CHAPTER 1.

PRELIMINARY EDUCATION.

Nurscling Senator.

IIE who is destined to rise in the SIDEREAL Parliament, ought to be put into a preparatory course of education from the very cradle.

A lively, prating NURSE, one of those women who chatter for hours together, to a cat, a parrot, a pug-dog, or a child in their arms, without reflecting-whether the objects they address have the smallest intelligence of what they say,will, upon this score, be of

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infinite value, to have the charge of our M. P. in swaddling clothes. A little accustomed to such eloquence, the infant comes to listen to it, with looks and feelings of grave satisfaction. satisfaction. It becomes necessary, to make him easy. He grows to be like the sailor who cannot take a nap on the shrouds, unless he be lulled by a loud wind. Or, he takes, at this early age, the happy habit of the scold's husband that never sinks so sweetly into repose, as under the quietus of a curtain-lecture. The native sensibility of his auditory nerves, is subdued to the torpor of one who, living, as it were, next door neighbour to the noise of a waterfall, learns to mind it no more than if he kept his couch, night and day, in a nook of WestminsterHall, during the silence and solitude of the Long Vacation. Or, he becomes like the miller's servant, whose slumbers never fail to be broken, the moment the hollow rustling of the moving wheels is interrupted, and the din of the clapper ceases.

The importance of confiding the unfledged

legislator to such a nurse, is to be fully conceived only by those who have, like me, passed half a century in the CHAPEL OF PATRIOTISM and WISDOM.

But the gravity of look, far more valuable than attention itself, which counterfeits it to a very miracle, is never to be commanded, unless by early and unremitting habit. The patience to listen, night after night, to overpowering eloquence, is not to be created at once, nor acquired, if one have not been inured, from inarticulating infancy, to catch only the sounds, and leave the sense to be scattered by the winds. And it is of singular utility to the hero of political adventure, to have begun, from the earliest hour, to prepare for making as many as possible of the incidents of public debate to operate upon his mind with soporific influence. These qualities arc, in this planet, the very elements of the better part of the true genius for legisla tive greatness.

Early Eloquence.

So tutored before he begins to speak, the

nurseling senator has a quite different species of instruction to receive, the moment he can make himself understood in articulate He must be, now, excited to emu

SPEECH.

late the chatter of his nurse with the utmost briskness and perseverance.

If to be a solemn, steady, unintelligent hearer, be the first object in that which is his destination in life; his very next object is, to be, himself, an eloquent speaker.

Now, I must acquaint you, ingenuously, with that which is the true secret of eloquence. It is not, as Demosthenes was weak enough to fancy, "Action! Action! Action!" it exists not in fire of sentiment: no, nor in vigour of imagery! it depends not upon any general predominance of good sense or propriety throughout the whole of what is said. It is not constituted by mere strength of facts or cogency of argument. It does not consist even in directing the whole scope of what is said to one single and leading point of persuasion. It is not in the grace, propriety, or energy, of correct and

mellow elocution; no! not in any one of these applauded excellencies; nor even in the union of the whole. Far from me be it, to vilify the art which I have nothing but the sincerest motives of public spirit to induce me to teach. But I must state that which I certainly know. In the whole course of my senatorial experience, I have watched anxiously to discover what it was that produced the proper effects of Eloquencé in Parliamentary speaking. In the result, I have clearly ascertained, that bold promptitude, glib volubility, inexhaustible perseverance, periods of fifty miles, a generous negligence of excessive accuracy of definition, or clearness and regularity of argument, the fortitude to resist a general hum, lungs of strength to overpower the spread of a forced cough, spirit to make the most of a friendly "Hear him!" an affected, or, still better, a natural confusion of ideas, mincing and mangling popular facts and arguments, without absolutely omitting them, a turbid stream of speech overwhelming all purity of