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ONE is apt to wonder, that such an important branch of literature as eloquence should have been so little cultivated among the various nations of the world, and, that so few specimens of accomplished excellence in it should be displayed. While many nations, both in ancient and modern times, have been celebrated for their cultivation of several of the arts and sciences, and the high degree of improvement to which they carried them, few, indeed, have been found in possession of a sublime and refined eloquence, or have been able to point in their literature to its lasting monuments. Architecture, poetry, philosophy, as well as the various arts of common life, flourished for a time in many quarters where the genius of oratory was unknown. It was reserved for the country in which philosophy was domesticated, and the arts received a polish which elsewhere had no place, to produce an eloquence so grand and imperishable, as to demonstrate that a gift so rare could only be the daughter of perfection.

The Egyptians, by whom a great part of Greece was colonized, had little of the liveliness and sensibility of the later Greeks. However much the Greeks were indebted to them for the elements of civilization and a knowledge of the arts and sciences, it cannot be said that they laid the foundations of the Grecian taste for rhetoric. The language, customs, and national institutions of the Egyptians were all hostile to eloquence. Their august and symbolical architecture, while it was the offspring of superstition, tended to increase the native melancholy of

the people and their gloomy notions of the future, by a sovereign awe of superior powers. The despotism of their civil government prevented all political freedom of thought and expression, while their religious system was only fitted to inspire the deepest mysticism and awe. The consequence of this appeared in the universal gloom which pervaded every thing relating to them. Though not destitute of high energy of character or grandeur of conception, the Egyptian mind could never divest itself of the sombre gravity which attached to it; there was none of that delightful liveliness and animation of national manners characteristic of the Greeks-little of that refined sensibility and acuteness which enabled the latter to appropriate the mental wealth of all other nations to themselves, to polish and improve it in such a manner, that its origin was lost in the beauty of its added lustre, and to give to their conceptions the charms of a matchless execution. The almost savage grandeur of the Architecture of Egypt gave place with them to a no less simple, yet less stern and far more attractive majesty; the feelings with which their temples were viewed were those of beauty and delight, rather than those of awe and melancholy-there was something in their airy sublimity which, while it filled the mind with a proper veneration for the Gods, inspired them with sovereign gratification and a sense of the dignity of the worshippers. The deep awe and oppression of soul, which the Egyptian worship encouraged and made permanent, did not harass the mind of the Greek, whose devotional system exhibited no other principle of combination than that of beauty and pleasure, because the result of the plastic imaginations which assimilated all deities to themselves. The Egyptian, destitute in a great measure of distinct and copious historic recollections, fancied that he was the descendant of an ancestry whose origin could scarcely be traced in the innumerable ages that preceded, and whose laws and institutions could never admit of change the Greek, more fortunate, did not despise the present because little in comparison with the past, but drew upon the latter, so far only as it ministered to the enjoyment and animation of the former.

The mild and agreeable climate, and fertile, varied and beautiful territory of Greece, produced, no doubt, the most beneficial effects upon "the inhabitants. For, if it be true, that between man and nature there is that sympathy of feeling, which exists so strongly in the bosom of the poet and prompts him to the labours of the muse, the truth of this remark will be evident. The physical forms, by which we are surrounded, are always exercising their proper effects upon the mind. Not only are we differently affected by change of climate and temperature, but we view the various combinations in nature with various sympathetic emotions. A high degree of heat, as well as of cold, subdue

and oppress the mind, and deprive it of that vigorous play of the faculties without which there is no greatness of genius. A dull and barren country, and a beautiful and varied one, will not affect the mind alike for in virtue of the principle of assimilation which exists between mind and matter, it is impossible that they should. It is no less true, that these physical circumstances will have a powerful effect upon the physical organization of man, the perfection of which latter again is so essential to mental excellence. In short, there must be a harmony between nature and the mental powers before the latter will successfully operate-and the more complete the harmony, the more perfect will be the operations of mind. In one sense, it is true, that there is always a harmony between mind and physical nature. The power which the mind has of adapting itself to external circumstances, is a proof of this. But it is no less true, that external nature, in one locality, is more fitted to call the various powers of the mind into high exercise than in another, and we only look for mental perfection in that which is calculated to give a generous play to all the various states of the thinking and emotional nature of man.

The climate and country of Greece are certainly as well calculated as any others to produce a beneficial effect upon the mind. Its pure air and inspiring sky combine to give a higher interest to its magnifi. cent hills, and a richer beauty to its pleasant and romantic vallies, rendered yet more inviting by the mildest and most agreeable climate in the world. All the qualities of the grand and beautiful mingle together in those shapes and arrangements which have called forth the rapture of the ancient poets, when they sung the Muses' residence, or the inexpressible sweetness of the vales of Tempe and Arcadia. The variety of all the Grecian landscapes, equalled too by the ever new and ever recurring beautiful which is inseparable from it, contributed to give the ancient inhabitants the glow and animation of mind which could only be felt by those who drew a certain inspiration from nature. There was a voice in the Grecian scenery which behoved to stir up another voice in the beholder; and it was not long after the darkness of barbarism had disappeared, that the poetic spirit which had long existed, but found no corresponding expression in her people, burst forth in the succession of songs, which have made every spot in her land imperishable.

See there the olive grove of Academe,
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;

There flowery hill Hymettus, with the sound

Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites

To studious musing; there Ilissus rolls
His whispering stream.

But the spirit of eloquence did not sleep when that of poetry was awakened. From the earliest ages to the last days of Greece, her eloquence never slumbered. She was, no doubt, distinguished for the high poetic genius of her people, and the matchless productions of her bards; but the order and succession of her orators were more unbroken. So early as the age of Theseus, the art seems to have attracted attention, and, in proof of its antiquity, Cicero says, that "Homer would never have given Ulysses and Nestor, in the Trojan war, so great commendations on account of their speeches, if eloquence had not, in those times, been in great repute." So famed were the chiefs of the Greek confederation for their cultivation of eloquence, that Homer says that Peleus sent Phoenix, with his son Achilles, to the Trojan war, to instruct him as well in oratory as in arms. About five hundred years afterwards, Cicero says, that they were universally sensible of the power of eloquence; at which period many teachers of the art gained the highest reputation. One of these, Gorgias of Leontium in Sicily, taught with so much success, and acquired such a universal fame for excelling in his art, that all Greece, in manifestation of their applause, erected a golden statue to him at Delphos. He had many contemporaries who assisted to improve and, still more, to recommend the art. Of the school of Isocrates, another celebrated master of eloquence and scholar of Gorgias, Cicero says, that "it sent forth, like the Trojan horse, abundance of great men." Not only did those who were more peculiarly rhetoricians dedicate their labours to the cultivation of eloquence, but the wisest and most philosophic studied it with diligence and propounded its principles. Aristotle wrote the most complete treatise upon the art; and Plato was almost a perfect model of living eloquence. By Demosthenes, who attended the instructions of Isocrates and Plato, eloquence was carried to the highest pitch of sublimity and grandeur, and became, like the arms of a Superior being, a resistless power, wielding at will "the fierce democratic." For ages afterwards the accents of the Grecian eloquence still lingered in the halls of the old masters, and although their supreme boldness and sublimity were no longer heard, yet many of their qualities and much of their grandeur were long found in the efforts of their successors.

Now the antiquity of Grecian oratory-the commendations of it in the earliest ages-the universal estimation in which it was held, and the reputation which attended it-the multitudes of rhetoricians who, in every period, taught and improved the art, and the power and dignity of the orators-all prove that oratory was eminently the national art of the Greeks. Although there is much of the accidental in the rise and progress of the arts in a nation, yet merely accidental causes will not account for the ancient predilection of the Greeks for oratory,

and their earlier efforts in the art.

Rhetoric among the Greeks, like poetry among rude but poetic nations, was the offspring of nature. Like the first poets, the early orators of Greece struggled against the disadvantages of a less refined and copious language than their successors, and gave a polish and a music to their simple phrases, long before Homer, in his matchless songs, furnished them with a standard of amplified and beautiful composition. Their natural disposition to aim at excellence in address and expression, was strengthened and improved by their frequent opportunities of exhibiting it. In the earlier councils of the Chiefs the influence of an individual was often determined by his eloquence. In later periods the democratic constitution, and the supremacy of the popular voice in several states, not only presented occasions for the display of the highest eloquence, but roused and compelled the most powerful and gifted genius of the Orator. The whole history of Grecian Rhetoric proved, that their natural love of eloquence derived strength from all accidental causes, and while these causes will not account for the birth and earlier developments of the art, they may explain its irresistible power in after ages.

Unlike Greece, Rome had no national literature, or, if it ever had, it took no pains to perpetuate it. Had the Romans nurtured the literary spirit more peculiar to themselves, while they borrowed from the Greeks, it is likely they would have left behind them still more monuments of their genius than they have done. But they early distrusted their own power in poetry and the arts, and surrendered themselves wholly to the authority of the Greeks. The latter indeed furnished them with models, which they could scarcely expect to excel. The Greek ideal, far more elevated and original than the Roman, compelled the latter almost to worship it, and to content itself with a vast and laboured imitation. It is thus that in all their works of art, in the composition of their poets and orators, the Greek original is still prominent, however various the taste and genius of the authors. Hence oratory owed its cultivation in Rome to the Greeks. We are told that in the year of the city 592, the Grecian arts were admired and cultivated in Italy; but so little were they appreciated by the government, that the Senate passed a decree ordering the rhetoricians and philosophers to depart. In a few years afterwards certain Athenian ambassadors came to Rome, and, by the beauty and splendour of their eloquence, inspired a general love of the art in the bosoms of the Roman youth. From this time it began to be studied with the greatest ardour, and to be reckoned the masterpiece of all education. Success in it became necessary to the power and reputation of public men, and, in the troublesome period which followed the time of Gracchus, the popular passion for it was strong and imperative. It was this popular power and

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