a statement possible of that truth which he is most unwilling to
receive,--a statement possible, so broad and so pungent, that he
cannot get away from it, but must either bend to it or die of it. Else
there would be no such word as eloquence, which means this. The
listener cannot hide from himself that something has been shown him
and the whole world, which he did not wish to see; and, as he cannot
dispose of it, it disposes of him. The history of public men and
affairs in America will readily furnish tragic examples of this fatal
force.

For the triumphs of the art somewhat more must still be required,
namely, a reinforcing of 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