witness that he had declared his opinion above a week before, that the French king was certainly dead; to which he added, that, considering the late advices we had received from France, it was impossible that it could be otherwise. As he was laying these together, and dictating to his hearers with great authority, there came in a gentleman from Garraway's, who told us that there were several letters from France just come in, with advice that the king was in good health, and was gone out a-hunting the very morning the post came away; upon which the haber10 dasher stole off his hat that hung upon a wooden peg by him, and retired to his shop with great confusion. This intelligence put a stop to my travels, which I had prosecuted with so much satisfaction; not being a little pleased to hear so many different opinions upon so great an event, and to observe how naturally upon such a piece of news every one is apt to consider it with a regard to his particular interest and advantage.—L. No. 407. On Gesture, Action, and Delivery; neglect of them by public speakers in England. Most foreign writers who have given any character of the English nation, whatever vices they ascribe to it, allow in general that the people are naturally modest. It proceeds perhaps from 20 this our national virtue, that our orators are observed to make use of less gesture or action than those of other countries. Our preachers stand stock still in the pulpit, and will not so much as move a finger to set off the best sermons in the world. We meet with the same speaking statues at our bars, and in all public places of debate. Our words flow from us in a smooth continued stream, without those strainings of the voice, motions of the body, and majesty of the hand, which are so much celebrated in the orators of Greece and Rome. We can talk of life and death in cold blood, and keep our temper 30 in a discourse which turns upon everything that is dear to us. Though our zeal breaks out in the finest tropes and figures, it is not able to stir a limb about us. I have heard it observed more than once by those who have seen Italy, that an untravelled Englishman cannot relish all the beauties of Italian pictures, because the postures which are expressed in them are often such as are peculiar to that country. One who has not seen an Italian in the pulpit, will not know what to make of that noble gesture in Raphael's picture of St. Paul preaching at Athens, where the apostle is represented as lifting up both his arms, and pouring out the thunder of his rhetoric amidst an audience of Pagan philosophers. It is certain that proper gestures and vehement exertions of the voice cannot be too much studied by a public orator. o They are a kind of comment to what he utters, and enforce every thing he says with weak hearers better than the strongest argument he can make use of. They keep the audience awake, and fix their attention to what is delivered to them, at the same time that they shew the speaker is in earnest, and affected himself with what he so passionately recommends to others. Violent gesture and vociferation naturally shake the hearts of the ignorant, and fill them with a kind of religious horror. Nothing is more frequent than to see women weep and tremble at the sight of a moving preacher, though he is placed 0 quite out of their hearing; as in England we very frequently see people lulled asleep with solid and elaborate discourses of piety, who would be warmed and transported out of themselves by the bellowings and distortions of enthusiasm. If nonsense, when accompanied with such an emotion of voice and body, has such an influence on men's minds, what might we not expect from many of those admirable discourses which are printed in our tongue, were they delivered with a becoming fervour, and with the most agreeable graces of voice and gesture? We are told that the great Latin orator very much impaired his health by his laterum contentio, this vehemence of action, with which he used to deliver himself. The Greek orator was likewise so very famous for this particular in rhetoric, that one of his antagonists, whom he had banished from Athens, reading over the oration which had procured his banishment, and seeing his friends admire it, could not forbear asking them, if they were so much affected by the bare reading of it, how much more would they have been alarmed, had they heard him actually throwing out such a storm of eloquence n ? How cold and dead a figure in comparison of these two great men, does an orator often make at the British bar, holding up his head with the most insipid serenity, and stroking the sides of a long wig that reaches down to his middle? The truth of it is, there is often nothing more ridiculous than the gestures of an English speaker. You see some of them running their hands into their pockets as far as ever they can thrust them, and others looking with great attention on a piece of paper that has nothing written in it; you may see many a smart rhetorician turning his hat in his hands, 10 moulding it into several different cocks, examining sometimes the lining of it, and sometimes the button, during the whole course of his harangue. A deaf man would think he was cheapening a beaver, when perhaps he is talking of the fate of the British nation. I remember when I was a young man, and used to frequent Westminster-hall, there was a counsellor who never pleaded without a piece of pack-thread in his hand, which he used to twist about a thumb or a finger all the while he was speaking: the wags of those days used to call it the thread of his discourse, for he was not able to utter a 20 word without it. One of his clients, who was more merry than wise, stole it from him one day in the midst of his pleading; but he had better have let it alone, for he lost his cause by his jest. I have all along acknowledged myself to be a dumb man, and therefore may be thought a very improper person to give rules for oratory; but I believe every one will agree with me in this, that we ought either to lay aside all kinds of gesture, (which seems to be very suitable to the genius of our nation), or at least to make use of such only as are graceful and ex30 pressive.-0. No. 435. On Extravagances in Female Dress; hats, riding-coats; such fashions un-English. Nec duo sunt, at forma duplex, nec fæmina dici Most of the papers I give the public are written on subjects that never vary, but are for ever fixed and immutable. Of this kind are all my more serious essays and discourses; but FEMALE CAVALIERS. 297 there is another sort of speculations, which I consider as occasional papers, that take their rise from the folly, extravagance, and caprice of the present age. For I look upon myself as one set to watch the manners and behaviour of my countrymen and contemporaries, and to mark down every absurd fashion, ridiculous custom, or affected form of speech that makes its appearance in the world, during the course of these my speculations. The petticoat no sooner began to swell, but I observed its motions. The party patches had not time to 10 muster themselves before I detected them. I had intelligence of the coloured hood the very first time it appeared in a public assembly. I might here mention several other the like contingent subjects, upon which I have bestowed distinct papers. By this means I have so effectually quashed those irregularities which gave occasion to them, that I am afraid posterity will scarce have a sufficient idea of them to relish those discourses which were in no little vogue at the time when they were written. They will be apt to think that the fashions and customs I attacked were some fantastic conceits of my own, to and that their great grandmothers could not be so whimsical as I have represented them. For this reason, when I think on the figure my several volumes of speculations will make about a hundred years hence, I consider them as so many pieces of old plate, where the weight will be regarded, but the fashion lost. Among the several female extravagances I have already taken notice of, there is one which still keeps its ground, I mean that of the ladies who dress themselves in a hat and feather, a riding coat and a periwig, or at least tie up their hair in a bag or > ribbon, in imitation of the smart part of the opposite sex. As in my yesterday's paper1 I gave an account of the mixture of the two sexes in one commonwealth, I shall here take notice of this mixture of two sexes in one person. I have already shewn my dislike of this immodest custom more than once; but, in contempt of every thing I have hitherto said, I am informed that the highways about this great city are still very much infested with these female cavaliers. I remember, when I was at my friend Sir Roger de Coverley's about this time twelvemonth, an equestrian lady of this order 1 No. 434, omitted from this selection. appeared upon the plains which lay at a distance from his house. I was at that time walking in the fields with my old friend; and as his tenants ran out on every side to see so strange a sight, Sir Roger asked one of them who came by us what it was? To which the country fellow replied, ''Tis a gentlewoman, saving your worship's presence, in a coat and hat.' This produced a great deal of mirth at the knight's house, where we had a story at the same time of another of his tenants who, meeting this gentleman-like lady on the high-way, was asked by her Io whether that was Coverley Hall? The honest man seeing only the male part of the querist, replied, 'Yes, Sir'; but upon the second question, whether Sir Roger de Coverley was a married man, having dropped his eye upon the petticoat, he changed his note into 'No, Madam.' Had one of these hermaphrodites appeared in Juvenal's days, with what an indignation should we have seen her described by that excellent satirist! He would have represented her in a riding habit, as a greater monster than the Centaur. He would have called for sacrifices or purifying waters, to expiate the 20 appearance of such a prodigy. He would have invoked the shades of Portia or Lucretia, to see into what the Roman ladies had transformed themselves. For my own part, I am for treating the sex with greater tenderness, and have all along made use of the most gentle methods to bring them off from any little extravagance into which they are sometimes unwarily fallen: I think it however absolutely necessary to keep up the partition between the two sexes, and to take notice of the smallest encroachments which the one makes upon the other. I hope therefore that I shall 30 not hear any more complaints on this subject. I am sure my she-disciples who peruse these my daily lectures have profited but little by them, if they are capable of giving into such an amphibious dress. This I should not have mentioned, had I not lately met one of these my female readers in Hyde Park, who looked upon me with a masculine assurance, and cocked her hat full in my face. For my part, I have one general key to the behaviour of the fair sex; and when I see them singular in any part of their dress, I conclude it is not without some evil intention; and therefore 40 question not but the design of this strange fashion is to smite |