man from events, so as to give the double
force of reason and destiny. In transcendent eloquence, there was ever
some crisis in affairs, such as could deeply engage the man to the
cause he pleads, and draw all this wide power to a point. For the
explosions and eruptions, there must be accumulations of heat
somewhere, beds of ignited anthracite at the centre. And in cases
where profound conviction has been wrought, the eloquent man is he who
is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly drunk with a certain
belief. It agitates and tears him, and perhaps almost bereaves him of
the power of articulation. Then it rushes from him as in short, abrupt
screams, in torrents of meaning. The possession the subject has of his
mind is so entire, that it insures an order of expression which is the
order of Nature itself, and so the order of greatest force, and
inimitable by any art. And the main distinction between him and other
well-graced actors is the conviction, communicated by every word, that
his mind is contemplating a whole and inflamed by the contemplation of
the whole, and that the words and sentences uttered by him, however
admirable, fall from him as unregarded parts of that terrible whole
which he sees, and which he means that you shall see. Add to this
concentration a certain regnant calmness, which, in all the tumult,
never utters a premature syllable, but keeps the secret of its means
and method; and the orator stands before the people as a demoniacal
power to whose miracles they have no key. This terrible earnestness
makes good the ancient superstition of the hunter, that the bullet
will hit its mark, which is first dipped in the marksman's blood.

Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest narrative. Afterwards, it
may warm itself until it exhales symbols of every kind and color,
speaks only through the most poetic forms; but, first and last, it
must still be at bottom a biblical statement of fact. The orator is
thereby an orator, that he keeps his feet ever on a fact. Thus only is
he invincible. No gifts, no graces, no power of wit or learning or
illustration will make any amends for want of this. All audiences are
just to this point. Fame of voice or of rhetoric will carry people a
few times to hear a speaker, but they soon begin to ask, "What is he
driving at?" and if this man does not stand for anything, he will be
deserted. A good upholder of anything which they believe, a
fact-speaker of any kind, they will lon