To these external properties of his elocution,
we may ascribe the pleasure which persons of all conditions found in
listening to him. Women often crowded the court-rooms to hear him, and
as often astonished him, not only by the patience, but the visible
enjoyment with which they were wont to sit out his argument to the
end,--even when the topic was too dry to interest them, or too abstruse
for them to understand his discourse.... His oratory was not of
that strong, bold, and impetuous nature which is often the chief
characteristic of the highest eloquence, and which is said to sway the
Senate with absolute dominion, and to imprison or set free the storm of
human passion, in the multitude, according to the speaker's will. It was
smooth, polished, scholar-like, sparkling with pleasant fancies,
and beguiling the listener by its varied graces, out of all note or
consciousness of time.
* * * * *
=_William Ware, 1797-1852._= (Manual, p. 510.)
From "Aurelian, or Rome in the Third Century."
=_293._= THE CHRISTIAN MARTYR.
When now he had stood there not many minutes, one of the doors of the
vivaria was suddenly thrown back, and bounding forth with a roar that
seemed to shake the walls of the theatre, a lion of huge dimensions
leaped upon the arena.
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