From the “Boston Advertiser.”
The lamented death of Mr. H. W. Grady affords a fit occasion for saying that oratory is not one of “the lost arts.” A great deal is said from time to time about the decadence of oratory as caused by the competition of the press. We are told that public address is held in slight esteem because the public prints are much more accessible and equally interesting. It is said that this operates in two ways, that the man who has something to say will always prefer to write rather than speak, because the printed page reaches tens of thousands, while the human voice can at most be heard by a few hundreds, and that not many people will take the trouble to attend a lecture when they can read discussions of the same subject by the lecturer himself, or others equally competent, without stirring from the evening lamp or exchanging slippers for boots. But there is a great deal of fallacy in such arguments. The press is the ally, not the supplanter of the platform. The functions of the two are so distinct that they cannot clash, yet so related that they are mutually helpful. Oratory is very much more than the vocal utterance, of fitting words. One of the ancients defined the three requisites of an orator as first, action; second, action; and third, action. If by action is meant all that accompanies speech, as gesture, emphasis, intonation, variety in time, and those subtle expressions that come through the flushing cheek and the gleaming eye, the enumeration was complete. Mr. Grady spoke with his lips not only, but with every form and feature of his bodily presence. Such oratory as his, and such as that of the man whose lecture on “The Lost Arts” proved that oratory is not one of them, will never be out of date while human nature remains what it is. There is, indeed, one class of public speakers whose occupation the press has nearly taken away. They are the “orators,” falsely so called, whose speech is full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Cold type is fatal to their pretensions.
THE LESSON OF MR. GRADY’S LIFE.
From the “Philadelphia Times.”
Henry W. Grady is dead, but the lesson of his life will live and bear fruits for years to come. The young men of the South will not fail to note that the public journals of every faith in the North have discussed his life and death in the sincerest sympathy, and that not only his ability but his candor and courage have elicited universal commendation. Had Mr. Grady been anything less than a sincere Southerner in sympathy and conviction, he could have commanded the regulation praise of party organs in political conflicts, but he would have died little regretted in either section. He was a true son of the South; faithful to its interests, to its convictions, to its traditions; and he proved how plain was the way for the honest Southerner to be an honest patriot and a devoted supporter of the Union.
There are scores of men in the South, or who have lived there, and who have filled the highest public trusts within the gifts of their States, without commanding the sympathy or respect of any section of the country. Of the South, they were not in sympathy with their people or interests, and they have played their brief and accidental parts only to be forgotten when their work was done. They did not speak for the South; they were instruments of discord rather than of tranquility, and they left no impress upon the convictions or pulsations of either section.
But Mr. Grady was a true, able, candid, courageous son of the South, and he was as much respected under the shadows of Bunker Hill as in Georgia. Sincerely Southern in every sympathy, he was welcomed North and South as a patriot; and long after the Mahones and the Chalmers shall have been charitably forgotten, the name of Grady will be fresh in the greenest memories of the whole people of the country.