ORATORS PAST AND PRESENT.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1007, 23 December 1910, Page 6

ORATORS PAST AND PRESENT.

OUR MODERN DECADENCE. Before a good audience in Warrender Park TJ.F. Church, Edinburgh, recently Mr. Charles Lyell, M.P. for South Edinburgh, in the course of a lecture, entitled "Speeches and Speakers, Past and Present," said there was no doubt that oratory was a very old institution in the world's history, and had played an extraordinary part in- the moulding of that history. .When they attempted a comparison of the past with the present they were driven to the conclusion that oratory, at all events in most of its branches was a dead or- a dying art. The age that produced simultaneously such mon as Pitt, Fox, Burke, Sheridan, and Grattan had claims to be considered as the age of oratory in -this country, but to compare the oratory of such men with that of modern speakers was impossible. Tliey all know hdw some voices got on their nerves; with others to listen to thorn was a physical delight. He had always thought one of Mr. Chamberlain's greatest ansets as a political force was his melodious voice; even when saying the nastiest things it was a pleasure to . listen to it, and tho very tones invoked sympathetic consideration for oVery contentious argument produced. Mr. Gladstone, he said, was to the end of his life a great orator' perhaps tho last of the great orators! What lifted Mr. Gladstone out of the level | ranks of good debaters and fine speakers was his great moral force,. his apoeal to conscience. '