Page:Modern Eloquence - Volume 1.djvu/20

Rh order of lecture are William M. Thackeray, Thomas Carlyle, John Lord, Ian Maclaren, Wendell Phillips, Matthew Arnold, William Ellery Charming, Marion Crawford, George William Curtis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert G. Ingersoll, Sir Henry Irving, Charles Dudley Warner, and Henry Watterson.

In the list of those who are identified with moral and didactic lectures are Dean Farrar, T. DeWitt Talmage, John B. Gough, Julia Ward Howe, Mary Ashton Livermore, Charles Kingsley, and many others. History, travel, and education have proved fruitful fields for platform orators. Henry M. Stanley, John B. Gordon, Theodore Parker, Edward Everett, and a host of others have distinguished themselves as lecturers on themes of this order.

In the section devoted to occasional addresses the Committee of Selection have aimed to include only those addresses which are characterized by attractiveness of style, clearness and force of thought, and appropriateness of illustration. Among the literary addresses are given the most representative speeches of great authors and critics. Those presented are interpretative and expository, but never descend to the dulness of dogmatism. They pertain to some important phase of literature or to some famous author. They differ from the lectures in having been delivered only on special occasions. Among the speakers represented in this class are Andrew Lang, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and scores of others of equal note. Of scientific addresses only those have been selected which are at once clear, comprehensive, and entertaining—elements which are seldom lacking when the speaker is an authority on the particular branch of science of which he treats. Among those who have delivered notable scientific addresses, and are here represented, are Sir John Lubbock, Thomas Henry Huxley, John Tyndall, Charles Robert Darwin, Lord Kelvin, Richard A. Proctor, and Sir Frederick Herschell. Some of the most famous educators and eloquent divines have been identified with commencement addresses. There are also many fine examples of the eulogy. George William Curtis, for instance, discoursed eloquently on Lowell; Edward Everett eulogized Washington; and