Would not Mark Anthony's speech over the dead body of Caesar, had it been uttered, have moved the Roman populace as it moves the spectator when the play is acted, or the solitary reader in his closet?

Do not Sheridan's great perorations, and Burke's, in the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, read well?

There are examples of men of great original genius who have risen to lofty oratory on some great occasion who had not the advantage of familiarity with any great author.

It is a maxim that the pupil who wishes to acquire a pure and simple style should give his days and nights to Addison.

But there is a lack of strength and vigor in Addison, which perhaps prevents his being the best model for the advocate in the court-house or the champion in a political debate.

I should rather, for myself, recommend Robert South to the student.

There is one great difference between the condition of the American orator and that of the orator of antiquity.

The speaker, in the old time, addressed an audience about to act instantly upon the emotions or convictions he had himself caused.

The speech itself perished with the occasion, unless, as in some few instances, the orator preserved it in manuscript for a curious posterity.

Even then the best of them had discovered that not eloquence, but wisdom, is the power by which states grow and flourish.

The Judge himself must state the reasons for his opinions, which are to be read by a learned and critical profession and by posterity.

The speaker's argument must be sounded, and rung, and tested, and tried again and again, before the auditor acts upon it.

The printing-press and the reporter, the consultation in the jury-room, the reflection in the Judge's chamber, the delay of the election to a day long after the speech, are protections against the mischief of mere oratory, which the…

The speeches are well worth studying by a person who wishes to get an idea of the intellectual and literary quality of these champions.

Osborne was full of a shrewd and delightful wit, without the vitriolic flavor which often appears in the sarcasm of Disraeli.

Gladstone showed his power of elevating the discussion to a lofty plane, which his opponent never reached, although Disraeli launched at him many a keen shaft from below.

Although Bernal Osborne was a man of great wit and sense, and Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Michael Hicks-Beach were then, as the latter is now, very eminent characters, yet the only speakers who belonged to the rank of the great orators…

One of these merits is that it enables a man to discharge a noble duty in the noblest possible manner.

That by marking his vote you expose the voter to be tempted through his cupidity and through his fears.

We propose, by secret voting, to greatly diminish the first of these, and we hope to take away the second.

We do not believe that the disposition to bribe can operate with anything like its present force when the means of tracing the action of the man bribed are taken away, because men will not pay for that they do not know they will ever…

The great quality of Gladstone, as of Sumner, is his profound seriousness.

He makes the impression on his hearers, an impression made, but not so strongly, upon his readers, that the matter he is discussing is that upon which the foundations of heaven and earth rest.

It is an old-fashioned political expedient; it is not adapted to the circumstances which we have to encounter in the present, and because it has no real foundation of truth or policy, it will meet with defeat and discomfiture.

Gladstone was the last of a school of oratory, and the last of our time--I hope not for all time--of a school of statesmen.