Page images
PDF
EPUB

trained, as it is in morals, to follow the conscience. And for this service which the ear renders to the orator, it has a right to demand something for its own sake. A word may sometimes be put in, not so much to aid the sense, as to please the ear, to give a fulness and harmony to the combination.

Intimately connected with this subject of rhythm and the ear, is that of models. The utility of them under the right conditions, I think, is unquestionable. They contribute greatly, not altogether, to make every man what he is in style. Cicero took to the Asiatic models, rather than to the Greek, and the result was an extreme of the copious and flowing. It is all-important that the orator select right models. Right models are, as it were, to the ear, what the Bible is to the conscience. I assume that every one will have some model, or models. Indeed, there is no way to avoid this. The cry against models sometimes raised, as making men artificial, mere imitators, is perfectly nonsensical. As they will be had, those had, ought to be the right ones. How, then, is a person to select them? He should proceed, in the premises, not altogether according to his liking, but also according to his. judgment. Let him know what are the faults of his style, what the false reports of his ear; then let him proceed somewhat on the principle of contrast, somewhat against predilection it may be. If two much given to sound and redundance, let him select from the barren school, the severely Attic. If bareness, dryness, barrenness is the fault, let him take more to the prolific school. There are some men who would do well to read' Jeremy Taylor. There are others who ought never to touch him. While correction is going on in any particular, there should be a preponderance in that class of models which stand over against our fault. If we are down in the ditch, the man who lifts us out must be above, on the dry, hard ground. If we are high up, the man who helps us down must, ordinarily, be beneath.

In what I have said of models, I wish to be understood only so far as consistent with another remark which I regard

as true and important, viz. that every person should, to some extent, consult his own idiosyncrasy, constitutional peculiarity, in the style he adopts. It is in the nature of some to be copious, wordy, of others to be close, stringent; these can never change places to advantage; of the constitutionally stringent man you can never make a Cicero; he may be better for being relaxed; but you can never relax him into a Cicero. Let him abide in his place. Nor of the constitutionally copious man, can you ever make a Demosthenes. He may be better for being braced and compressed; but you can never compress him into a Demosthenes. Let him abide in his place. The one may acquire from models, freeness and grace, the other, closeness and force. I remark again, that in pronouncing upon the Ciceronian style, we must concede, that in skilful hands, it is a good style; for some purposes, and some occasions, it is the best, the most effective. Where the object is to soothe, or please, or attract, or persuade, the fulness and the melody of the Roman are wanted. The Ciceronian is a more popular style of oratory than the opposite; I know not but it has ten admirers where the other has one.

It is also

far more easily caught than the other; far more successfully imitated. The consequence is, we have much more in English writing and oratory of the Ciceronian structure and movement than of the Demosthenian. We find, indeed, many admirable masters of this style. Edmund Burke is a pre-eminent example. Though Demosthenes was his favorite in the closet, yet, in his practice the predominance of the Ciceronian appears; the Ciceronian chastened and perfected. The two Pitts were, on the whole, Ciceronian; the younger decidedly so. The father was marked by a streak of the Grecian fire. Sir James Mackintosh was altogether of the amplifying school, and a very fine instance of it, too. Perhaps, the most finished and beautiful specimen of the Ciceronian eloquence is Robert Hall. We have in him the excellences of this style with none of its faults. He is a perfect model of it, whom we can commend without any qualification; one who will show us all the harmony the

English language is capable of. Though Burke and Hall are both of the school of Cicero, they are far less imitable than Cicero himself. We have fine specimens of this style in our own country. Mr. Wirt was decidedly of this school, and few men could give sounder sense in richer music. Colonel Hayne who participated in the great debate in the United States Senate in the winter of 1830, is splendidly, rather pompously, Ciceronian. And Mr. Webster in the opening of his reply to Mr. Hayne has not a little of the Roman's fulness, though, commonly, he is rather characterized by simplicity, verging toward severity. Mr. Clay, perhaps, is one of the most accomplished amplifiers of our country. The Southern speaker is expected to be warmed into more luxuriance than the Northern. John Randolph, at times, had great power, and might have fallen into the Ciceronian class; but he was commonly, when he rose too cross to speak in long and flowing periods. He seemed, often, to have so much of the cur about him, particularly in his later days, that he could only spit out his sentences, incoherently, in a sort of quick and snappish brevity.

One of the infelicities attending this style is, that its peculiarities are apt to be pressed to far. It is very easily abused; its music changed to mere jingle; its fulness blown up into disgusting bombast. We need not look long nor far for specimens, so strong is the tendency to excess, to an amplifying, overloaded luxuriance. If we go to what is called the Irish school, we shall find this abuse of the Ciceronian characteristics, legitimately run out, and existing in their most bloated perfection. We hear of "wreathing) the immortal shamrock round the brow of painting, poetry and eloquence;""of souls swelling with the energies, and stamped with the patent of the Deity;" of one "whose prayers are curses, whose communion is death, whose vengeance is eternity; in form a fury, in act a demon; her heart festered with the fires of hell; her hands clotted with the gore of earth; her path apparent by the print of blood; her pause denoted by the expanse of desolation." We may

4

well say, in the words of Burnett, "that this is a gibberish kind of language, which sounds like somewhat that is sublime, but, really, has nothing under it." Yet this is exceedingly taking in some quarters, and the admirers will read and praise, and then soar and sing in like strain. It is insisted that this is eloquence in its finest form and garb. If it be eloquence, then the clowns and the peacocks have it; the Grecian, the great Roman even, had it not. It would be eloquence, were the people made all ear and no brains. But considerable numbers happen not to have been so made. Some thought, substance, then, must go into the article. Whatever it is, in its perfect structure, eloquence is a noble combination, and noble, too, and wonderful often in its achievements. It has held spell-bound the minds and hearts of assembled thousands; it has made them tremble and made them weep; it has melted all hearts into one, beating with his who spoke; it has stirred the depths of passion, and fixed the stern resolve, and strung every arm to high endeavThat one mind and voice has swayed his peers; swept onward the multitude; reached, as by an electric power, distant nations; changed the destinies of the world; and affected, widely, the immeasurable interests of the eternal scene.

ors.

ARTICLE VII.

ORIGIN AND SIGNIFICANCE OF JEWISH SACRIFICES.

THIS Article will be devoted to a somewhat detailed account of certain theories of the Origin of Sacrifices which have been advanced at different times.. The one to which attention will be first turned is that of John Spencer, as set forth in his celebrated work De Legibus Hebraeorum, written in Latin, and printed in 1685.

It was almost unavoidable that the long period of servitude which the Israelites passed through in Egypt should have had the effect of obliterating from their minds, to a very great extent, the knowledge of the true God, and creating an attachment to the modes of worship which were practised by their oppressors. The means which God saw fit to use to bring them back to their former purer belief were not such as might seem to us the most direct and efficient. He adopted, instead, a very circuitous method. The Israelites had been habituated while in Egypt to a mode of worship which abounded in sacrifices, and God chose, therefore, to incorporate similar observances into the Mosaic economy, lest by creating too violent a contrast between this economy and the Egyptian form of worship, the minds of the Hebrews should be filled with disgust, and should reject with abhorrence the new religion. Sacrifices neither in themselves, nor by virtue of that which they typify, are directly pleasing to the mind of God; they are tolerated merely, in condescension to human infirmity, as a necessary though disagreeable means of preventing a greater evil.

The language of Chrysostom in his sixth Homily on Matthew gives a correct statement of the true origin of sacrifices. "All the religious rites, he says, prescribed to the Jews, and especially sacrifices, had their origin in the rudeness of

[blocks in formation]
« PreviousContinue »