although he confines rhetoric to the representation of judgments only, and excludes that of conceptions; in other words, limits it to argumentative discourse, and excludes explanatory. This view confines attention exclusively to the matter of discourse, leaving out both the object and the manner. Hence, Dr. Whately, on principle, rejects style from rhetoric as well as elocution. Some lurking doubt as to the philosophical correctness of his view, seems, however, to have induced him to introduce both into his treatise. It would have been a meagre art of rhetoric, indeed, if it had been confined, as he formally insists it properly should be, to the mere invention and arrangement of arguments. What kind of oratorical training could such a limited view of rhetoric give? We need not dwell on this point, in showing that any other view of the art than what we have presented furnishes no worthy system of training for the orator. Reason, a priori, and experience alike reject the best system thus given as imperfect or directly hurtful.

But a view of oratory, on the other hand, which recognizes it as having essentially an exterior aim, as a personal procedure with another person, and hence as involving a determining ethical element, furnishes, naturally, and at once, a course of training, complete, consistent in itself, attractive and full of promise to every aspiring student of eloquence, and withal, having the full sanction of long and uniform experience.

It prescribes, in the first place, as the most essential thing, the practical adoption of the moral ideas which lie at the foundation of all true eloquence, with the culture and nourishinent of them into pervading, controlling principles of life. It is in vain to think of eloquence without having the soul of eloquence. The statesman must have a true love of country; the legal counsellor and advocate must be animated with a true love of right and equal justice; the preacher must burn with a true love of holiness and all its correlate ideas, or he cannot be eloquent. The comprehensive moral idea, including its three generic phases, of the right in itself, the beautiful, and the good, must rule, in some of their specific applications or forms, in each several department of eloquence. So far, the ancients were right in requiring, as the first thing of the orator, that he be a good man. This specific form of the moral idea, he must nourish in all the various ways in which practical principles are nourished and developed in the human mind, by feeding it with truth, and invigorating and disciplining it in appropriate exercise. The statesman must foster his love of his country's prosperity, and his country's approbation by the diligent and thorough study of his country's history, condition, and capacities. He must strengthen it by the actual exercise of the patri

'Dr. Whately, in his development of the art of rhetoric, proceeds inconsist ently with his own principles, in including persuasion, or address to the will, in the art. His justification of this procedure is of no philosophical value.

otic spirit. Demosthenes was Demosthenes because he was a patriot, and from his patriotic zeal studied out so accurately and fully the bearings of all events, inward and outward, on his country's welfare. Therefore, was he able, when all other orators failed, to step forth, and with a voice of eloquence which no Athenian heart could resist, bid on to high, patriotic endeavors and sacrifices. The deliberative orations of Cicero, testify to the same point. He was the thoroughly-informed, the bold and decided statesman, because he was a patriot, nourished and strengthened on the studies and by the efforts of a patriot. It was the ardent love of the just and equal, the deep-cherished reverence for law. which first prompted the severe investigation into its nature and developments, and then grew on its thus furnished food, which carried the Roman almost to any equality in the department of judicial eloquence, with his Grecian rival. So, in the other great province of oratory, it is the love, deep-seated love, nourished and cultured into a controlling passion, of holiness and its kindred or subordinate ideas, which ever makes the Christian preacher eloquent. Any system of oratorical training which keeps this element out of view, must necessarily, be radically deficient.

This view of oratory, again, prescribes a philosophically just and complete course of training for the orator in regard to the content of discourse. Most of our modern treatises on rhetoric have excluded from their view, the department of invention, or that which treats of the provision and arrangement of the thought in discourse. Yet this, with the ancients, who more firmly apprehended the ethical element in oratory, was the main department, and style with them was ever subordinate. This department is the more essential in a proper art of oratory, as upon this alone can a systematic and progressive course of exercises in oratory be constructed; a course which, from its furnishing to the student an object and thereby determining the matter in composition, converts his rhetorical exercise from what would otherwise be. and usually is, a repulsive drudgery into a pleasant, exciting, and. therefore, in every way profitable exercise. Founded, as this department is, mainly on the logical states of the mind and their relations, oratory so far coincides in its development with a proper art of philosophical discourse. It yet occupies a field which is foreign to this latter art,-that of address to the feelings and to the will; while it modifies in reference to its moral aim the peculiar laws of mere scientific essay. The philosophical necessity of this department in a true oratory lies in this; that a moral procedure in reference to a moral end in another mind necessarily involves the use, as means, of truth presented according to the laws of its apprehension in the human mind. No other view of oratory can give this necessity; and hence, it has been so often excluded.

In the same way, this view of oratory in the third place, shows the philosophical necessity, in a complete art of oratory, of the department of style; and prescribes the course of learning in reference to it. Thoughts can be addressed to other minds only through language. Were rhetoric justly confined, as Dr. Whately confines it to the mere invention and arrangement of arguments, or more generally to the mere invention and arrangement of thought simply for the thought's sake, then, as does in fact that author, we might drop style from its place in this art. It is the exterior aim in oratory, of which Dr. Whately takes no recognition in his fundamental conception of it, that prescribes the necessity of style in a complete development of rhetoric. At the same time, this view defines the line between proper rhetorical and poetical style; which no other view can furnish. It gives at once, also, the principle of classification for the various properties of style, which yet remain, for the most part, unclassified. While it indicates the necessity of attention to style in all oratorical training, it yet prevents, by its keeping prominent its exterior aim, giving law to all culture in oratory, the lifeless, disgusting mannerism of an æsthetic development of the art.

Finally, this view determines the relation of elocution to rhetoric, and the attention which the orator should give to it in his training. Whether elocution is or is not a part of rhetoric, is a question that has much puzzled rhetoricians. The aesthetic class who have looked more to the form of oratory, have inclined to recognize it as an essential department, but yet have hardly known what to do with it. Dr. Whately, on the other hand, both rejects it as a proper part of rhetoric, and condemns all systematic training in it. If oratory, however, be, essentially, a personal procedure, implying an address to another mind, it necessarily includes elocution as much as style, or invention; the vocal, as much as the verbal or the logical embodiment of the moral aim. Elocution is, then, originally, an essential part of spoken oratory. But mind may be addressed through the written character as well as through the sound, and the actual accomplishment of the moral end, which we have held to be involved in all oratory is, so far, independent of the vocal expression. There is a propriety, as there is, also, great convenience, in constituting a distinct art of elocution. training here, however, the end of discourse should never be lost from view, otherwise, the result will be as Dr. Whately intimates, "an affected style of spouting." For the orator, in the original and proper sense of the term, a distinct and thorough training in elocution is necessary; unless, indeed, the tones of oratory are all arbitrary, capricious, and subject to no law. This, happily, is not the case. Vocal expression has been successfully subjected to a strict philosophical analysis; and in a work of remarkable

In

We refer, of course, to Dr. Rush's Philosophy of the Voice; a work that places the author in the first rank of original investigators in this country.

philosophical thoroughness, precision, and accuracy, the various movements of the voice in expressing the relations of thought, as also the kinds and degrees of passion, are fully and clearly enumerated, described, and classified with the exactness and fullness of arts of music. It is, now, as absurd to object in oratorical training to systematic training in elocution, as, in musical training, to condemn the systematic and methodical procedures prescribed by proper musical arts. No function in man attains its full development, or measure of capacity, without exercise; and it would be silly to question whether such exercise should in him proceed rationally or not, that is, according to the known laws of that function, and by systematic progressive stages. The liability, here as in style, to mannerism, is counteracted by the same principle which prescribes the necessity of distinct and thorough training in it-the presence of the moral element which controls in all oratory.

All those processes of oratorical training which systems of rhetoric properly set forth and direct, are at once determined and regulated with philosophical precision, by this element in oratory. There is another part of oratorical training, of which the ancients made much, that lies out of such systems. We mean what the ancients called imitation;-the study of models in oratory. How much this has to do with oratorical culture is proved by the fact, that great orators ever appear in clusters. Demosthenes was but the brighter star of a glorious constellation of Athenian orators, as Cicero was but one of many brilliant Roman statesmen and advocates. In this part of his training, the orator needs more than elsewhere, perhaps, the guidance of the moral element. The study of models of eloquence in reference to the specific character of this moral element, its strength, its development and mode of working, gives unity to the whole study, furnishes the proper stand-point of criticism indicating both excellences and faults, and counteracts the liability to habits of servile imitation.

The importance of this part of training in oratory, it is to be feared, is not properly appreciated in modern times. The study of written oratory, even, is of far higher benefit than is generally sup posed. "Men who have a quick, penetrating genius," says Augustine, as quoted by Fenelon, "profit more in eloquence from reading the discourses of eloquent men, than from studying the precepts even of the art." The speaking orator, the better model, is not always at hand. Written oratory lies ever within our reach. There is, indeed, an oratory of the most perfect kind, ever open to our study; the oratory of nature. There the all-perfect is ever speaking. His Divine person, ever holding forth the high moral end of His teachings, appears everywhere. Nature is not poetry. It is a sad piece of work, if it be only or essentially that. It is not to be studied for its forms. It is oratory everywhere-a

God speaking-communicating His own perfect nature to those whom, in this respect, as moral, He has created in His own image. This is its commanding element. For this moral end, and for the mode by which it is accomplished, nature should be studied. So regarded, nature is perfect. Thus studied, good sermons will be found not only "in stones," as the poet has it, but everywhere.

Thus, here as elsewhere, it is only by the apprehension of the ethical element in oratory that we gain any satisfactory view of the art. From whatever point regarded, it presents itself ever under the same aspect; and forces us to the admission, that true oratory is ever essentially a moral procedure.

ARTICLE II.

DANTE.

By REV. ROBERT TURNBULL, Hartford, Connecticut.

THE old Florentine Republic had attained, even in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a high degree of wealth and refinement. Her civilization, crude and stormy in some of its aspects, was passing into a state of serene beauty and strength. Had it not been checked by hostile powers, by the despotism of the Papacy and the tyranny of the Empire, and especially by the universal prevalence of bigotry and violence, it might have risen to the highest elevation, and long blessed the world with its benignant influence. That, however, was a period of social and political transition, in which freedom and tyranny, religion and superstition, charity and hate, contended for the mastery, and in which it is difficult to say which gained the victory.

It was an era, however, favorable to the development of some of the higher and more vigorous qualities of the human mind, and especially to the cultivation of poetry and romance.

The stars

shone bright and clear amid the gathering or the vanishing gloom. The violence of the storm, which often swept the heavens, only gave deeper beauty to the calm and sunshine by which it was succeeded. It was an age, at once, of stormy passions and lofty imaginings, of great vices and great virtues.

The earliest and greatest of the Florentine, and indeed of the Italian Poets, is Dante Alighieri, author of the Divina Commedia, or the Vision of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise; one of the noblest poems in any language, and yet one of the most singular compounds of truth and error, of beauty and deformity. If, however, THIRD SERIES, VOL. V. NO. 2

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