The orator who
alternately enthralled and insulted a considerable audience at the Music
Hall, two nights ago, laid a decided claim both to accomplishment and to
democracy. He himself informed his hearers that he was a Democrat; and,
indeed, it was necessary that he should state his position, for it would
have been impossible to decide from the tone and quality of his opinions
whether he were a socialist, a reformer, a conservative, or an Irishman.
Perchance he has discovered the talisman by which it is possible for a man
to be all four, and yet to be a man, Furthermore, he claims to be an
orator. No one could listen to the manifold intonations of his voice, or
witness the declamatory evolutions of his body, without feeling an inward
conviction that the gentleman on the platform intended to present himself
to us as an orator.
"Lest we be accused of partiality and prejudice, we will at once state
that we believe it possible for a man to be singular in his manner and
quaint in his mode of phrasing, and yet to utter an opinion in some one
direction which, if neither novel nor interesting, nor even tenable, shall
yet have the one redeeming merit of representing a conceivable point of
view.
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