arms laid up in store, until the power to use and wield them has been acquired. They may benefit their possessor individually, but they give him no power over others until he has learnt the art of communicating them in strong and beautiful language.

An art, it certainly is, requiring for its acquisition careful study and constant exercise; and this study can never be remitted. It is as necessary at fifty as at twenty-five; in a speech to the senate, as in a Sunday school address; but when acquired, how transcendent is its power; how glorious its effects!

This study and constant use are as necessary to a writer as to a speaker. Nothing tells but excellence; nothing is excellent but what is the result of labor. STOWE, 1877.

ELOQUENCE.*

"The impression which every person, whether on the platform or in conversation, makes on his fellows, is the moral resultant, not of what he says, but of what he has grown up to be; of his manhood, weak or strong, sterling or counterfeit; of a funded but unreckoned influence accumulated unconsciously and spending itself according as the man is deep or shallow, like a reservoir, or like a spout, or an April shower." Prof. Matthews, in "Getting On in the World."

The above observation is so true that the wonder is, it has never been made before. We have approaches to it in such proverbs as "Actions speak louder than

* See Bolingbroke's "Spirit of Patriotism," Works, Vol. IV, p. 224. Ed. 1809. Description of Demosthenes and Cicero.

words," etc. I would make but one alteration in it, namely, by adding the words "so much" after the word "not," so as to read "not so much of what he says, as of what he has grown up to be," etc. An insignificant man may utter words as wise as even Solomon uttered without producing the slightest impression; whilst the same words spoken by one whom we have learned to reverence and look up to, will be drunk in with delight, and produce a lasting influence upon our lives. The one is not preceded by any preparation on our part to appreciate him; whilst the character of the other has already made a lodgment in our minds which disposes us to pay the strictest attention to his speech, and to give it the fullest effect. It is in us, not in the speaker, that the cause of the difference of impression lies. The effective speaker has already, by his previous reputation, affected us in his favor. We listen to him as a master, because we have come to regard him as such beforehand. This weight of character which thus fills out and gives due effect to a man's utterances, may be partially, though but partially, supplied by the favorable presumptions which arise from his appearance, air and manner, which presuppose, or give reason to presuppose, those characteristics which command our confidence, when we know, or believe them to exist.

STYLE.

The perfection of style consists in the use of the exact speech necessary to convey the sense in the fewest words consistent with perspicuity, at the same time having regard to appropriateness and harmony

of expression. Its greater excellencies are directness, accuracy, appropriateness and perspicuity. When these qualities are accomplished with a clear and well modulated enunciation, the thoughts of the speaker go straight to the understanding of his hearers, keep their attention fixed, and leave no time for inclination to wander, criticise, or even to notice the manner in which they are conveyed. The desired effect necessarily follows, whether it be conviction or the excitement of the emotions or passions. When mind speaks directly to mind, spirit to spirit, it gives to the communication the greatest possible power. Redundancy, circumlocution, inappropriate diction, cloud the senses, divert the attention, produce weariness and deprive the effort of any useful effect.

In a public speaker, besides the above qualities of style, fluency is also necessary, by which I mean the power of readily calling up the exact words which the style requires. When these excellencies are all combined and the thoughts are vigorous and impressive, the effect is irresistible. The mind is carried along, as with a whirlwind to the point which the speaker desires.

This talent of effective speaking was possessed in an eminent degree by Lord Bacon, by Vice-President Burr, and by Mr. Judah P. Benjamin. The secret lies, not in fluency merely, but also in the exact and appropriate selection of words and phrases to convey the whole sense and nothing more. Of course the thoughts must be worthy of the occasion.

"When Atreus' son harangued the listening train,
Just was his sense, and his expression plain,
His words succinct, yet full without a fault,
He spoke no more than just the thing he ought."
Pope's Iliad, III, 275.

August 21, 1879. (STOWE).

METAPHYSICS.

"He knows what's what, and that's as high as metaphysic's wit can fly."-Hudibras.

Metaphysics. Metaphysical writers do not seem to me to be exact enough in their accounts of the Human Mind. Locke refers the origin of all our ideas to Sensation and Reflection. Stewart, meaning the same things, to Perception and Consciousness. They tell us that the mind is conversant about no other ideas than what these two sources furnish. But is it so ?

Let us see. We have a knowledge of eternal things by perception, and a knowledge of Perception by consciousness. Thus one faculty of the mind contemplates the load-stone, and is itself immediately reviewed by another faculty of the mind. Now, in contemplating the load-stone, we cannot expect that we are acquainted with all its properties, or know all about it, and so, by analogy, we would immediately be led to suppose that in contemplating the power by which we perceived the load-stone, I would rather say the act of the mind in perceiving the load-stone, we are unable to grasp all the properties that appertain to that act. By consciousness we know there was a battle at Bunker's Hill; perhaps we know the number of killed and wounded, yet ten thousand little circumstances of valor and distress, which we have every reason to believe happened to individuals in that battle are known nothing of. I say by analogy we would be led to suppose that many things appertaining to the operations of the mind wholly escape our observation or elude the grasp of consciousness. But I think that

we have more than analogy to support this. When I have stood on a mountain and witnessed the setting of a calm summer's sun-the waters irradiating different parts of the wide landscape, and the fields, some yellow, some green, some brown, checkering the view like a rich carpet of nature; the gently nodding trees, the songs of evening birds, the lowing of cattle in the distance, and the bleating of flocks, all conspiring to enchantment, my emotions for a brief hour have been indescribable, and, in any other circumstances, inconceivable. My spirit so rapt, my enjoyment so exquisite, my thoughts so sublimated, that I would give myself up to the torrent flow of those intoxicating ideas. At such times I am sure that I have passed many minutes without a thought of watching the operations of my mind or emotions-my mind? That was quite absorbed in drinking delight from the exhilarating draught, and after the spell had passed away, I had but a faint idea, an indistinct recollection of the enchanting dream. I did not make the attempt to grasp the feelings of my mind, or to watch them by the power of consciousness. I had no time to watch the workings of my mind. So completely absorbed was I in feeling the enjoyment of the scene, that I had no opportunity of watching that feeling. I afterwards knew in general, that I had felt, and that I had felt indescribable-nay-almost inconceivable sensations. But to endeavor, then, to get up such a conception of those sensations from the scattered fragments of consciousness which I did exercise at the time, would have been as vain as an attempt to cut a robe from the sky and trim it with the rainbow. And yet, in the case both of perceiving the load-stone