"When the people are the master, tumults become national events. Never is the voice of reason consulted. Honours are sold to the most ambitious, authority yielded to the most seditious. These little sovereigns, made for a year, seeing the term of their power so near expiring, cause the most auspicious designs to miscarry, from the dread that others who follow may obtain the credit of them. As they have little share in the property which they command, they reap without hesitation in the harvest of the public, being well assured that every one will gladly pardon what they themselves hope to do on a future occasion. The worst of states is the popular state."[5] Corneille's celebrated picture of Attila, which he puts into the mouth of Octar, but which was really intended for Louis XIV., exhibits another example of the condensed style of oratory, perhaps still more applicable to a greater man than the Grande Monarque,-- "I have seen him, alike in peace and war, bear everywhere the air of the conqueror of the earth. Often have I beheld the fiercest nations disarm his wrath by their submission. I have seen all the pleasure of his heroic mind savouring of the grand and the magnificent, while his ceaseless foresight in the midst of peace had prepared the triumphs of war; his noble anxiety, which, amidst his very recreations prepared the success of future designs. Too happy the people against whom he does not turn his invincible arms! I have seen him, covered with smoke and dust, give the noblest example to his army--spread terror everywhere by his own danger--overturn walls by a single glance, and heap his own conquests on the broken pride of the haughtiest monarchs."[6] Napoleon said, if he had lived in his time, he would have made Corneille his first councillor of state. He was right: for his thoughts were more allied to the magnanimity of the hero than the pathos of the tragedian; and his language savoured more of the sonorous periods of the orator than the fire of the poet. Beside these specimens of French tragic eloquence, we gladly place the well-known speech of Brutus in _Julius Cæsar_, which proves that Shakspeare was endowed with the very soul of ancient oratory:--