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HORS. I did not profess, sir, to be explaining his political power: I was merely pointing out the secret of his oratorical fame. His political power is a product of several forces of which the merely wonder-rousing quality in his oratory is but one. Chief among the others is the curiosity, the interest, and, for the less instructed, the admiration excited by his character and career.

BURKE. But what is it then-nay, what can it be— that should charm them in such a character, if, indeed it be reflected in his oratory? What can they find in such a career as I may suppose that character to have determined?

HORS. In the character they find power, and in the career success; and these are the idols to which human nature, bowing lowest in the lowest, will everywhere bend the knee. The more widely you extend political rights, and the more freely you commit government to the untutored instincts of mankind, the more surely shall you find the dominant influence in politics to be the worship of individual strength.

BURKE. You are of those then who hold that Democracy leads necessarily to Dictatorship?

HORS. Our English democracy of ignorance seems to have already led to it. The man of whom we have been speaking is the virtual dictator of his country: and it is from strength that he draws his strength. Potest quia posse videtur. He dominates his colleagues; he rides roughshod over his own former opinions; he refuses to be constrained even by his own spoken words. But all these characteristics-the imperiousness of his nature, his

audacity of tergiversation, the astonishing sophistry with which he explains himself away-all these characteristics which shock and alienate the scrupulous and the reflective serve only to strengthen that essentially un-moral conception of irresistible power which wins him the allegiance of the masses. When he drags the grandees of Whiggery at the tail of the Radical chariot; when he compels an uneasy Legislature to burn what they have adored and adore what they were wont to burn; when he stands up unappalled before the crowding ghosts of his former opinions and lays them with a wave of his enchanter's wand, his votaries among the multitude waste no thought upon the moral aspect of these performances: all they have eyes for is the magnificent display of force, and before that idol of the modern world they instinctively bow down and worship.

BURKE. And do you really mean to tell me that the astonishing influence of the man has no root whatever in the moral approval, the moral sympathy, of his countrymen ?

HORS. Nay, Mr. Burke, I do not say so. It would be at once an unjust and an unintelligent analysis of the elements of his power. I spoke only of the sources of that boundless admiration with which the unthinking populace regards him. He has yet another order of admirers whose attachment to him is based even more upon veneration for his character than upon wonder at his powers. In a word, he possesses adherents who not only applaud him but believe in him-followers who follow him in the spirit of true discipleship, not merely

to gaze upon his miracles, but to hearken reverently to his teachings. Great, indeed, is their faith: great even to the removal of mountains. No paradox of the master's doctrines, no conflict between his utterances, has power to shake for an instant their steadfast belief in his righteousness and truth. They are not staggered by his reconciliatory sophisms, for they see no need of reconciliations at all. They accept the self-contradictions of their master as one of the "antinomies" of the reason, which no more require, if they no more admit of, explanation to the feeble human understanding than does the crux of free will coexistent with divine foreknowledge, or the mystery of God-sanctioned evil.

BURKE. But surely, sir, you must be speaking of a class of person almost as ignorant and superstitious as the populace itself.

HORS. By no means. They are mostly men of intelligence they are all men of high principle and of scrupulous conscience: they are some of them men of deep and unaffected piety.

BURKE. You are merely multiplying incredibilities. How is it possible for such men to be so deluded?

HORS. By means, sir, of that gift of speech which you, I must say, so ungratefully underrate, and by special virtue of one element therein which, though it has as yet been mentioned by neither of us, is to my thinking the real secret of an orator's power.

BURKE. You mean.

HORS. I mean the physical element-the strange magic in the mere sound of some voices, the calculated charm

of their modulation, the magnetism of eye, of expression

and even of gesture.

BURKE. And does your orator then possess these things in such high perfection?

HORS. Sir, I can only tell you that profoundly as I distrust him, and lightly as, on the whole, I value the external qualities of his eloquence, I have never listened to him even for a few minutes without ceasing to marvel at his influence over men. That white-hot face, stern as a Covenanter's, yet mobile as a comedian's; those restless flashing eyes; that wondrous voice, whose richness its northern burr enriches as the tang of the wood brings out the mellowness of a rare old wine; the masterly cadences of his elocution; the vivid energy of his attitudes; the fine animation of his gestures-sir, when I am assailed through eye and ear by this compacted phalanx of assailants, what wonder that the stormed outposts of the senses should spread the contagion of their own surrender through the main encampment of the mind, and that against my judgment, in contempt of my conscience, nay, in defiance of my very will, I should exclaim: "This is indeed the voice of truth and wisdom. This man is honest and sagacious beyond his fellows. He must be believed; he must be obeyed." And if such be the effect, however temporary, that this remarkable man produces upon me who distrust him intellectually and dislike him morally, judge, sir, how powerfully he must influence those who bring to him ready sympathies and a confiding mind.

RICHARDSON AND FIELDING.

RICH. Sir! Mr. Fielding! This is mighty ill manners! I would have you to know, sir, that I prefer my own company to yours.

FIELD. I cannot believe it. Death does not so change men's natures. Your known conviviality of disposition

RICH. Again, sir! You pass all bounds! 'Tis strange that you should suppose yourself entitled to use this freedom with me. Were we on earth I should impute your rudeness to an excitement in which you were said to indulge yourself something too freely.

FIELD. I know you would: and as a backbiter you deserve to be pitied for the loss of so useful a tooth.

RICH. I shall suffer less by my loss, Mr. Fielding, I am well assured, than you will by yours.

FIELD. Perhaps so; but you will suffer in the same way. Tea and tittle-tattle must be almost as bad to go without as a bottle of Burgundy and a rousing catch; though I dare say, by the way, that you manage to get the most favourite of all your drinks even down here.

RICH. I know not what you would be at, sir.

FIELD. There is a beverage which intoxicates more hurtfully than wine and makes a greater fool of the

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