. Such a one can mount as on the wings of an
eagle, and Nature herself seems to come forth and give a great soul of
this kind means and material whereby to accomplish his purposes, whereby
the great universal truths go direct to the minds and hearts of his
hearers to mould them, to move them; for the orator is he who moulds the
minds and hearts of his hearers in the great moulds of universal and
eternal truth, and then moves them along a definite line of action, not
he who merely speaks pieces to them.

How thoroughly Webster recognized this great principle is admirably
shown in that brief but powerful description of eloquence of his; let us
pause to listen to a sentence or two: "True eloquence indeed does not
consist in speech.... Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way,
but they cannot compass it.... Affected passion, intense expression, the
pomp of declamation, all may aspire to it; they cannot reach it.... The
graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied
contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men when their own lives and
the fate of their wives and their children and their country hang on the
decision of the hour. Then words have lost their power, rhetoric is
vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then
feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then
patriotism is eloquent, then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear
conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the
firm resolve, the dauntless spirit speaking on the tongue, beaming from
the eye, informing every feature and urging the whole man onward, right
onward to his object,--this, this is eloquence." And note some of the
chief words he has used,--_self-devotion, patriotism, high purpose_. The
self-centred man can never know these, and much less can he make use of
them.

True, things that one may learn, as the freeing of the bodily agents,
the developing of the voice, and so on, that all may become the _true
reporters of the soul_, instead of limiting or binding it down, as is so
frequently the case in public speakers,--these are all valuable, ay, are
very important and very necessary, unless one is content to live below
his highest possibilities, and he is wise who recognizes this tact; but
these in themselves are but as trifles when compared to those greater,
more powerful, and all-essential qualities.

Is it your ambition to become a great _states man?_ Note the