Going, C. R. Dem. (passionately seizing her.) Where goest? Erix. To seek a friend. Dem. Erix. Earth open and receive me. Dem. And save me from a double suicide, And one of ten-fold death. O Jove! O Jove! He's here. Yes, Perseus' friend. Heaven strike us dead, Yes one Dem. What love denied, thine agonies have done. [Takes up the dagger. [Stabs herself. Enter the KING, ANTIGONUS and others, R. [Pointing at ERIXENE. King. My grief-accustom'd heart can guess too well. Dem. That sight turns all to guilt, but tears and death. King. Death! Who shall quell false Perseus now in arms? Who pour my tempest on the Capitol ? How shall I sweeten life to thy sad spirit? I'll quit my throne this hour, and thou shalt reign. Dem. You recommend that death you would dissuade; Ennobled thus by fame and empire lost, As well as life.-Small sacrifice to love. [Going to stab himself, the KING runs to prevent it, but too late. King. Ah, hold! nor strike thy dagger through my heart. Dem. 'Tis my first disobedience and my last. [Falls on ANTIGONUS, who supports him. King. There Philip fell, there Macedon expired. I see the Roman eagle hovering o'er us, And the shaft broke should bring her to the ground. [Pointing at DEMETRIUS. Dem. Hear, good Antigonus, my last request: Tell Perseus, if he 'll sheath his impious sword Drawn on his father, I'll forgive him all; Though poor Erixene lies bleeding by. Her blood cries vengeance; but my father's peace EXTRACT FROM A LECTURE ON HISTORY, Delivered AT THE NORMAL SCHOOL, PARIS, BY C. F. VOLNEY. THIS extract may seem, at the first glance, to be without the range of productions we proposed The Orator should alone contain; but the student will find, by a thorough perusal of the following, a field for gesture, posture, and many points which must call forth expression. Since public lecturing is so popular, a few selections from choice lectures, even if not so oratorical as orations, can not be without their interest; and this selection is from a master series of that class of literature. We can only say of its delivery, that it requires that colloquial modulation which always should be prominent in scientific lecturing, but which so seldom is heard. WHOEVER has read with attention the history of the Eastern and Western Empires, and that of modern Europe, must have observed, that in all the convulsions of nations, in all the wars, in all the treaties of peace and alliance that have taken place within fifteen centuries, there has invariably been a reference to transactions recorded in the book of the Hebrews. If popes pretend to anoint and consecrate kings, it is in imitation of Melchisedeck and Samuel. If emperors do penance for their sins at the feet of pontiffs, it is in imitation of David and Hezekiah. It is in imitation of the Jews, that Europeans make war upon infidels. It is imitation of Ahod, Eglon, and Judith, that individuals assassinate princes to obtain the palm of martyrdom. In the fifteenth century, when the art of printing promulgated those works which before existed only in manuscript, and rendered them books of general use, this influence was double, and produced an epidemic mania of imitation. You know the dreadful effects to which this passion gave rise in the wars promoted by Luther in Germany, in those which Cromwell conducted in England, and in those of the league which was terminated by Henry IV. * * * * At last true philosophy, philosophy which is the friend of peace and of universal tolerance, had extinguished the ferment, and the eighteenth century seemed to approach the finest epoch of humanity; when a new tempest, hurrying men's minds in an opposite extreme, has overthrown the rising edifice of reason, and has furnished us with a new example of the influence of history, and of the abuse of its comparisons. You must be aware that I allude to that mania of citations and imitations of the Greek and Roman history, which within a few years has struck us as it were, with a vertigo. Names, surnames, dress, manners, laws,seem all about to become Spartan or Roman. Ancient prejudices alarmed, and recent passions irritated, have pretended to discover the cause of this phenomenon in a philosophic spirit, of which they are ignorant; but that philosophic spirit, which is merely observation disengaged from passion and prejudice, easily recognizes its real origin in the system of education which has prevailed for a century and half in Europe. The classical books so extravagantly admired, the works of the celebrated poets, orators, and historians of Grecce and Rome, placed without consideration in the hands of youth, have inspired them with their principles and their sentiments. Those books extolling certain men and certain actions as models of greatness or perfection inflame the mind of the student with the natural desire of imitation. Habituated under the collegiate lash to admire certain beauties, real or supposed, but which in either case are equally above his comprehension, he becomes inspired with the blind passion of enthusiasm. We have seen this enthusiasm, at the commencement of the present age, manifest itself in a ridiculous admiration of the literature and art of the ancients. Other circumstances have now turned this admiration towards politics, in which it displays a vehemence proportioned to the interests that are brought into action. Varied in its form, in its name, and in its object, it is still the same passion; so that we have done nothing more than to change idols, and substitute a new worship for that of our ancestors. We reproach them for their superstitious adoration of the Jews, and we are guilty of an adoration no less superstious of the Greeks and Romans. Our ancestors swore by Jerusalem and the Bible; and the new sect swear by Sparta, Athens, and Titus Livy. It is not a little remarkable that the apostles of this new religion are far from having a just idea of the doctrines they inculcate, and the models they propose to us are quite inconsistent with the object they wish to promote. They boast to us of the liberty and spirit of equality which prevailed in Rome and Greece; but they forget that at Sparta an aristocracy of thirty thousand nobles held two hundred thousand serfs under a yoke of the most cruel oppression ; that of four millions of persons, which was all the population of ancient Greece, more than three millions were slaves; that civil and political inequality was the dogma of the people and their legislators; that this principle was consecrated by Lycurgus and Solon, professed by Aristotle and the divine Plato, and propagated by the generals and the ambassadors of Athens, Sparta, and Rome, who speak in Polybius, Livy, and Thucydides, like the ambassadors of Attila and of Tchinguizkan. They have forgotten that the same manners and the same government prevailed in what is called the most glorious days of the republic; that this pretended republic, varying according to its epochs, was always an oligarchy, consisting of a noble and sacerdotal order possessing almost exclusively the land and public employments, and a plebeian mass oppressed with usurers, having only four acres of ground a-head, and differing from their slaves only by the right of flogging them, growing old, or dying in the gardens of their centurions, in the slavery of camps, and in the midst of military rapine; that in those states, pretended to be founded on liberty and equality, all political rights were concentrated in the hands of the indolent and factious inhab itants of the capitals, who viewed their allies and associates only in the light of tributaries. The more I have studied the celebrated constitutions of antiquity, the more I have been convinced that the governments of the Mamalukes of Egypt and the Deys of Algiers do not differ essentially from those of Sparta and of Rome; and the Greeks and Romans, that we so much venerate, want only the names of Huns and Vandals to excite in us the ideas we have been taught to form of those nations. Eternal wars, the murder of prisoners, massacres of women and children, breach of faith, internal factions, domestic tyranny and foreign oppression are the most striking features of the picture of Greece and Italy during five hundred years, as it has been portrayed to us by Thucydides, Polybius, and Titus Livy. The war against Xerxes, the only just and honorable one in which the Greeks were ever engaged, was scarcely finished when the insolent vexations of Athens on the sea commenced; next comes the horrible Peloponnesian war; then the Theban; to these succeed the wars of Alexander and his successors; then follow those of the Romans, without affording the mind the satisfaction of repose over half a generation of peace. The legislation of the ancients has been highly praised: but what was its object, what its effect? It was calculated to form men for acts of savage barbarity, as ferocious animals are trained to fight lions and bulls. Their constitutions are admired; but what was the constitution of Sparta? Cast in a mold of brass, it condemned a nation of thirty thousand people, never to increase in population or territory; a regulation worthy of the Monks of La Trappe. The modern Lycurguses have spoken, to us only of bread and of iron. The iron of pikes produces nothing but blood, and bread is only produced by the iron of plows. The poets step forward to celebrate what they denominate warlike virtues. Let us reply to the poets by the howlings of the wolves, and screams of the vultures, that gather the dreadful harvest of battles; or by the lamentations of widows and orphans, expiring with hunger on the tombs of their husbands and fathers. Writers have endeavored to dazzle us with the glories of war; but unfortunate are the people who shine with greatest splendor in the pages of history. Like the heroes of the drama, their celebrity is acquired at the expense of their happiness. GOD IN NATURE. BEHOLD an earthly Heaven, a realm of air, Of distance, till their outlines fade. Their fields, Little by little, till, at length, they melt, And the horizon meets the sky, like Ocean's. Whence are these tender hues, these lights and shades. Half-hidden, half-revealed, like God's own truth. That robes them with a radiance not their own? Ah, see the clouds draw up and veil the plain, Where, now, the splendor of the scene? Where, now, The glory that we see on nature's face, PATHOS, TRAGEDY, AND COMEDY. THERE is one truth relating to oratorical delivery which is generally acknowledged; and that fact is, that before a production can be read or recited with any degree of interest, or with a proper display of its meaning and beauty, it must be correctly understood by the orator. The character of the selection must be conceived to the very life; every counterplot for emotion, every display of gesture, posture, expression, and modulation, must be so put forth by the reciter, that they all seem the spontaneous outbursting of the speaker's heart. That the reader may be the more minutely acquainted with the character we hope our selections to possess, and also what we regard the true principles of oratory, we here propose to make a few remarks on pathos, tragedy, and comedy; thinking at the same time, they cannot be tedious to the student of oratory, for we designate by those terms all the nice mechanism of delivery; all that by which the orator arouses the affections of our nature, moves us from the calm slumbers of every-day life, and makes those affections vibrate with all the turbulence of emotion; as it were, move man to action by their mammoth powers. |