ld house.

Climate has much to do with it,--climate and race. Set a New Englander
to describe any accident which happened in his presence. What
hesitation and reserve in his narrative! He tells with difficulty some
particulars, and gets as fast as he can to the result, and, though he
cannot describe, hopes to suggest the whole scene. Now listen to a
poor Irish-woman recounting some experience of hers. Her speech flows
like a river,--so unconsidered, so humorous, so pathetic, such justice
done to all the parts! It is a true transubstantiation,--the fact
converted into speech, all warm and colored and alive, as it fell out.
Our Southern people are almost all speakers, and have every advantage
over the New England people, whose climate is so cold, that, 'tis said,
we do not like to open our mouths very wide. But neither can the
Southerner in the United States, nor the Irish, compare with the
lively inhabitant of the South of Europe. The traveller in Sicily
needs no gayer melodramatic exhibition than the _table d'hote_ of his
inn will afford him, in the conversation of the joyous guests. They
mimic the voice and manner of the person they describe; they crow,
squeal, hiss, cackle, bark, and scream like mad, and, were it only by
the physical strength exerted in telling the story, keep the table in
unbounded excitement. But in every constitution some large degree of
animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher
qualities of the art.

But eloquence must be attractive, or it is none. The virtue of books
is to be readable, and of orators to be interesting, and this is a
gift of Nature; as Demosthenes, the most laborious student in that
kind, signified his sense of this necessity when he wrote, "Good
Fortune," as his motto on his shield. As we know, the power of
discourse of certain individuals amounts to fascination, though it may
have no lasting effect. Some portion of this sugar must intermingle.
The right eloquence needs no bell to call the people together, and no
constable to keep them. It draws the children from their play, the old
from their arm-chairs, and the invalid from his warm chamber; it holds
the hearer fast, steals away his feet, that he shall not depart,--his
memory, that he shall not remember the most pressing affairs,--his
belief, that he shall not admit any opposing considerations. The
pictures we have of it in semi-barbarous ages, when it has some
advantages in the simpler habit of the peop