Now, what young priest, even the most brilliant of his class,
going on the mission can pretend to the hundredth part of the
advantages that enabled Manning to dispense with the written
page? Therefore, to conclude that because he, under such
privileged circumstances, succeeded, you can do the same under a
very different set of conditions, is to ignore the hard logic of
facts and pay a poor compliment to your reason.

[Side note: Father Burke and O'Connell]

Then, we are confronted not with opinions but names--the two
names that will stand for all time in the forefront of Irish
orators are those of O'Connell and Father Burke. O'Connell wrote
but one speech--his first. The orations delivered by Father Burke
in America, by which he achieved a European reputation, were not
written. What, then, it is asked, becomes of the advocacy of the
written sermon? The answer to this argument is evident. If the
question is reduced to one of great names, into the other side of
the scales may be thrown not two but dozens of the most
illustrious men who not only wrote, but _became famous mainly
because they wrote_.

Passing by the great pagan orators, Cicero and Demosthenes, and
the Doctors of the Church, Saints Augustine, John Chrysostom,
&c.--these all wrote, polished and elaborated--we come to the
four names that have flung a deathless glory around the French
pulpit, that created a golden era of sacred eloquence which has
never been surpassed: Bourdaloue, Bossuet, Massillon, and
Fenelon. I will not labour the argument by showing how much of