4 o 
English and American Physique 3 [January, 
people have that balance and harmony of temperament that 
always breeds well. Large families are commanded by un- 
written law, and this little island has become the spawning- 
ground of empires. 
The American speaks more rapidly than the Central 
European ; he makes more muscular movements of the 
larynx in a minute ; in his nervousness he clips words, arti- 
culating indistinctly, and allowing his voice to fall at the 
end of a sentence, sometimes so as to be inaudible. The 
Englishman speaks more slowly, enunciates more clearly, 
says fewer words to a minute, and, as is well known, keeps 
the voice up where an American would let it fall. The 
American says more than the Englishwoman, is easier and 
more alert for converse, quicker to seize a delicate irony, 
more facile to respond to a suggestion, than the English 
lady in the same walk of life. I believe, also, that the 
English, Germans, and Swiss cannot hear as many words 
in a minute as Americans, the auditory nerve and the brain 
behind it being incapable of receiving and co-ordinating as 
many sounds in a given time. Hence it is necessary to 
speak to them with more calmness and clearness, whatever 
language may be employed. 
Relation of American Oratory to Climate . 
American oratory is in part the product of American 
climate. For success in the loftier phases of oratory, fine- 
ness of organisation, a touch of the nervous diathesis is 
essential : the masters in the oratorical art are always 
nervous : the same susceptibility that makes them eloquent, 
subtile, and persuasive, causes them to be timid, distrustful, 
delicate, and sometimes cowardly. We blame Cicero for 
the pusillanimity of his old age, and for his terror in the 
presence of death, and praise him for his spirit and force 
and grace in the presence of audiences, not thinking that 
the two opposite modes of conduct flowed from a single 
source. A nature wholly coarse and hard, with no thread 
or vein of nerve-sensitiveness, must always fail in the higher 
realms of the oratoric art, just as it must fail in all arts. 
Jefferson, after afting his Rip Van Winkle for years, even 
now enters upon the stage at each performance with a cer- 
tain anxiety lest he fail ; and of more than one orator has 
it been affirmed that he always dreaded to speak. “ Give 
me an army of cowards,” said Wellington ; “ it is the man 
who turns pale in the face of the enemy that will fight to 
