heir claims
heard and respected.

I know very well, that, among our cool and calculating people, where
every man mounts guard over himself, where heats and panics and
abandonments are quite out of the system, there is a good deal of
skepticism as to extraordinary influence. To talk of an overpowering
mind rouses the same jealousy and defiance which one may observe round
a table where anybody is recounting the marvellous anecdotes of
mesmerism. Each auditor puts a final stroke to the discourse by
exclaiming, "Can he mesmerize _me_?" So each man inquires if any
orator can change _his_ convictions.

But does any one suppose himself to be quite impregnable? Does he
think that not possibly a man may come to him who shall persuade him
out of his most settled determination?--for example, good sedate
citizen as he is, to make a fanatic of him? or, if he is penurious, to
squander money for some purpose he now least thinks of? or, if he is a
prudent, industrious person, to forsake his work, and give days and
weeks to a new interest? No, he defies any one, every one. Ah! he is
thinking of resistance, and of a different turn from his own. But what
if one should come of the same turn of mind as his own, and who sees
much farther on his own way than he? A man who has tastes like mine,
but in greater power, will rule me any day, and make me love my ruler.

Thus it is not powers of speech that we primarily consider under this
word Eloquence, but the power that, being present, gives them their
perfection, and, being absent, leaves them a merely superficial value.
Eloquence is the appropriate organ of the highest personal energy.
Personal ascendency may exist with or without adequate talent for its
expression. It is as surely felt as a mountain or a planet; but when
it is weaponed with a power of speech, it seems first to become truly
human, works actively in all directions, and supplies the imagination
with fine materials.

This circumstance enters into every consideration of the power of
orators, and is the key to all their effects. In the assembly, you
shall find the orator and the audience in perpetual balance, and the
predominance of either is indicated by the choice of topic. If the
talents for speaking exist, but not the strong personality, then there
are good speakers who perfectly receive and express the will of the
audience, and the commonest populace is flattered by hearing its low
mind returned to it with every ornament