102 Rev. J. Wills on Mr. Stewart's Explanation of 



he places himself in each successive point, a wide variety of scenic combinations 

 spontaneously arise on his mental vision, each of them filled with different succes- 

 sions of locality. Strictly analogous is the intellectual horizon of the practised 

 professional speaker, within the range and compass of his habitual associations. 

 The analogy may be further pursued even in the failures to which either is liable, 

 when his thoughts attempt to travel out of the accustomed range : though he may 

 possess a general knowledge of his line of road, the traveller must lose the chang- 

 ing combinations, the side views, and the shifting backgrounds ; while the orator, 

 in like manner, must want the varied suggestions, and the rapid transitions, so ex- 

 cellently described by Lord Brougham. 



His language, supplied as language is by habitual combination, will become 

 less appropriate, flowing, and effective ; and should he not have the good sense 

 to perceive quickly the really narrow limit of his power, and take due care to 

 keep within its scope, he will soon become embarrassed by an effort to maintain 

 his usual superiority. 



There is another not unfamiliar affection to which unaccustomed speakers 

 are occasionally subject, which may be considered to illustrate the elementary 

 process in a different way. When a young speaker, in his great and earnest 

 anxiety, instead of yielding his mind to the spontaneous processes already de- 

 scribed, begins to exert an enforced voluntary effort, and to look for that lan- 

 guage in one way which should be obtained in another ; a total embarrassment 

 often seizes him, he begins to look for the path on which he should be moving, 

 and he can see nothing more than the preconceived outline, which it had been his 

 design to clothe variously in effective language, and with all the popular artifices 

 of rhetoric. 



In thus dwelling on the example offered in this section, I cannot but observe, 

 that I could have selected others far more illustrative of the argument; but I have 

 thought it fairest and most satisfactory to pursue the subject as it has been argued 

 by Mr. Stewart and others who have fallen into his views. 



