of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both poles. We know that while some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness of their toils.
A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.
Passages of this sort are frequent in the speech, and it is not difficult to make the pupils not only recognize them, but appreciate the quality which distinguishes them from the matter-of-fact statements of figures, statistics, or other necessary information.
A step further is to make the class see how the imagination shows in a passage like the famous sentence:
I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.
These dozen or so words may profitably be made the subject for an entire lesson, and if this seem a proportionately extravagant amount of time to give to a single line, I can only say that to do one thing thoroughly is not only better than to do a score superficially, but in the long run it is economy of time as well. If the class can be led to discuss the meaning of the phrase, and the principles upon which Burke rested the argument which is behind this superb proposition, not only will the hour have been well
spent in developing the ideas of the students, but the whole oration will be wonderfully illuminated. When to this is added an adequate understanding of the imaginative grasp which seizes the personality of a whole nation, perceives its majesty, its sovereignty, and the impossibility of arraigning it before the bar like a criminal, the student is getting the best that the study of the oration can give him.
Written work should be kept within the limits of the capability of the individual pupil to think intelligently. Perhaps the best means of enforcing upon a class the vigor of Burke's style at once and the completeness of the oration as a whole is that of requiring from each an expression, as clear and as exact as possible, of just what the orator wished to effect, and an estimate, as critical as the pupil is capable of making, of how the means employed were especially adapted to carry out his purpose. Such work will be useless if the teacher does the reasoning, but much may be elicited by skilful leading in recitation, and after the scholars have done all that they can do, the instructor may add his comment.
After the "Speech on Conciliation" may reasonably come, if the required list of readings is being followed, the "Sir Roger de Coverley Papers." Here one deals with work more deliberately imaginative. Preparation for taking up these essays should begin with a brief account of the "Spectator" and of the circumstances under which they were written. The less elaborate this is the better, so long as it serves