would be sure in his public speeches to appeal to conscience, to the moral sense, and to a lofty patriotism. The appeals may have often fallen dead; but he could not help believing that there was still a spirit in his countrymen which, if rightly invoked, might yet be roused, and stir them to the deeds of their forefathers. This was the faith of Demosthenes. This it was which made him dislike and distrust even the noble speculations and philosophy of Plato. These, he felt—as many an Englishman might have felt—would tend to carry Athenians away from the practical sphere of politics into a shadowy realm of ideas. Athens, he thought, ought still to assert her greatness and dignity, and he had something in regard to her of the feeling which Virgil has expressed in the well-known line—
"Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento."[1]
As an orator he has, almost without question, been unrivalled. Lord Brougham, in his dissertation on the oratory of the ancients, confidently pronounces this opinion, and we are not aware that there is or has been any dissent from it. His eloquence was the joint product of natural genius and elaborate study. Quintilian says, on the whole truly, that Cicero owed more to study, and Demosthenes to nature. Still, as we have seen, Demosthenes did his best to perfect his great natural gifts by the most assiduous application. His industry was prodigious. He left behind him a collection of exordia, or introductions to speeches, which it seems that Cicero had by him. He was continually revising his words and phrases. All his
- ↑ "Thine, Roman, be the claim to rule the world."
