ce, by immeasurable degrees, the noblest and
richest, is our religious eloquence. Here, of course, all comparison
ceases; for classical Grecian religious eloquence, in Grecian attire,
there is none until three centuries after the Christian era, when we
have three great orators, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil--of which two I
have a very fixed opinion, having read large portions of both--and a
third of whom I know nothing. To our Jeremy Taylor, to our Sir Thomas
Browne, there is no approach made in the Greek eloquence. The
inaugural chapter of the _Holy Dying_, to say nothing of many another
golden passage; or the famous passage in the _Urn Buriall_,
beginning--'Now, since these bones have rested under the drums and
tramplings of three conquests'--have no parallel in literature. The
winding up of the former is more, in its effect, like a great
tempestuous chorus from the _Judas Maccabeus_, or from Spohr's _St.
Paul_, than like human eloquence.

But, grant that this transfer of the comparison is unfair--still, it
is no less unfair to confine the comparison on our part to the weakest
part of our oratory; but no matter--let issue be joined even here.
Then we may say, at once, that, for the intellectual qualities of
eloquence, in fineness of understanding, in depth and in large compass
of thought, Burke far surpasses any orator, ancient or modern. But, if
the comparison were pushed more widely, very certain I am, that, apart
from classical prejudice, no qualities of just thinking, or fine
expression, or even of artificial ornament, could have been assigned
by Hume, in which the great body of our deliberative and forensic
orators fall short of Grecian models; though I will admit, that, by
comparison with the Roman model of Cicero, there is seldom the same
artful prefiguration of the oration throughout its future course, or
the same sustained rhythmus and oratorial tone. The qualities of art
are nowhere so prominently expressed, nowhere aid the effect so much,
as in the great Roman master.

But, as to Greece, let us now, in one word, unveil the sole advantage
which the eloquence of the Athenian _assembly_ has over that of the
English senate. It is this--_the public business of Athens was as yet
simple and unencumbered by details_; the dignity of the occasion was
scenically sustained. But, in England, the vast intricacy and complex
interweaving of property, of commerce, of commercial interests, of
details infinite in number, and inf