on agriculture, police, and justice, and put them aside for after examination.
Every one expected an address such as the Resident had delivered the day before, and it was not quite certain that Havelaar himself intended to say anything else to the chiefs; but you ought to have seen him on such occasions to conceive how he, at speeches like those, grew excited, and, through his peculiar way of speaking, communicated a new colour to the most common things; how he became taller, so to speak, how his glance shot fire, how his voice passed from a flattering softness to a lancet sharpness, how the metaphors flowed from his lips, as if he was scattering some precious commodity round about him, which, however, cost him nothing, and how, when he ceased, every one looked at him with an open mouth, as if asking, “Good God! who are you?”
It is true that he himself who spoke on such occasions as an apostle, as a seer, afterwards did not exactly know how he had spoken, and his eloquence was therefore more powerful to astonish and to touch, than to convince by solid argument. He would have excited the martial spirit of the Athenians to frenzy as soon as they had decided to go to war with Philip; but he would not have succeeded so well, if it had been his task to incite them to this war through cogency of reasoning. His harangue to the chiefs of Lebak was of course in Malay,—a circumstance which added greatly to its effect,
