moderns approach the ancients in any of the arts here in question,
they approach them nearest in The Art of Painting, The human mind can
with difficulty conceive any thing more exalted, than "The Last
Judgment" of Michael Angelo, and "The Transfiguration" of Raphael.
What can be more animated than Raphael's "Paul preaching at Athens?"
What more tender and delicate than Mary holding the child Jesus, in
his famous "Holy Family?" What more graceful than "The Aurora" of
Guido? What more deeply moving than "The Massacre of the Innocents" by
Le Brun?

But no modern Orator can dare to enter the lists with Demosthenes and
Tully. We have discourses, indeed, that may be admired, for their
perspicuity, purity, and elegance; but can produce none that abound in
a sublime which whirls away the auditor like a mighty torrent, and
pierces the inmost recesses of his heart like a flash of lightning;
which irresistibly and instantaneously convinces, without leaving, him
leisure to weigh the motives of conviction. The sermons of Bourdaloue,
the funeral orations of Bossuet, particularly that on the death of
Henrietta, and the pleadings of Pelisson, for his disgraced patron
Fouquet, are the only pieces of eloquence I can recollect, that bear
any resemblance to the Greek or Roman orator; for in England we have
been particularly unfortunate in our attempts to be eloquent, whether
in parliament, in the pulpit, or at the bar. If it be urged, that the
nature of modern politics and laws excludes the pathetic and the
sublime, and confines the speaker to a cold argumentative method, and
a dull detail of proof and dry matters of fact; yet, surely, the
Religion of the moderns abounds in topics so incomparably noble and
exalted as might kindle the flames of genuine oratory in the most
frigid and barren genius much more might this success be reasonably
expected from such geniuses as Britain can enumerate; yet no piece of