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 reader
to put behind the recorded words the living force and power. In this
we shall fill a vacant place in literature. There are countless books
of poetry in which the gems of the great poets of the world have been
preserved, but oratory has not been thus favored. We have many
volumes which record the speeches of different orators, sometimes
connected with a biography of their lives and sometimes as independent
gatherings of speeches. We have also single books, like Goodrich's
'British Eloquence,' which give us partial selections of the great
orations. But this is intended to be universal in its reach, a
complete encyclopedia of oratory. The purpose is to present the best
efforts of the world's greatest orators in all ages; and with this
purpose kept in view as the matter of primary importance, to
supplement the great orations with others that are representative and
historically important--especially with those having a fundamental
connection with the most important events in the development of
Anglo-Saxon civilization. The greatest attention has been given to
the representative orators of England and America, so that the work
includes all that is most famous or most necessary to be known in the
oratory of the Anglo-Saxon race. Wherever possible, addresses have