hances their importance. The subjects on which
the lawyer speaks come home to men's business and bosoms. Some present,
immediate object is to be gained. The lawyer _feels_, and he aims to
accomplish something. But ministers have plunged into the metaphysics of
religion, and gone about to inculcate the peculiarities of a system, and
have neither felt themselves, nor been able to make others feel. It has
long been a most interesting question to me, Why is the ministry so
inefficient? It has seemed to me, that, with the thousands of pulpits in
this country for a theatre to act on, and the eye and ear of the whole
community thus opened to us, we might _overturn the world_. Some ascribe
this want of efficiency to human depravity. That is not the sole cause
of it. The clergy want knowledge of human nature. They want directness
of appeal. They want the same go-ahead common-sense way of interesting
men which lawyers have."

_Mr. C._ "Ought they not to cultivate elocution?"

_Dr. N._ "It seems to me that at those institutions where they pay the
most attention to elocution they speak the worst. I have no faith in
artificial eloquence. Teach men to think and feel, and, when they have
anything to the purpose to say, they can say it. I should about as soon
think of teaching a man to weep, or to laugh, or to swallow, as to speak
when he has anything to say."

_Mr. C._ "How, then, do you account for the astonishing power of some
tragedians?"

_Dr. N._ "Ah! the speaking in the theatre is all overacted. There is no
nature in it. Those actors, placed in a public assembly, and called upon
to address men on some real and momentous occasion, would utterly fail
to touch men's hearts, while some plain country-man, who had never
learned a rule of art, would find his way at once to the fountains of
feeling and action within them. The secret of the influence which is
felt in the acting of the teatre is _not_ that it is natural. Let a
_real tragedy_ be acted, and let men _believe_ that a _real_ scene is
before them, and the theatre would be deserted. No audience in this
country could bear the presentation of a natural and real tragedy. Men
go to the theatre to be amused. The scenery, the music, the attitudes,
the gesticulations, all unite to fix attention and amuse; but the
eloquence, so called, of the theatre, is all factitious, and is no more
adapted to the real occasions of life than would be the recitative in
singing, and it pleases on th