be rich in knowledge, but they are seldom fit to communicate it. He that would gain a happy talent for the instruction of others must know how to disentangle and divide his thoughts if too many of them are ready to crowd into one paragraph: and let him rather speak three sentences distinctly and perspicuously, which the hearer receives at once with his ears and his soul, than crowd all the thoughts into one sentence, which the hearer has forgot before he can understand it.

K

ON FORENSIC ARGUMENTS AND DISPUTES

EEP this always upon your mind as an everlasting rule of conduct in your debates to find out truth, that a resolute design, or even a warm affectation of victory, is the bane of all real improvement and an effectual bar against the admission of the truth which you profess to seek. This works with a secret, but a powerful and mischievous influence in every dispute, unless we are much upon our guard. It appears in frequent conversation; every age, every sex, and each party of mankind are so fond of being in the right, that they know not how to renounce this unhappy prejudice, this vain love of victory.

When truth with bright evidence is ready to break in upon a disputant, and to overcome his objections and mistakes, how swift and ready is the mind to engage wit and fancy, craft and subtilty, to cloud and perplex and puzzle the truth, if possible! How eager is he to throw in some impertinent question to divert from the main subject! How swift to take hold of some occasional word, thereby to lead the discourse off from the point in hand! So much afraid is human nature of parting with its errors, and being overcome by truth. Just thus a hunted hare calls up all the shifts that nature hath taught her; she treads back her mazes, crosses and confounds her former track, and uses all possible methods to divert the scent, when she is in danger of being seized and taken. Let puss practice what nature teaches; but would one imagine that any rational being should take such pains to avoid truth, and to escape the improvement of its understanding?

When you come to a dispute in order to find out truth, do not presume that you are certainly possessed of it beforehand. Enter the debate with a sincere design of yielding to reason, on which side soever it appears. Use no subtle arts to cloud and entangle the question; hide not yourself in doubtful words and phrases; do not affect little shifts and subterfuges to avoid the force of an argument; take a generous pleasure to espy the first rising beams of truth, though it be on the side of your opponent; endeavor to remove the little obscurities that hang about it, and suffer and encourage it to break out into open and convincing light; that while your opponent perhaps may gain the better of your reasonings, yet you yourself may triumph over error; and I am sure that is a much more valuable acquisition and victory.

The forum was a public place in Rome, where orators and lawyers made their speeches before the proper judge in matters of property, or in criminal cases, to accuse or excuse, to complain or defend; thence all sorts of disputations in public assemblies or courts of justice, where several persons make their distinct speeches for or against any person or thing whatsoever, but more especially in civil matters, may come under the name of forensic disputes.

This is practiced not only in the courts of judicature, where a single person sits to judge of the truth or goodness of any cause, and to determine according to the weight of reasons on either side, but it is used also in political senates or parliaments, ecclesiastical synods, and assemblies of various kinds.

In these assemblies, generally one person is chosen chairman or moderator, not to give a determination to the controversy, but chiefly to keep the several speakers to the rules of order and decency in their conduct; but the final determination of the questions arises from the majority of opinions or votes in the assembly, according as they are or ought to be swayed by the superior weight of reason appearing in the several speeches that are made.

The method of proceeding is usually in some such form as this. The first person who speaks when the court is set opens the case either more briefly or at large, and proposes the case to the judge or the chairman, or moderator of the assembly, and gives his own reasons for his opinion in the case proposed.

This person is succeeded by one, or perhaps two, or several more, who paraphrase on the same subject, and argue on the same side of the question; they confirm what the first has spoken, and urge new reasons to enforce the same; then those who are of a different opinion stand up and make their several speeches in succession, opposing the cause which others have maintained, giving their reasons against it, and endeavoring to refute the arguments whereby the first speakers have supported it.

After this, one and another rise up to make their replies, to vindicate or to condemn, to establish or to confute what has been offered before on each side of the question; till at last, according to the rules, orders, or customs of the court or assembly, the controversy is decided, either by a single judge, or the suffrage of the assembly.

Where the question or matter in debate consists of several parts, after it is once opened by the first or second speaker, sometimes those who follow take each of them a particular part of the debate, according to their inclination or their prior agreement, and apply themselves to argue upon that single point only, that so the whole complexion of the debate may not be thrown into confusion by the variety of subjects, if every speaker should handle all the subjects of debate.

Before the final sentence of determination is given, it is usual to have the reasons and arguments, which have been offered on both sides, summed up and represented in a more compendious manner; and this is done either by the appointed judge of the court, or the chairman, or some noted person in the assembly, that so judgment may proceed upon the fullest survey of the whole subject, that, as far as possible in human affairs, nothing may be done contrary to truth or justice.

As this is a practice in which multitudes of gentlemen, besides those of the learned professions, may be engaged, at least, in their maturer years of life, so it would be a very proper and useful thing to introduce this custom into our academies, viz., to propose cases, and let the students debate them in a forensic manner in the presence of their tutors. There was something of this kind practiced by the Roman youth in their schools, in order to train them up for orators, both in the forum and in the senate. Perhaps Juvenal gives some hints of it when he says,

et nos

Consilium dedimus Syllæ, privatus ut altum
Dormiret

- Sat. I.

"Where with men-boys I strove to get renown,

Advising Sylla to a private gown,

That he might sleep the sounder."

ON GOOD AND BAD PREACHING

UR fathers formed their sermons much upon the model of doctrine, reason, and use; and perhaps there is no one method of more universal service and more easily applicable to most subjects, though it is not necessary or proper in every discourse; but the very names of doctrine and use are become nowadays such stale and old-fashioned things that a modish preacher is quite ashamed of them; nor can a modish hearer bear the sound of those syllables. A direct and distinct address to the consciences of saints and sinners must not be named or mentioned, though these terms are scriptural, lest it should be hissed out of the church like the garb of a Roundhead or a Puritan.

Some of our fathers have multiplied their particulars under one single head of discourse, and run up the tale of them to sixteen or seventeen. Culpable, indeed, and too numerous! But in opposition to this extreme, we are almost ashamed in our age to say thirdly; and all fourthlies and fifthlies are very unfashionable words.

Our fathers made too great account of the sciences of logic and metaphysics, and the formalities of definition and division, syllogism and method, when they brought them so often into the pulpit; but we hold those arts so much in contempt and defiance that we had rather talk a whole hour without order, and without edification, than be suspected of using logic or method in our discourses.

Some of our fathers neglected politeness perhaps too much, and indulged a coarseness of style, and a rough or awkward pronunciation; but we have such a value for elegancy, and so nice a taste for what we call polite, that we dare not spoil the cadence of a period to quote a text of Scripture in it, nor disturb the harmony of our sentences to number or to name the heads of our discourse. And for this reason I have heard it hinted that the name of Christ has been banished out of polite sermons, because it is a monosyllable of so many consonants and so harsh a sound.

But after all, our fathers, with all their defects, and with all their weaknesses, preached the Gospel of Christ to the sensible instruction of whole parishes, to the conversion of sinners from the errors of their way, and the salvation of multitudes of souls. But it has been the late complaint of Dr. Edwards and other worthy sons of the Established Church, that in too many pulpits nowadays there are only heard some smooth declamations, while the hearers that were ignorant of the Gospel abide still without knowledge, and the profane sinners are profane still. O that divine grace would descend, and reform what is amiss in all the sanctuaries of the nation!

All the above extracts are from "Improve

ment of the Mind."

LORD BOLINGBROKE

(HENRY ST. JOHN, VISCOUNT BOLINGBROKE)

(1678-1751)

ORD BOLINGBROKE was in his generation one of the most celebrated orators of England, but, unfortunately, not a single speech of his was reported, except in brief and summary references in the third person. He was born at Battersea, England, October 1st, 1678. Entering Parliament in 1701, he soon advanced to the highest dignities of the state. From 1710 to 1714 he was Secretary of State under Queen Anne, who created him Viscount Bolingbroke. On the accession of George I., he was suspected of intriguing with the Stuarts. Obliged to go into exile, he was attainted in his absence, but being allowed to return to England in 1723, he devoted himself largely to literature and left a number of works which rank as English classics. The best of these are probably his "Letters on the Study of History."

I

HISTORY AS A PREPARATION FOR SPEAKING AT THE BAR

MIGHT instance, in other professions, the obligations men lie under of applying themselves to certain parts of history, and I can hardly forbear doing it in that of the law; in its nature the noblest and most beneficial to mankind, in its abuse and debasement the most sordid and the most pernicious. A lawyer now is nothing more, I speak of ninety-nine in a hundred at least, to use some of Tully's words, "nisi 'leguleius quidam, cautus et acutus, præco actionum, cantor formularum, anceps syllabarum." But there have been lawyers that were orators, philosophers, historians; there have been Bacons and Clarendons, my lord. There will be none such any more, till in some better age true ambition or the love of fame prevail over avarice; and till men find leisure and encouragement to prepare themselves for the exercise of this profession, by climbing up to the vantage ground, so my Lord Bacon calls it, of science; instead of groveling all their lives below in a mean but gainful application to all the little arts of chicane. Till this happen, the profession of the law will scarce deserve to be ranked among the learned professions; and whenever it happens, one of the vantage grounds to which men must climb is metaphysical, and the other historical knowledge. They must pry into the secret recesses of the human heart, and become well acquainted with the whole moral world, that they may discover the abstract reason of all laws; and they must trace the laws of particular states, especially of their own, from the first rough sketches to the more perfect draughts; from the first causes or occasions that produced them, through all the effects good and bad that they produced. But I am running insensibly into a subject which would detain me too long from one that

relates more immediately to your lordship, and with which I intend to conclude this long letter.

The sum of what I have been saying is, that in free governments the public service is not confined to those whom the prince appoints to different posts in the administration under him; that there the care of the state is the care of multitudes; that many are called to it in a particular manner by their rank, and by other circumstances of their situation; and that even those whom the prince appoints are not only answerable to him, but like him, and before him to the nation, for their behavior in their several posts. It can never be impertinent nor ridiculous therefore in such a country, whatever it might be in the Abbot of St. Real's, which was Savoy, I think; or in Peru, under the Incas, where Garcilasso de la Vega says it was lawful for none but the nobility to study-for men of all degrees to instruct themselves in those affairs wherein they may be actors, or judges of those that act, or controllers of those that judge. On the contrary, it is incumbent on every man to instruct himself, as well as the means and opportunities he has permit, concerning the nature and interests of the government, and those rights and duties that belong to him, or to his superiors, or to his inferiors. This in general; but in particular, it is certain that the obligations under which we lie to serve our country increase in proportion to the ranks we hold, and the other circumstances of birth, fortune, and situation, that call us to this service; and, above all, to the talents which God has given us to perform it.

Letter V. From his essays on the

"Study of History."