A key may be found to the causes of this remarkable superiority in ancient eloquence, notwithstanding the comparatively limited extent of the materials of which they had the disposal, in the very qualities in which the ancient orators stand pre-eminent. It is the exquisite taste and abbreviated force of their expression which renders them unrivalled. In reading their speeches, we are perpetually tempted to shut the book even in the most interesting passages, to reflect on the inimitable brevity and beauty of the language. It is a mistake to say this is owing to the construction of the Greek and Roman languages, to the absence of auxiliary verbs, and the possibility of combining expression, as in modern German, so as to convey a complex idea in a single word. Undoubtedly that is true; but who made the ancient languages at once so copious and condensed? It was the ancients themselves who did this. It was they who moulded their tongues into so brief and expressive a form, and, in the course of their progressive formation through successive centuries, rendered them daily more brief and more comprehensive. It was the men who made the language--not the language the men. It was their burning thoughts which created such energetic expressions, as if to let loose at once the pent-up fires of the soul. Those who assert the reverse fall into the same error as the philosophers who ascribe the character of the Anglo-Saxons to their institutions, when, in truth, their institutions are owing to their character. The main causes to which the extraordinary perfection of ancient oratory are to be ascribed, are the great pains which were bestowed on the education of the higher classes in this most difficult art, and the practice of preparing nearly all their finest orations before delivery. It will sound strange in modern ears to assign these as the causes of this undoubted superiority, when the practice with them is in both particulars directly the reverse; but a very little consideration must convince every reasonable mind that it is to these that it is to be ascribed.