The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-03-29

|
ready quoted from, says pertinentiy;
There are degrees of excellence among
orators as there are degrees of inspira-
ton among poets. and men OF large &C
! quisitive power may do some OF the
things which, in their best estate. are
the exclusive property OF the chlldren
OF genius. And if oratory is thus re-
| cogniZed as one of the choicest glts Vi
man. it follows that you can no more
command the appearance OF the oraIoi
than Won can call into existence MIL
ton or a Shakespeare by the agency OF
weIl-directed culture. Genius, IN any
of ire electric forms. is not at the dis
nosaI of the human will" Nature is no
niqpard. and scatters her royal gifts with
a free hand but she rarely endows with
her supreme powers men OF ORDINARY
mould The centenarii homines are
counted on your fingers Men OF the type
os Homer Aeschylus Euripides,
Sopbocles Demosthenes, Aeschines,
Pericles Cicero, Caesar, Virgil, Dante,
Spenser. Shakespeare, Milton, Bunyan'
Burke and others who glorify the human
family and eternize their own names, are
the rarest exceptions of the human race.
Education nor all scholastic training can
endow with genius. God makes the inn
mortals Oratorical gifts of the highest
/ kind are not given to very many of the
! children of men. America has been real
| w rich in sons who were endowed with
oratorical parts. They have been found
! in both great sections, and in probably
all of the States. The North has pro-
duced a Sergeant Smith Prentiss, a Wen
l.
an Jngersoll, Corwin, Storrs, a Rufus
Choate, a Bellows. and some others. The
South has had Henry Clay, McDnffie,
a Preston, Wise, Ben Hill. Pinck-
ney. a Hayne. Grady, Vance and
others, and many preachers of great gifts
the two Pierces, Palmer, Bishop Will
son, Kavanaugh, Hezekiah G. Leigh,
Lowe, the elder John Kerr, Hawks, An
| drew Broaddus, Leonidas Rosser, and
some others.
| With true Northern limitations and
self-applause a Northern newspaper
mentions ten Northern orators of the
past or living there but does not
name one Southern man. DR.. Joha
| Hall, a Scotchman, Evarts, Brooks
! and r. c. Winthrop could be
easily matched by many Southrons. Hall
was not fairly comparable to DR. Palmer
of New Orleans. Evarts had many
equals among the great lawyers and
forators of the Southland-Pinckney
Reverdy Johnson, Randolph, McDuffie
Badger, Jefferson Davis and dozens eoi
others. Brooks could have found his
equals among the greatest preachers in
the Baptist Methodist and Presbyterian
churches in the South. Even the Epsico-
pal church could equal him in Dr. F. L.
Hawks, a North Carolinian, and Bishop
Hugh Miller Thompson. an Irishman, OF
the Diocese of Mississippi, recently de-
ceased By the way, a really Southern
man will find difficulty in the way in
admiring Bishop Brooks, when he is as
sured that in his own Boston church
long after the war, he was graeeless and
bitter enough to say from the pulpit
''That Traitor Robert E. Lee" He was
mean enough to utter that vile Islander
| upon the greatest man yet born in
America--the knight with the stainless
soul, and the noblest principles, the Sill
Galahad of the centuries But so pro
Nincial, so narrow are most Northern
writers they can not even discuss ora
tory or great men without limiting pro-
duction to their own over praised sec
ton.
That oratory is still capable of produc-
ing great effects is true. 1t is not thai
culture and supposed refined and exalted
taste have destroyed the relish and ca
pability of men to enjoy fine oratorica'
displays. That is not true. Man is
man. and all the cultivation of the
schools can not change his relish fol
forensic display, and the exhibition Of
the most splendid effects by speakers OF
great powers, passion, imagination, rich
ness of diction and high magnetism. The
sorrow of the thing is. not that mer
cannot still enjoy, respond to and be
thrilled to the hearts core by great
speaking, but it is the lack of the mar
who can do it. The heart is ready tt
thrill to the touch for men are no bet
ter or wiser or greater than were the
Greeks who We're swept by Demosthenef
and the other masters of oratory but the
player who can strike the chords right
to evoke the response Is lacking. Lei
him step forth before the most refined
and highly educated audiences, and he
will arouse to the Ioftiest enthusiasm
the scholar the pedant, the recluse, the
SCepIlc, IL Iney De Dut men WIN like
passions" with men. Modern culture
would prove itself a sham and a decep
tion if it could make men less men, roll
them Of natural gifts and feelings reduce
them to educated automata, destroy
the true elements of the soul, and render
them incapable of eager response to the
greatest manifestations of genuine elo.
quenee when uttered by such supreme
; orators, endowed with the mos
enravishing and most commandips
voices like O'connell and Gladstone had
, Cratory is not dead yet, and education
has not killed 1t. 1t exists in all lands
and among all peoples. The schools hav,
not made 1t extinct. and the men wht
( are truly orators can enthrai the multi
| tude and command listening senates.
That dominating orator of poWeF-thf
late Senator Thomas II. Benton, native
of North Carolina, once pronounced
terrible philippe against Henry Clay il
. the United States Senate. That consum
e mate orator and commander of men, afte
Benton had closed, arose. with his Ions
cloak around him, and stepping out int
AN adtaceHt aisle, and drawing himSsi