Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 9.djvu/164

 THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS — in each of these, again, his speech, of the first form of ability, was exactly adapted, also, to the critical proprieties of the place; each achieved, when delivered, the most instant and and specific success of eloquence — some of them in a splendid and remarkable degree; and yet, stranger still, when reduced to writing, as they fell from his lips, they compose a body of reading, in many volumes — solid, clear, rich, and full of harmony — a classical and permanent political literature. And yet all these modes of his eloquence, exactly adapted each to its stage and its end, were stamped with his image and superscrip- tion, identified by characteristics incapable to be counterfeited and impossible to be mistaken. The same high power of reason, intent in every one to explore and display some truth; some truth of judicial, or historical, or biographical fact ; some truth of law, deduced by construction, perhaps, or by illation; some truth of policy, for want whereof a nation, generations, may be the worse — reason seeking and unfolding truth; the same tone, in all, of deep earnestness, ex- pressive of strong desire that that which he felt to be important should be accepted as true, and spring up to action; the same transparent, plain, forcible, and direct speech, conveying his exact thought to the mind — not something less or more ; the same sovereignty of form, of brow, and eye, and tone, and manner — everywhere the intellectual king of men, standing before 154