the choir; whereas it is next to impossible to get any number of persons to give up two evenings of the week with any regularity. To those who have agreed with my theory of acquiring and exercising the power of speaking, the plan I adopted for carrying on such lectures will, at least, seem to have the advantage of gaining in simplicity what it wanted in dignity. The subjects chosen were generally lighter than those which are usually considered appropriate for a lecture-room. My plan was to devote the morning of the day to the purpose; and, having selected some popular book, to glance through it, marking the most useful and interesting portions; thus getting a general view of some of the leading features, I trusted to help out the subjectmatter so obtained by the portions previously marked for reading. Travels, biographical sketches, and any details of colonial life, were readily appreciated; also, historical subjects founded on such books as "Ivanhoe," "Prescott's Mexico" and " Peru," &c. Nothing, however, proved so generally popular as readings from Shakespeare; explaining the allusions, describing manners and customs and places, and here and there narrating some historical or other event connected with the play, together with occasional remarks naturally arising out of the subject, served to prevent the reading becoming tedious, while, by simplifying the plot of the original, the whole was easily comprehended, even by the youngest portions of the audience. The plan of making reading and lecturing go hand in hand was, I believe, advocated by Mr. Brockfield, in his lecture on "reading aloud," at the South Kensington Museum; and I think that all who may ever have tried this method will agree that it is both the best, the easiest, and the most expeditious mode of preparing a lecture, and at the same time one which affords the greatest opportunity of combining the utile with the dulce in tolerably fair proportions. However this may be, this plan of lecturing is certainly the best method for a man to adopt who, though he may be quite equal to giving any short explanations, narrating simple facts, or making cursory remarks, may not wish to trust entirely to his own power; such an one, whilst he relieves his audience from the weariness with which any lengthened reading is invariably listened to, and caters for them according to the best of his ability, will not only be fitting himself to be of greater service to them at some future day, but will gain the power of contributing at will to the pleasure and social improvement of those amongst whom his lot may at any time be cast. CHAPTER XIV. "Lives of great men all remind us Some forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, may take heart again."-LONGFELLOW. EARLY four centuries ago a youthful artist* stood spell-bound before a master-piece of the immortal Raphael; at last, as his awe and reverence for the mighty genius which could so conceive and execute deepened upon him, and as his heart thrilled responsively to every thought and feeling there portrayed, he broke forth in proud humility with the ever-memorable exclamation-"I too am a painter." Unknown to fame as he then was, oppressed with poverty, and debarred from every chance of instruction, instead of being crushed with a sense of his own inferiority, he rose, with a spirit worthy even of a nobler cause, above every petty consideration, and * Corregio. felt his heart kindle with emotion at the thought that he, too, was called by the same honoured name. There must be a kindred spirit to this animating the future orator as he studies the great masterpieces of ancient and modern eloquence. He, too, must feel that his vocation, in the strictest sense of the term, is the same; and though he may never hope to attain to the goal of excellence at which others have arrived, he will yet rejoice to walk as a humble follower in their footsteps; and in this spirit hinderances and discouragements, and even a keen sense of his own disqualifications, will but add zest to the struggle-Labor ipse voluptas will be the motto for a man like him.* The more we study the history of oratory the more shall we be convinced that natural facility of speech oftener results in mediocrity than in excellence. The greatest men in this as in every other art have been the men who have laboured most. The painter, the musician, the scholar, or the divine, all, in fact, who have attained to eminence in their particular spheres of life, know within themselves that they are distinguished from those with whom they first competed, not so much by superior genius as by greater energy and perseverance. It is true that, just as some persons of great wealth would fain have their fortune attributed to anything rather than their "I was not swaddled, and dandled, and rocked into a legislator; nitor in adversum is the motto for a man like me.”— BURKE'S Correspondence. own exertions, so it may gratify a petty vanity in some men to conceal the steps by which they have risen. Unfortunately this vanity is very general; we see it at work in our schools, our universities, and in public life; making success, if attributed to plodding industry, to be spoken of with a sneer, if to innate genius, to be regarded with unqualified admiration. Thus it happens that the world is misled, it accords to the few a monopoly of that which belongs to the many; while some of its brightest lights, though set upon a candlestick, had far more advantageously been placed beneath a bushel. In one of his earlier contributions to the "Edinburgh Review," we find Lord Brougham expressing a very strong opinion as to the labour absolutely indispensable to make a good speaker. The quotation itself will be my best apology for giving it at length. He says:"A corrupt and careless eloquence so greatly abounds that there are but few public speakers who give any attention to their art, excepting those who debase it by the ornaments of most vicious taste. Not, indeed, that the two defects are often kept apart; for some men appear to bestow but little pains upon the preparation of the vilest composition that ever offended a classical ear, although it displays an endless variety of far-fetched thoughts, forced metaphors, unnatural expressions, and violent perversions of ordinary language. In a word, it is worthless, without the poor merit of being elaborate, |