
ceptible and potent because of it's presenta-
ton by a master. Great actors who add
nothing to the sum of the worlds knowledge
of truth, like great lawyers who add nothing
to the law, soon become traditions in the
professions; but through the speeches that
survive, we are brought face to face with the
worlds great orators, and it does not strain
the imagination to picture the effect of these
mastery orations on the people Who heard
them.
''Who do you think, Colonel Ingerson, was
the greatest,of the ancient orators?''
Cicero. He WAS the lord of language. He
above all men, expressed the greatest and the
grandest thoughts, and the most wonderful
congratulations. He had in supreme degree,
the gift of imagination, without which he
could not have been an orator. In corrupt
age he was a patriot and gave the best of his
splendid efforts to the denunciation of treason.
There never stood before nor after him at the
bar of Rome a lawyer who was worthy to
fasten his sandals. His splendid gifts were
exercised in no cramping rut. Whatever
affected humanity interested him, and he
Illuminated it with the splendor of his genius.
The reverence for and the beauties of Old age
were better appreciated after they had been
framed in his golden sentences. Friendship
became holer for his treatment, and SO men
became better and broader when they heard
l,oEl h. LoJ I
on the subject.
"Demosthenes is more or less of myth
He may have been as wonderful an orator as
tradition says, but if so the evidences of his
supreme genius are lost, they are not to be
found in the Phillipics, or in the Oratioris on
the Crown. He may have been and no doubt
was cramped by his Attic environment. but
had he been man of commanding genius,
he would have risen superior to 1t, and the
truths he propounded would have been as
forceful and vital to-day as when they were
uttered
Chow do the modern compare with the
ancient orators, in your opinion, asked
'We can compare the efforts of the poets,
architects, sculptors and painters of antiquity,
particularly where their works survive in
but in oratory so much depends on the indi-
vidual peculiarities Of the man, that it is al
most impossible to make anything like
judicial comparison. The orations of the
ancients were carefully prepared and to that
fact is due their preservation. The most
effective addresses of the French Revolution
were largely extemporaneous, and no means
having been taken in the tumult of the times
to preserve them exactly they were lost. In
the same way, many of the mastery speeches
of the elder Pitt died with the sound of the
voice that uttered them, yet enough remains
to show that he, in his limited field, was
great orator. Fox was a powerful pleader
rather than great orator, and while Burke's
speeches, prepared and penned by his fine
scholarship and exquisite taste, are models
of splendid diction and elevated rhetoric, we
know that he was called the dinner bell for
his rising was a signal for friend and oppo-
nent to empty the benches. Sheridan had
many of the requisites of great orator, but
his training made him theatrical and he
worked for effects, and one feels that the
curtain should have been rung down on his
climaxes. To my mind Curran was the
greatest orator of his day, and some of the
passages in his speeches thrill the reader to-
day like a trumpet blast, and they will con-
tinue to thrill while truth sublimely uttered