The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10)

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• Publié par: ermey
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 26
• Langue: English

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Project Gutenberg's The World's Best Orations,
Vol. 1 (of 10), by Various
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Title: The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10)
Author: Various
Release Date: November 27, 2004 [EBook #14182]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG
EBOOK THE WORLD'S BEST ORATIONS, ***
Produced by Kent Fielden
THE WORLD'S BEST ORATIONS, Vol. 1 (of 10)THE ADVISORY COUNCIL
The Right Hon. Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke. Bart.,
Member of
Parliament—Author of 'Greater Britain,' etc.,
London, England.
William Draper Lewis, PH. D., Dean of the
Department of Law,
University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
William P. Trent, M.A., Professor of English and
History, Colombia
University, in the city of New York.
W. Stuart Symington, Jr., PH. D., Professor of the
Romance Languages,
Amherst College, Amherst, Mass.
Alcee Fortier, Lit.D., Professor of the Romance
Languages,
Tulane University, New Orleans, La.
William Vincent Byars, Journalist, St Louis, Mo.
Richard Gottheil, PH. D., Professor of Oriental
Languages,
Columbia University, in the city of New York.
Austin H. Merrill, A.M., Professor of Elocution,
Vanderbilt
University, Nashville, Tenn.
Sheldon Jackson. D. D., LL. D., Bureau of
Education, Washington, D. C.A. Marshall Elliott, PH.D. LL. D., Professor of the
Romance Languages,
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.
John W. Million, A.M., President of Hardin College,
Mexico, Mo.
J. Raymond Brackett. PH. D., Dean of the College
of Liberal Arts, and Professor of Comparative
Literature, University Of Colorado, Boulder, Colo.
W. F. Peirce. M.A., LL. D., President Of Kenyox
College, Gambier,
Ohio.
S. Plantz, PH.D., D. D., President of Lawrence
University,
Appleton, Wis.
George Tayloe Winston, LL.D., President of the
University Of Texas,
Austin, Texas.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
VOL. I
Preface: Justice David J. Brewer
The Oratory Of Anglo-Saxon Countries: Prof.
Edward A. AllenABELARD, PIERRE 1079-1142
The Resurrection of Lazarus
The Last Entry into Jerusalem
The Divine Tragedy
ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS 1807-1886
The States and the Union
ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS, JUNIOR 1835-
The Battle of Gettysburg
ADAMS, JOHN 1735-1826
Inaugural Address
The Boston Massacre
ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY 1767-1848
Oration at Plymouth Lafayette The
Jubilee of the Constitution
ADAMS, SAMUEL 1722-1803
American Independence
AELRED 1109-1166
A Farewell
A Sermon after Absence
On Manliness
AESCHINES 389-314 B. C.
Against Crowning Demosthenes
AIKEN, FREDERICK A. 1810-1878
Defense of Mrs. Mary E, Surratt
ALBERT THE GREAT (ALBERTUS MAGNUS)
1205-1280 The Meaning of the Crucifixion
The Blessed Dead
ALLEN, ETHAN
A Call to Arms
AMES, FISHER 1758-1808
On the British Treaty
ANSELM, SAINT 1032-1109
The Sea of Life
ARNOLD, THOMAS 1795-1842
The Realities of Life and Death
ARTHUR, CHESTER ALAN 1830-1886
Inaugural Address
ATHANASIUS 298-373
The Divinity of Christ
AUGUSTINE, SAINT 354-430
The Lord's Prayer
BACON, FRANCIS 1561-1626
Speech against Dueling
BARBOUR, JAMES 1775-1842
Treaties as Supreme Laws
BARNAVE, ANTOINE PIERRE JOSEPH MARIE
1761-1793
Representative Democracy against Majority
Absolutism
Commercial PoliticsBARROW, ISAAC 1630-1677
Slander
BASIL THE GREAT 329-379
On a Recreant Nan
BAXTER, RICHARD 1615-1691
Unwillingness to Improve
BAYARD. JAMES A. 1767-1815
The Federal Judiciary
Commerce and Naval Power
BAYARD, THOMAS F. 1828-1898
A Plea for Conciliation in 1876
BEACONSFIELD, LORD 1804-1881
The Assassination of Lincoln
Against Democracy for England
The Meaning of "Conservatism"
BEDE, THE VENERABLE 672-735
The Meeting of Mercy and Justice
A Sermon for Any Day
The Torments of Hell
BEECHER. HENRY WARD 1813-1887
Raising the Flag over Fort Sumter
Effect of the Death of Lincoln
BELHAVEN, LORD 1656-1708
A Plea for the National Life of Scotland
BELL, JOHN 1797-1869
Against Extremists, North and South Transcontinental Railroads
BENJAMIN, JUDAH P. 1811-1884
Farewell to the Union
Slavery as Established by LawPREFACE
Oratory is the masterful art. Poetry, painting,
music, sculpture, architecture please, thrill, inspire;
but oratory rules. The orator dominates those who
hear him, convinces their reason, controls their
judgment, compels their action. For the time being
he is master. Through the clearness of his logic,
the keenness of his wit, the power of his appeal, or
that magnetic something which is felt and yet
cannot be defined, or through all together, he
sways his audience as the storm bends the
branches of the forest. Hence it is that in all times
this wonderful power has been something longed
for and striven for. Demosthenes, on the beach,
struggling with the pebbles in his mouth to perfect
his articulation, has been the great example. Yet it
is often true of the orator, as of the poet; nascitur
non fit. Patrick Henry seemed to be inspired as
"Give me liberty or give me death" rolled from his
lips. The untutored savage has shown himself an
orator.
Who does not delight in oratory? How we gather to
hear even an ordinary speaker! How often is a jury
swayed and controlled by the appeals of counsel!
Do we not all feel the magic of the power, and
when occasionally we are permitted to listen to a
great orator how completely we lose ourselves and
yield in willing submission to the imperious and
impetuous flow of his speech! It is said that after
Webster's great reply to Hayne everyMassachusetts man walking down Pennsylvania
Avenue seemed a foot taller.
This marvelous power is incapable of complete
preservation on the printed page. The presence,
the eye, the voice, the magnetic touch, are beyond
record. The phonograph and kinetoscope may
some day seize and perpetuate all save the
magnetic touch, but that weird, illusive, indefinable
yet wonderfully real power by which the orator
subdues may never be caught by science or
preserved for the cruel dissecting knife of the critic.
It is the marvelous light flashing out in the
intellectual heavens which no Franklin has yet or
may ever draw and tie to earth by string of kite.
But while there is a living something which no
human art has yet been able to grasp and
preserve, there is a wonderful joy and comfort in
the record of that which the orator said. As we
read we see the very picture, though inarticulate,
of the living orator. We may never know all the
marvelous power of Demosthenes, yet Proton,
meg, o andres Athenaioi, suggests something of it.
Cicero's silver speech may never reach our ears,
and yet who does not love to read Quousque
tandem abutere, O Catilina, patientia nostra? So if
on the printed page we may not see the living
orator, we may look upon his picture—the
photograph of his power. And it is this which it is
the thought and purpose of this work to present.
We mean to photograph the orators of the world,
reproducing the words which they spake, and
trusting to the vivid imagination of the thoughtful