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Is swept by a fell fisher's net ;
We are the last of all our kind

To mourn our brethren left behind.
We hide to gain a short respite

From death, though robbed of joyous light,
And sorely harrassed day and night."
"Leap" said the fox-" upon this rock-
The fisher's wiles you here may mock."
"Are you in truth the wisest beast?
Yet fame proclaims you so at least!
To give us such advice fair friend,

You seem the silliest of them all;
Our lot indeed we'd surely mend,
Into a surer snare to fall.
The wave our element of life,
Like air to thee;

Although with many dangers rife,
We would not flee.

To leap into the jaws of death
While safely still we glide beneath.
The fox with rising wrath inflamed,
And drooping tail slunk off ashamed.

MORAL.

World weary wight, if you are able,
Take home the moral of this fable;
Avow 'tis better far to dare

The brunt of Fate and patient bear
Thy galling load of mingled care,

Than yield thy little boon of breath
And seek a darker evil-Death.

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ART IN ORATORY.

'Nature," says Sir Thomas Browne, "is the Art of God." The symmetry, the beauty, the unity, in a word, the perfection which it reveals to its most devoted students, attest not merely a divine origin but a divine Artist. Man, also, whether we regard him in his relation to nature, or as an independent creation, beautifully illustrates and confirms this truth. In the full development of his being, spiritual and physical, we have the product of an art and an Artist, divine as the work of no other art or artist ever can be. The account we have received of it from its author, should exalt while it inspires us with awe,-"IN THE IMAGE OF GOD MADE HE MAN." It was not a cold, exact impress; it was no peculiar shape and defined form. It was a living, spiritual resemblance, for "the Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul."

That image of Divinity, defaced though it has been, bears many and many a trace of its Grand Original. Man too is an Artist, a Creator; finite it is true, but yet à Creator. The hard, jagged and shapeless rock in his hand, will grow into forms of majesty and grace and living beauty, which kings and pontiff's will reverence and be guiltless of idolatry. He can change

"the blank canvass to a magic mirror,

Making the absent present; and to shadows

Give light, depth, substance, bloom, yea thought and motion." Under his plastic power, columns will rise, cornice, frieze and architrave, roof and dome, and spires surmount each other in stately and harmonious proportions, while within, curiously graven pillars will sustain arches and vaults fashioned together, and roll back anthems which other men of powers no less transcendent, have created to thrill and dilate and ravish the soul; and within this temple, He whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, deigns to dwell and these anthems He who inhabits the praises of Eternity is pleased to hear.

The nature, importance, and achievements of Art in either of these departments, would furnish a subject, fertile of thought and entertainment. We have selected, however, as the theme for a few reflections, that department of art which has special reference to the exercises at the bar and in the pulpit. In the use of the expression "department of art," we have been betrayed into the very error which it has been an important part of our design to expose. Each of those subjects to which we have referred, has been commonly regarded and treated as having an art pertaining peculiarly to itself; based upon principles of its own, by which it must be controlled and criticised. Accordingly we hear of the art of sculpture, the art of painting, the art of architecture, and even the arts of poetry and of oratory. In certain vague and common uses, this language may perhaps be allowed. But in critical propriety it cannot be so used. It is defective, and it degrades art into skill, and the artist into an artisan. In the sense in which this term must be used, in the only sense in which it ought in such a connection to be used, art is one-one in its philosophy, one in its laws, one in its effects. In the connection therefore, in which it is proposed to consider it, it will be more philosophically and æsthetically correct to speak of art in oratory, rather than the art of oratory. We do not speak of the logic of Jurisprudence, the logic of Geometry, and the logic of Theology. Truths in either we know to be logical when we know what logic is; and even if we do not, analysis will detect a logic in our decision. By its figures and moods, consciously or unconsciously to the author, these truths must be constructed, and by them alone are they to be judged. So art, having its foundation in the conditions and laws of our being, and of nature when exhibited, whether consciously or unconsciously to its author, is sooner or later recognised and confessed; and the confession, though spontaneous, analysis will discover to be based upon true artistic principles.

Art is Nature reproduced through the soul. It is the direct offspring of our spiritual being, begotten by those earnest longings after the perfect and the beautiful, which make us conscious of our high origin and destiny. It is a new birth of truth by which it becomes humanized, and receives at once our cordial and spontaneous recognition. It may be embodied in marble as the Niobe, the Laocoon, or the Moses of Angelo, the Coliseum or the Parthenon. We may see it in the sweet expressive beauty of the Madonna, or the glory of the Transfiguration. We may read it in the Prometheus, the Edipus, the Iphigenia, in Lear and in Hamlet, or hear it in the sublime oratorios of the Creation and the Messiah. We have no hesitation, however, in affirming that IN

THE TRUE IDEAL OF AN ORATOR, WE HAVE ITS HIGHEST AND MOST

PERFECT MANIFESTATION. Because here, and here only, we have so far as it is possible the union of all, together with peculiar, and we might almost say, superartistic elements possessed by no other.

We have not here, however, as in the departments already mentioned, examples by which to illustrate our position. We cannot, from its very nature implying as it does, the presence and actings of the orator. We can only by description and reference. to those few and immortal names with which every scholar is familiar assist him in creating such an ideal.

In the first place, then, we have in the perfect oration the proportions, the symmetry, the strength and the imposing dignity of the architectural ideal-whether it be the simplicity, noble plainness and chastened severity of the manly Doric; the light airy elegance and matron grace of the Ionic; the magificence and luxuriant splendor of the rich Corinthian, or the vastness and gloomy grandeur of the sublime Gothic. To what school of painting too can we not present a counterpart? Words are themselves the pictures of thought, and when selected and combined with the taste and skill and spirit of a master, will rival the excellence of design and anatomical fidelity of the Florentine, the ease and expression of the Roman, or the light and shade and perfect coloring of the Venetian schools.

In the next place we can find in the perfect orator-perfect we mean as to all the externals of oratory, so far as they can here be separated the ability to effect in substance all that can be effected by art in musical performance. The oratorio in itself may be admirable. Its full effect however, as a work of art must depend upon the execution; and here it may be aided immensely by instruments. But with such materials as I have assumed for the orator, (and how seldom have they been united!) what music has he not created? How skillfully and effectively has he not played upon thousands of those thousand-stringed harps at once; alternately elevating and subduing, thrilling and soothing, rousing them to martial fury or hushing them into unbreathing repose. And how far does an orator, thus physically educated, surpass the highest achievement of the chisel? Ay was not man the great

prototype of the statuary? Was it not when he had fully developed all these powers, by the discipline and excitement of their public games, in the Gymnasia and Palæstræ, in wrestling, boxing, running and gladiatorial combat, that Phidias and Praxiteles chose him as the model of grace and strength, attitude and expression? Was it not from human nature the former borrowed his great ideal of that inimitably grand chryselephantine statue of Minerva in the Parthenon? Thus did they create even their gods in the image of man.

We seek not in this to depreciate those glorious products of genius, that for more than twenty centuries have received the unqualified and unanimous praise of all whose praise was valuable. We would detract not an iota, if we could, from the high merits of their immortal authors. True, art and nature never can conflict. They are essentially interdependent. Without nature there could be no art, and through art we discover more minutely and vividly the perfection of nature. So that a deeper contemplation and love of both, will only elicit from us the exclamation

"O mater pulchra, filia pulchrior!"

With reference to expression also, the perfect orator's superiority in point of variety, intensity, and force, might be shown from the same view. This, we are aware, is the glory of sculpture. And in the use of the naked human form, there really is the opportunity of exhibiting the working of any passion or emotion, under whatever circumstances, at any age and throughout the whole body. The last choking pang, the maddening convulsion, the stagnating circulation and paralytic death of Laocoon, are legible and audible. We can witness the expression of the dying gladiator of Cresilas, "in which," says Pliny, "it could be discovered how much of life yet remained." There in marble are the gaunt bones, the wrinkled skin and the protruding veins of old age; there, too, the round finely articulated limbs, the free throbbing buoyancy and restless sporting of boyhood. Nor can we refrain from reminding those who have had the privilege of seeing it, of the face of the Ivory Crucifix. We say reminding them, for if they knew it were possible for us to describe it, they would prefer that we should not. They would rather contemplate that divine spectacle of resignation in agony, which, had one been a scoffer of Jesus, would have silenced his scoffings forever; and to the Christian's heart must have given a meaning unfelt before, to the words, "He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth."

It is true also, that in many of these productions we have, not merely a single passion represented, but often in that or by that, a whole act, perhaps a whole life. Yet if we carefully and constantly observe the living human face and figure in its most perfect exhibitions, in form and moving how express and admirable," in the ever-varying play of the features lighted up with joy kindled into rage, haggard and hideous with despair, erect and nervous

with indignant scorn, composed into the placid serenity of holy meditation, or dumb with "thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears" we shall feel though we cannot express the wonderful contrast. Not to mention the eloquence of a man's right arm there are meanings which cannot be spoken or painted in the sparkling fiery glow; the fixed riving gaze, the mellow loveliness, the fascinating side-glance and sympathetic tear of that speechless but mighty coadjutor-a cultivated eye. They are not permanent as in marble; many of them may be evanescent as an echo, but they are in the true orator no less effective. They are not the passion petrified but the ministers of a soul struggling to give birth to a great truth when language fails or falters. They are the wings of thought and emotion and passion. Roscius is said in a contest with Cicero to have expressed by action everything which the orator expressed in words. The Edipus of Sophocles we are told, was performed at Rome during the reign of Augustus entirely by pantomime and so admirably as to draw tears from the whole assembly. One of the most affecting and vivid illustrations of its power, may be seen in the conversation of a group of the deaf and dumb. When the pupils of Eschines at Rhodes expressed their unbounded applause of the oration of Demosthenes which he had just repeated to them, he said, "Quanto magis admiraremini, si audissetis ipsum;" and in reference to that exquisite work of art already alluded to-the Ivory Crucifix-we would say, Quanto magis admiraremini, si vidissetis ipsum?

We come now to a brief consideration of a topic which justly demands a distinct treatment; a comparison of dramatic and oratorial art, their points of identity and diversity as artistic productions. In the proposition already advanced, we were not unmindful of the very great and just estimate in which dramatic art is held. And slight as is our experimental knowledge of those great masters of the ancient and modern drama, we could not live long in a literary atmosphere, or imbibe much of its spirit without feeling that their dominion was almost supreme. We know little comparatively of the colossal grandeur, the boldness and originality of the creations of Eschylus, the harmony, the humanity and the perfect mastery of the Greek language, of Sophocles, the energy and passionate outpourings of Milton's favorite, Euripides. Nor can we perceive but as it were afar off, the gigantic proportions of the great poet of man, England's "myriad-minded bard." Yet we confess that the power and productions of him

"whose resistless eloquence

Wielded at will that fierce democratie,

Shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne,"

to our own mind far transcends them all; and if asked to point to the finest exhibition of intellectual sublimity in the world, we should select out of all others, DEMOSTHENES DELIVERING THE ORATION ON THE CROWN. Bossuet has somewhere called this oration,

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