Future. It is actually the thing of the
Present and its urgencies, therefore popular, pouring forth the pure waters of
moderation, strong in their copiousness. Delicious and rapturous effects are to
be produced in the flood of a Liberal oration by a chance infusion of the
fierier spirit, a flavour of Radicalism. That is the thing to set an audience
bounding and quirking. Whereas if you commence by tilting a Triton pitcher full
of the neat liquor upon them, you have to resort to the natural element for the
orator's art of variation, you are diluted - and that 's bathos, to quote Mr.
Timothy. It was a fine piece of discernment in him. Let Liberalism be your
feast, Radicalism your spice. And now and then, off and on, for a change, for
diversion, for a new emotion, just for half an hour or so - now and then the
Sunday coat of Toryism will give you an air. You have only to complain of the
fit, to release your shoulders in a trice. Mr. Timothy felt for his art as poets
do for theirs, and considered what was best adapted to speaking, purely to
speaking. Upon no creature did he look with such contempt as upon Dr. Shrapnel,
whose loose disjunct audiences he was conscious he could, giving the doctor any
start he liked, whirl away from him and have compact, enchained, at his first
flourish; yea, though they were composed of the poor man, with a stomach for the
political distillery fit to drain relishingly every private bogside or
mountain-side tap in old Ireland in its best days - the illicit, you understand.
    Further, to quote Mr. Timothy's points of view, the Radical orator has but
two notes, and one is the drawling pathetic, and the other is the ultra-furious;
and the effect of the former we liken to the English working man's wife's
hob-set queasy brew of well-meant villany, that she calls by the innocent name
of tea; and the latter is to be blown, asks to be blown, and never should be
blown without at least seeming to be blown, with an accompaniment of a house on
fire. Sir, we must adapt ourselves to our times. Perhaps a spark or two does
lurk about our house, but we have vigilant watchmen in plenty, and the house has
been pretty fairly insured. Shrieking in it is an annoyance to the inmates,
nonsensical; weeping is a sickly business. The times are against Radicalism to
the full as much as great oratory is