It is evident from these considerations, as well as the intrinsic beauties which the great masters of the art exhibit, that oratory in ancient times was regarded as one of the _Fine Arts_. It was considered not merely as the means of winning the favour, of convincing the judgment, or securing the suffrages of the judges, but of moving the affections, rousing the feelings, and elevating the mind. Quintilian mentions the various definitions of the art of oratory which had been invented by the rhetorical writers of antiquity, and he inclines to that of Cicero, who held that it was the art of speaking "_apte ad persuadendum_." This was its end, its aim; and undoubtedly it was so: but the _modes of persuasion_--the methods of influencing the judgment or moving the affections--were as various as the channels by which the intellect may be determined, the feelings roused, or the heart touched. Not less than poetry, painting, or statuary, they classed oratory among the fine arts; and, indeed, they placed it at the head of them all, because it embraced all their influences, and retouched, as it were, by allusion, all the chords which they had previously caused to vibrate. The surprising force with which they did this, considering the comparatively limited stock of ideas, knowledge, and imagery which was at their disposal, compared to what obtains in modern times, affords the most decisive proof of the great attention they had bestowed on the principles of the art, and the perfection to which they had brought the means of influencing the mind--not only by the force of reason, or the conceptions of genius, but by all the subordinate methods by which their effect in delivery was to be augmented. With them the object of oratory was not merely to persuade the understanding, but "To wake the soul by tender strokes of art, To move the passions, and to melt the heart."