weight of Russia and the diplomacy of the whole of Europe, so long the tool, and the most efficient instrument, in the hands of Russia?

Truly we cannot but conclude, admitting for a moment M. De Lamartine's calculation, that the government of Turkey must be the most enlightened one that the world ever saw, and if two millions of Turks could hold down the ambitious aspirations of ten times as many exasperated subjects*, there must be in their system something conciliatory beyond what one can conceive in the power of man-something of supernatural wisdom; in fact, a system formed so admirably as to exceed the bounds of human belief.

of

Let M. De Lamartine now think, with a moment's redeeming remorse, on the hospitality and kindness he has received under the shadow of the Ottoman sceptre, and of the return he has made. Let him remember the descriptions he has given of a people-whom he devotes to extermination in behoof of humanity-on whom he calls down the fanaticism of Christian Europe-against whom he excites the cupidity of the western powers (which may sacrifice the victim, but will never be able to glut themselves with the spoil). Let him think of the feelings any Turk, reading (and Turkey feels that she has too deep a stake in European opinion, for his volumes not to be read there) his insensate speculations, and let him picture to himself the effect that such a perusal must have on the disposition to admire and imitate European instruction, which he found amongst the Turks. Their indignation will not rest with the reprobation of this vain man's ingratitude, but will extend to the state of society to which such sentiments could be addressed. Can other words of milder import be found, to express the feeling to which the knowledge of the publication of such shameless, though public turpitude, must give rise in the minds of the Turk as applicable to European opinion, than ignorance, religious fanaticism, and political dishonesty? M. De Lamartine had an opportunity of recanting these sentiments he has not done so; and if France do not repudiate

Not that we calculate the Christians at that number; but as the total number is nearly thirty millions, our author's supposition of two or three millions of Turks alone, leaves of course the remainder as the oppressed subjects.

them, it behoves us, at least, to show that there exist in England, men who are not unmindful of the hospitality they have there enjoyed; who are as alive to a sense of public as of private integrity-of national as of personal interest; who have brought home a grateful remembrance of her primitive manners and simple institutions; who seek, it is true, to preserve Turkey for the sake of England, but who have learnt to respect her for her own.

ARTICLE II.

Speeches of the Right Honourable George Canning, with a Memoir of his Life. Third Edition. London: 1836. WHY is it that there are so few authentic and unmaimed remains of English parliamentary eloquence? Whence the curious anomaly that in England, with her free constitution and popular assemblies, and amid the redundant eloquence of English poetry and prose, the national literature has been barren of oratory? Freedom is not alone its grandest object, but its true source. To be an orator, according to Longinus, is denied to the slave. The same opinion is expressed in a tone of compromise by the author of the dialogue De Oratoribus, under the benign despotism of Vespasian. It is fully borne out by the experience of ages and of nations. In Greece, the race of orators perished with the race of freemen, to be succeeded by rhetoricians and sophists. Cicero, the first orator of Rome, was the friend of Brutus. Roman eloquence would have expired with the republic, if it had not found refuge with the genius of Roman freedom in the cabinets and writings of Livy and Tacitus.

Modern experience is equally conclusive. If the French have cultivated pulpit oratory, and produced some chefsd'œuvre in that kind, under the iron yoke of Louis XIV., it is because the church of France arrogated a spiritual authority co-ordinate with the temporal, and asserted practically, if not in dogma, its independence of the Papal power. In short, Athens, Rome, and the church of France, were eloquent, because they were free.

England, beyond all modern nations, has combined the essential requisites of a free government and intellectual cultivation. She should have equalled, if not surpassed, the free states of antiquity, in the most important and extensive department of the art-that of deliberative or political oratory. The scheme and practice of her institutions are essentially popular. All public business, from affairs of state down to those of a corporation or a vestry, is subject to popular debate. Public speaking is a familiar object of ambition and use among all ranks of the people. In England, it may be said of eloquence, as of knowledge that it is power. In every situation it exercises a paramount influence, commensurate with its sphere. It is the chief talent for becoming the first man in the capital or in a village. Eloquence can open to its possessor the way to parliament. Without it, no one can be a leading partisan-without pretensions to it, no one can be a leading minister.

The English parliament should be the best school of oratory that has ever existed. It is not only a legislative council, but a supreme court of remedy, to which the subject resorts in case of individual wrong, and which combines, therefore, the means and matter of forensic eloquence with the business of legislation and government. Not only our own great transactions, interests, and agitations, but those of Europe and the world, come under the jurisdiction of parliament. How scantily, with all this, have our parliamentary orators contributed, as such, to the classic literature of their country!

This phenomenon may, we think, be referred to the united operation of two causes: first, the peculiar character and manner of parliamentary debate, in which so much is necessarily unpremeditated and fugitive; next, the jealous vigilance with which the parliament so long pretended, as a matter of privilege, to forbid the public all cognizance of its proceedings.

Both causes have operated in preventing, not only the transmission, but the existence, of such master-pieces as those left by the great orators of antiquity. The latter, however, is the main cause. The orator, more than any other artist— more than even the poet-requires, for the exercise of his faculty in its highest pitch, the suffrages and sympathies of men. These stimulants acted powerfully in the republican

communities of Greece. They who cultivated or admired this, then glorious art, came from all parts to hear the orators of Athens. Copies of celebrated orations were multiplied and circulated with an industry amounting to publication. Eschines read to his hosts in exile, not only his own oration, but that of his immortal adversary.

To the same causes may be ascribed the perfection of Roman oratory. Quintilian, or whoever wrote the dialogue before cited, says, in alluding to the Ciceronian age, " Oratori autem "clamore plausuque opus est et velut quodam theatro, qualia

66

quotidie antiquis oratoribus contingebant, cum tot pariter ac "tam nobiles forum coarctarent, cum clientelæ quoque et tri"bus et municipiorum legationes, ac partes Italiæ periclitanti“bus assisterent, cum in plerisque judiciis crederet populus "Romanus sua interesse quid judicaretur. Satis constat C. "Cornelium, et M. Scaurum, et T. Milonem, et L. Bæstiam, "et P. Vatinium, concursu totius civitatis et accusatos et "defensos, ut frigidissimos quosque oratores ipsa certantis populi studia excitare et incendere potuerint." The dialogue then proceeds to show how Roman eloquence declined when publicity and popular sympathy were cut off by the imperial despotism. The same causes have produced the same effects, mutatis mutandis, upon English eloquence. Genius was neutralized, and the art unknown, under the ordinance of secresy.

66

This may be seen at a glance in the history of the English parliament. Our language was copious and cultivated, as used by Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More. The prose writings of that period are not duly estimated, and some men had the much rarer art of being eloquent in verse. But it would be idle to seek eloquence in the parliaments of Henry VIII. They have dated their existence only by ministering to the caprices of cruelty and sensuality, which characterised that inhuman prince.

Under the despotic genius of Elizabeth, the parliament was a cypher. The elder Cecil neither wrote nor spoke eloquently; and his son, who, with his diminutive and deformed person and sickly countenance, was reputed the most graceful and persuasive orator of his time, has left some elaborately prepared or carefully reported speeches, which do not bear out his reputation. He made clear statements of the wants of the

crown to the House of Commons, and enforced them, not by eloquence or argument, but by the command of the sovereign. When he addressed them in a different strain, it was only to offer up the incense of servile and extravagant flatteries to the queen.

In the reign of James I., there were timid discussions and pusillanimous remonstrances. Even the genius of Bacon seems stunted by despotism and his disastrous servility. His reasoning faculty, in the philosopher supreme, degenerates, in the parliamentary orator, to artifice and sophistry; his learning and fancy, to pedantry and conceits.

The earliest gleams of parliamentary eloquence are observed in the first parliament of Charles I. New impulses of political liberty and religious speculation, in his unfortunate reign, brought forth a new race of freemen and orators. The causes which we have stated were now dormant, or they were counteracted by antagonist principles and the spirit of the age. The leading members, especially those who advocated the popular cause, looking for support to the people without doors, prepared their speeches with the utmost care, in a popular and stirring tone, and gave them to the world from their own notes, or thenotes of others revised by them. The English, like the Roman people (in the passage before cited), believed, at this period, that their highest interests were at stake (suâ interesse) in the deliberations of the parliament, and they looked on with strong sympathy. It is true, there was not then, as now, the great engine of a newspaper press, to circulate the proceedings and the eloquence of parliament, with electric rapidity, among the people; but the issue of pamphlets was immense, and to a certain extent answered the same end. Hence were produced, and hence we possess, some genuine remains of the sage and methodical, yet figurative and inspiring, eloquence of Pym; of the classic and courageous fervour of Elliot; of the nervous brevity and simplicity of Rudyard; some fragments which breathe the generous ambition and gallant patriotism of Hampden; the dark, subtle, and daring spirit of St. John; the artful, versatile, and enthusiast genius of the younger Vane; the wit, fancy, and ingenuity of the eccentric Lord Digby; the improved and flowing style of Waller.

We must not confound the liberal arts with licentious