There is one great difference between the condition of the
American orator and that of the orator of antiquity. The
speaker, in the old time, addressed an audience about to act
instantly upon the emotions or convictions he had himself
caused. Or he spoke to a Judge who was to give no reason
for his opinion. The sense of public responsibility scarcely
existed in either. The speech itself perished with the occasion,
unless, as in some few instances, the orator preserved it
in manuscript for a curious posterity. Even then the best
of them had discovered that not eloquence, but wisdom, is
the power by which states grow and flourish.
"Omnia plena consiliorum, inania verborum.
"Quid est tam furiosum quam verborum vel optimorum atque ornatissimorum
sonitus inanis nulla subjecta sententia nec scientia?"
Cicero's oratory is to excite his hearers, whether Judge
or popular assembly, for the occasion. Not so in general
with our orator. The auditor is ashamed of excitement. He
takes the argument home with him: He sleeps on it. He reads
it again in the newspaper report.
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