saved, and
now he had returned for awhile to his native land to advocate the cause
which had been a salvation to his own soul and life, and these men and
women--these hopeful youths--these tender-hearted maidens--have come to
give him welcome. Already every eye in that vast assembly is turned to
the quarter whence it is expected the hero of the night will appear. At
length the appointed hour arrives, a band of Temperance reformers move
towards the platform, with the flags of Britain and America waving, as we
trust they may long do, harmoniously together. Familiar faces are
seen--Cruikshank--Buckingham--Cassell; but there is one form, apparently
a stranger; it is John B. Gough. A few words from Mr. Buckingham, who
presides, and the stranger comes forward; but he is no stranger, for the
British greeting, that almost deafens his ears, while it opens his heart,
makes him feel himself at once at home.

Well, popular enthusiasm has toned down--the audience has reseated
itself--a song of welcome has been sung, and there stands up a man of
middle size and middle age. Lord Bacon deemed himself ancient when he
was thirty-one--we moderns, in our excessive self-love, delude each other
into the belief that we are middle-aged when we are anywhere between
forty and sixty. In reality, a middle-aged man should be somewhere about
thirty-five, and such we take to be Mr. Gough's age. He is dressed in
sober black--his hair is dark, and so is his face; but there is a
muscular vigour in his frame for which we were not prepared. We should
judge Gough has a large share of the true _elixir vitae_--animal spirits.
His voice is one of great power and pathos, and he speaks without an
effort. The first sentence, as it falls gently and easily from his lips,
tells us that Gough has that true oratorical power which neither money,
nor industry, nor persevering study, can ever win. Like the poet, the
orator must be born. You may take a man six feet high; he shall be
good-looking, have a good voice, and speak English with a correct
pronunciation--you shall write for that man a splendid speech--you shall
have him taught elocution by Mr. Webster, and yet you shall no more make
that man an orator than, to use a homely phrase, you can make a silk
purse out of a sow's ear. Gough is an orator born. Pope tells us he
"lisped in numbers," and in his boyhood Gough must have had the true
tones of the orator on his tongue. There was no effort--no fluste