instance of the power it could exert is to be found in a speech made
in 1883, during one of the tiresome debates occasioned by the
refusal of the Tory party and of some timorous Liberals to allow Mr.
Bradlaugh to be sworn as a member of the House of Commons. This
speech produced a profound impression on those who heard it, an
impression which its perusal to-day fails to explain. That
impression was chiefly due to the grave and reverent tone in which
he delivered some sentences stating the view that it is not our
belief in the bare existence of a Deity, but the realizing of him as
being also a Providence ruling the world, that is of moral value and
significance, and was due in particular to the lofty dignity with
which he declaimed six lines of Lucretius, setting forth the
Epicurean view of the gods as unconcerned with mankind. There were
probably not ten men in the House of Commons who could follow the
sense of the lines so as to appreciate their bearing on his
argument. But these stately and sonorous hexameters--hexameters
that seemed to have lived on through nineteen centuries to find
their application from the lips of an orator to-day; the sense of
remoteness in the strange language and the far-off heathen origin;
the deep and moving note in the speaker's voice, thrilled the
imagination of the audience and held it spellbound, lifting for a
moment the whole subject of debate into a region far above party
conflicts. Spoken by any one else, the passage culminating in these
Lucretian lines might have produced little effect. It was the voice
and manner, above all the voice, with its marvelous modulations,
that made the speech majestic.

Yet one must not forget to add that with him, as with some other
famous statesmen, the impression made by a speech was in a measure
due to the admiring curiosity and wonder which his personality