the cogency of his arguments is due to the atrocity of our common
enemies, and the enthusiasm which he kindles to the preparations of the
people's heart.

His orations are a tropical forest, full of strength and majesty,
tangled in luxuriance, a wilderness of self-repetition. Utterly
unsuited to form a book without immense abridgment, they contain
materials adapted equally for immediate political service and for
permanence as a work of wisdom and of genius. To prepare them for the
press is an arduous and responsible duty: the best excuse which I can
give for having assumed it, is, that it has been to me a labour of love.
My task I have felt to be that of a judicious reporter, who cuts short
what is of temporary interest, condenses what is too amplified for his
limits and for written style, severely prunes down the repetitions which
are inevitable where numerous[*] audiences are addressed by the same man
on the same subject, yet amid all these necessary liberties retains not
only the true sentiments and arguments of the speaker, but his forms of
thought and all that is characteristic of his genius. Such an operation,
rightly performed, may, like a diminishing mirror, concentrate the
brilliancy of diffuse orations, and assist their efficacy on minds which
would faint under the effort of grasping the original.

[Footnote *: The number of speeches, great and small, spoken in his
American half-year, is reckoned to be above 500.]

It is true, the exuberance of Kossuth is often too Asiatic for English
taste, and that excision of words, which needful abridgment suggests,
will often seem to us a gain. Moreover, remembering that he is a
foreigner, and though marvellous in his mastery of our language, still
naturally often unable to seize the word, or select the construction