380 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
Definitions of oratory and of eloquence were attempted in 
distinction from the science of rhetoric and the practice of 
declamation. 
The causes of the unrivalled eloquence of Demosthenes, in other 
words, of his power to convince and persuade, were found to con- 
sist in the following elements : 
1. His complete mastery of the subject on which he addressed 
the Athenian assemblies. 
2. The orderly and methodical arrangement of his matter. 
3. His wonderful power, in which perhaps he was never sur- 
passed, of putting things so as to bring them home with the 
greatest possible clearness and force to the common mind. 
4, His wonderful command of the most flexible, copious, and 
expressive language ever spoken among men—the ancient Greek. 
5. The noble and ardent patriotism which impelled him to put 
forth all his powers to maintain the liberties of his country. His 
oratory after all was only a means to an end, and that end the 
highest of which an ancient Athenian could conceive. 
In conclusion, the lecturer expressed his regret that the Attic 
orators in general, and Demosthenes in particular, were so little 
read in our colleges and universities. He challenged the learned 
President to mention an instance in which an oration of Demades, 
Antiphon, or Isocrates had ever been selected as a Greek subject 
for examination in any school or college, and concluded with the 
words, Let our youth learn, if you please, the secret of harmony 
from Homer, ‘whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own,” 
“thence what the lofty, grave tragedians taught in chorus or 
iambic.” But let them 
“Thence to the famous orators repair, 
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence 
Wielded at will that fierce democracy, 
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece, 
To Macedon and Artaxerxes’ throne.” 
