unfailing eloquence; but he was a poor speaker, and he did not often
rivet the attention of the audiences he addrest. This is why he cannot
establish a claim to inclusion among the supreme orators. Perhaps such a
claim could be made good before the cosmopolitan tribunal by two
speakers only, both belonging far back in the history of our
civilization--Demosthenes and Cicero. Both revealed the needful double
qualifications of the real orator, who shall hold his hearers in the
hollow of his hand while he is speaking, bending them to his will and
swaying them to the course he advocates, while the words he spoke then
must survive now for our delight in their style and in their substance,
a delight independent of the occasion of their utterance.

Others there are, no doubt, who were also possest of this double gift.
The French, for instance, might well urge the claim of Bossuet to be
raised to the same pinnacle; but the English and the Germans have not
yielded to the spell of his majestic periods. Perhaps we here in the
United States should not be extravagant if we set up also a claim for
Daniel Webster; but, however firm our faith, and however solid our
justification, we should be met with a silent stare from the French and
the Italians and the Spaniards, who might fail even to recognize
Webster's name. Demosthenes and Cicero alone would be hailed as the
supreme orators thruout the whole group of civilized nations.

There is close kinship between oratory and history; and as the supreme
orators are only two, one a Greek and the other a Roman, so the supreme
historians, however tightly we may restrict the selection, will include
a Greek, Thucydides, and a Roman, Tacitus. With them, and not inferior,
stands Gibbon; and perhaps these three, Thucydides, Tacitus, and Gibbon,
are all about whom there would be nowhere any dispute. But there is need
to note that Taine held Macaulay to be in no wise inferior to Gibbon.