The Golden Age of American OratoryWhittemore, Niles, and Hall, 1857 - 425 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
action admiration American argument arms audience beauty Beecher Boston cadence called Chapin character Choate's Cicero color command composition Court crowd Daniel Webster Demosthenes diction Edmund Burke Edmund Kean Edward Everett effect eloquence energy England enthusiasm Everett expression eyes fancy Faneuil Hall feel fire Fisher Ames genius give glory grace grand hand hear heard hearer heart Henry Clay Henry Ward Beecher hour Hungary idea illustration imagination impression impulse intellectual jury Kossuth listened look Lord Lord Brougham manner ment mind native nature never occasion orator oratory passion Phillips Pinkney Pinkney's Platform play political rapture Republic rhetoric rhetorician rose Rufus Choate scene seemed Senate sentences sentiment soul speaker speaking speech splendor spoke stand stood style temperament theme thought tion tones true utterance voice Washington Webster Wendell Phillips whole William Pinkney words youth
Popular passages
Page 361 - I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate with and inseparable from British soil; which proclaims even to the stranger and sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation.
Page 162 - We shall have neutrality, soft and gentle, and defenceless in herself, yet clad in the panoply of her warlike neighbors, — with the frown of defiance upon her brow, and the smile of conciliation upon her lip, — with the spear of Achilles in one hand and a lying protestation of innocence and helplessness unfolded in the other. Nay, if I may be allowed so bold a figure in a mere legal discussion, we shall have the branch of olive entwined around the bolt of Jove, and Neutrality in the act of hurling...
Page 42 - A pillar of state : deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat, and public care : And princely counsel in his face yet shone, Majestic though in ruin : sage he stood, With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies ; his look Drew audience and attention still as night Or summer's noontide air...
Page 361 - ... no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery ; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust ; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty ; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible Genius of UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION ! [Here Mr.
Page 24 - On the other side up rose Belial, in act more graceful and humane : A fairer person lost not heaven ; he seemed For dignity composed, and high exploit: But all was false and hollow ; though his tongue Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear The better reason...
Page 361 - ... -,—no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible Genius of UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION.
Page 161 - Honors to endeavor a personification of this motley notion, and to forgive me for presuming to intimate, that if, after you have achieved it, you pronounce the notion to be correct, you will have gone a great way to prepare us, by the authority of your opinion, to receive as credible history, the worst parts of the mythology of the Pagan world. The Centaur and the Proteus of antiquity will be fabulous no longer.
Page 161 - ... and disciplined judgment, for which the gentlemen on the other side are eminently distinguished, can receive it otherwise than as the mere figment of the brain of some ingenious artificer of wonders. The idea is formed by a union of the most repulsive ingredients. It exists by an unexampled reconciliation of mortal antipathies. It exhibits such a rare discordia...
Page 105 - Washington appears, like the pole star in a clear sky, to direct the skilful statesman. His presidency will form an epoch, and be distinguished as the age of Washington. Already it assumes its high place in the political region. Like the milky way, it whitens along its allotted portion of the hemisphere. The latest generations of men will survey, through the telescope of history, the space where so many virtues blend their rays, and delight to separate them into groups and distinct virtues.
Page 161 - The boundaries which separate war from neutrality, are sometimes more faint and obscure than could be desired : but there never were any boundaries between them, or they must all have perished, if neutrality can, as this new and most licentious creed declares, surround itself upon the ocean with as much of hostile equipment as it can afford to purchase, if it can set forth upon the great common of the world, under the tutelary auspices, and armed with the power of one belligerent, bidding defiance...