In the speech _For the Manilian Law_ Cicero addresses the assembled Roman people on a political question of immediate and great importance. His tone is exalted and earnest, his eloquence stirring and inspiring. The same qualities are found in all the political orations, and in many of the private speeches, delivered in cases involving the life of the accused or Cicero’s own character. [Sidenote: Gentler and more graceful style.] In speeches dealing with less urgent matters the tone is more gentle and the effect more graceful. Quotations from the poets are numerous, and the rhythmical structure of the sentences is more marked than in the stirring and excited passages of the political harangues. The oration _For the Poet Archias_ is the best example of Cicero’s less stirring and more graceful oratory. After establishing by a brief statement the fact that Archias had a valid claim to the citizenship, Cicero devotes the remainder of his speech to the praise of literary pursuits: These studies nourish youth, delight old age, adorn prosperity, furnish a refuge and solace in adversity, gladden us at home, are no hindrance abroad, spend the nights with us, are with us in our foreign travels, and at our country seats.[43] In this oration Cicero appears as the man of letters whose literary interest was not bounded by the career of the politician or the orator, and who, in spite of political successes and disappointments, was to achieve greater fame as an author than any other writer of Latin prose. [Sidenote: Direct address.] Few passages are more striking or characteristic in the orations of Cicero than those in which he turns to address directly either the opposing party in the case or his advocate. In these passages, which vary in length from a brief exclamation to an elaborate invective, the stinging words shoot forth with quick and passionate directness. One of the longer passages of this kind, in which additional force is lent to the words by the suggestion that they are uttered by the culprit’s own father, is the following: