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ascertained by comparing the present situation of South Carolina with its condition before the establishment of this college,-when all the refinement, all the influence and talents of the state were concentrated in Charleston; when the people in Charleston thought the upper country inhabited with savages, (some remnant of the same opinion remains still,) and those of the upper country thought the inhabitants of Charleston a womanish, enfeebled race of cits.'

Before closing this article, we beg leave to say a word of the judicious address of president Cooper, which we have named at the head of the article. It contains, in plain and perspicuous language, a series of very valuable remarks, addressed to the young gentlemen about to become graduates at the last commencement. We sincerely rejoice that the state of society is such, we will not say in South Carolina alone, but in any part of our country, that so liberal and ample a field of professional study, as this address prescribes, can any where even be recommended. We do not suppose that the mass of candidates who crowd into any of the professions, will allow themselves to be delayed by the noviciate which president Cooper marks out. But it augurs well to the cause of education, that a thorough course of reading in civil and continental law is enjoined on the student of law; and an acquaintance with the original language of the Old Testament and with the writings of the fathers of the four first centuries declared essential to the theologian; and classical literature to all engaged in these or any other professional pursuits. If we were to take any exceptions to the opinions of this judicious address, it would be to those which are expressed in disparagement of the art of oratory. While we unite with president Cooper in reprobating all abuses of that art, and every application to wrong ends of the power which it confers, we cannot allow that the whole history of ancient oratory shows that it was little else than the art of cheating the understandings of a gaping populace, by amusing their imaginations and exciting their passions; and that all modern oratory is to be held in the same estimation.' This seems to us at once an incorrect and a superficial view.-By public speaking in legislative, judicial, political, and religious assemblies, the highest temporal and eternal interests of men are most powerfully affected. Laws are made and abrogated, governments administered, preserved or overturned, justice dispensed, wrongs inflicted or redressed, the opinions men cherish on the highest points of moral and

religious concernment decided, and the whole complex social system in all its relations affected, by public speaking. Why then the art of doing this, the art of speaking well, should be a cheat in ancient or modern times, we see not. Does the president mean that to possess one's faculties before a formidable assembly, to speak the right word in the right place, to feel the intellectual and moral pulse of a mingled crowd of politicians, of citizens, or moral agents, and address them seasonably, judiciously, and effectually; to accompany what you speak with proper corresponding movements of the wonderful bodily organization which nature has made to act in sympathy with the soul,-does the president mean that this is that studied premeditated oratory which savors either of vanity or fraud? Is it not the hardest thing which man can attempt, to do all this in perfection, without affectation, without extravagance? He who studies to be eloquent, will never study to be wise; a dealer in tropes, metaphors, allegories and similes, is seldom a dealer in facts.' Did not Pericles and Demosthenes study to be wise; did not Cicero, did not Chatham and Burke study to be wise? Eloquence is not one thing and wisdom another. Eloquence is wisdom speaking or wisdom writing; and as for tropes and metaphors, to which the president testifies such aversion, there are not many sentences in his own well written address, that do not contain a tropical or metaphorical expression:-there are two such expressions in the sentence of four lines, in which their use is condemned. Most language is tropical; and if the meaning of the president's precept is, that impertinent, unseasonable use of figurative language should be avoided, it is one part of the art of oratory, to teach the speaker to avoid it. The president approves that eloquence of the heart, which arises naturally, spontaneously from warmth of feeling in the course of debate.' We approve it too, but what is to give this eloquence of the heart, the power of modulating the voice, perhaps a feeble voice, so that it shall be heard through a vast hall by a crowd; what shall give it a happy ease and command of language, what shall furnish it with illustrations, instances, arguments, replies, ready distinctions against plausible objections, and furnish these too, in the hurry and press of a passionate debate? Put down an eloquent savage in congress, Logan or Red Jacket himself; would he be able to keep the house to the question, in the whirlwind of amendments, commitments, previous ques

tions, and personalities? Put him down again in a court of justice; would he be able to lay a complicated train of facts intelligibly before the minds of a common jury, or direct the bench through a maze of almost equally balanced analogies, in a question of law? The heart is very honest, and must furnish, we grant, the orator's inspiration; and must itself be warmed by nature. But words, speech, action, debate, these are things, which nothing but the most laborious study, and the longest practice can enable the heart to command to best advantage. It is some consolation that this is no new theory, though a theory more reasonable we cannot imagine; for the greatest orators of ancient and modern times have united genius and study in equal degrees.

ART. XVII.-1. The Club Room. 8vo, Boston, 1821. 2. The Idle Man. New York.

It is so generally esteemed a violation of critical etiquette, for one periodical publication to enter into a formal examination of the merits of another, that we should not have ventured upon the works before us, which in this respect, have somewhat of the same generic character with ourselves, had we not farther considered, that it is the only point in which they do resemble us, and that to criticism in particular, they make no pretensions.

But before we commence our strictures, our readers will excuse us for making some reflections on the history and the value of a species of fine writing, which once acquired a high name in our mother country, and which, in a new and not less attractive dress, has grown into deserved favor in our

own.

The only sample of essay writing, purporting to be such, and bearing any resemblance to a modern miscellany, that has come down to us from the ancients, is, we believe, the Attic Nights of A. Gellius, who flourished in the reign of Trajan, the declining days of Roman literature;-it is a farrago of independent facts, criticisms, and loose speculations. He enumerates in his preface several Grecian works of a similar nature, none of which have reached us; and it is much to be

regretted, as this kind of composition must have been peculiarly suited to the light, evanescent graces of the Greek language; and still more, as such works would have thrown a light, now much wanted, on the social habits of the age.

Bacon first made this species of writing popular with the English, by a series of essays, which will always be reverenced as a text book among English classics, for the compact yet simple form in which he has embodied the results of a deep observation in moral and social science. Cowley, fifty years after Bacon, still farther recommended this kind of composition, by his agreeable speculations on such subjects as were suggested by the native delicacy of his mind. Indeed he seems to have gone to prose, as to a relief from the unnatural part he was playing in poetry; and his essays must always reproach him for having sacrificed so beautiful a natural taste, to the absurdities of the metaphysical school. Temple and Shaftesbury are principally known by their essays, and prepared the way for what may be justly esteemed an epoch, not only in this department of fine writing, but in literature in general.

We allude to the periodical essays, introduced by Steele and Addison, and afterwards illustrated by some of the greatest wits and scholars in Great Britain. These periodical writings were peculiarly distinguished from all others, in the circumstance of their being suggested by the vices and fashionable follies of the day. They may be looked upon as a body of practical morality, illustrated by such living examples as daily occur in society. The merit of their introduction must be given exclusively to Steele; for although Theophrastus and La Bruyere have, in their essays, or sketches of charter, given a faithful register of the human heart, yet it is rather as the abstract speculations of philosophers, than with a view to a particular application: and even Montaigne, who made a still nearer approach to this kind of writing, differed in this material point, that as his examples were drawn from mankind at large, so his reflections were not peculiarly adapted to the state of society in which he lived; .and thus the great object of the periodical writings of Steele, a reformation in the current follies and vices of the time, was neither intended nor effected by Montaigne.

The manner in which these essays were given to the world, on separate sheets, and with an interval of a few days between

the publication of each, distinguished them from every thing of the kind which had preceded them, and was a great cause of their popularity. The leading whim in the circle of fashion, whatever it might be, was immediately caught up by these censors of the public morals, stripped of its delusive colors, and exhibited in the severity of naked truth. There could be no want of subjects, either for raillery or satire, in the various dissipations of a court and a crowded metropolis. But it was fortunate, both for Steele and the world, that by an early association with so fine a genius as Addison, he was enabled to push his inquiries beyond the limited sphere of local and temporary interests into the higher walks of taste and criticism; to indulge in more exalted speculations in morals and in science; and thus not to enlighten one age or nation only, but all mankind.

We are desirous to express our opinion of the real merits of Addison, from the belief that the effort which of late years has been made, and we think justly made, to vindicate the reputation of the first writers, who broke up the virgin soil' of English literature, from the comparative obscurity into which they had been thrown, by the brightness of Queen Anne's day, has produced in some respects a too powerful reaction, and depreciated Addison in particular below his proper level, as a prose writer; and we are apprehensive that our readers may imagine that we undervalue his actual merits, since in furthering the same good cause, we have contented ourselves with calling their attention rather to excellencies, which he wanted, than to those which he possessed. But while we have no disposition to retract our former sentiments, while in vigor, exactness, fervent and original thinking, we consider him inferior to many both of the preceding and subsequent ages, we cannot deny, that in whatever is beautiful as distinguished from what is powerful, in polite wit, easy eloquence, calm philosophical reflection,-in short, in the perfect harmony of delicate sentiment and graceful expression, he has rarely, perhaps never, been equalled in English literature.

The popularity of the earliest essayists was almost incredible. Addison tells us in an early number of the Spectator, that 3000 copies were then daily distributed; and Chalmers somewhere mentions, that the circulation was afterwards increased to 14,000. The success of the first adventurers inNew Series, No. 10.

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