Phillips held his place the longest, beginning lyceum work about 1845, and continuing it to his death nearly forty years later. Gough was the most supremely popular--not the greatest of the three intellectually, but most level to the largest number of the plain people. Beecher came parallel with him and had a higher influence. His position during and after the Civil War reached the altitude of world influence. His command of the Plymouth pulpit was the most enormous mental leverage. Theodore Parker said of it as early as 1856, that its “sounding board was the Rocky Mountains”--the auditorium therefore was the continent. Beecher touched the hearts of men; Gough held to the fear of the effects of wrong-doing; Phillips, through the intellect, reached the conscience of his generation. He was a name in Great Britain, a power in the Northern States. Beecher was a power on both sides of the ocean, a person beloved on all sides. Who shall name other men who have filled the last half of the century with such enduring recognition? [Illustration: JOHN B. GOUGH.] John B. Gough deserves the title of King of the Lecture World, if popularity be made the sole test, and only Mr. Beecher and Wendell Phillips had any claim to contest the title with him, if eloquence--the power to hold and charm audiences--be made the test. Mr. Gough was a more popular lecturer for a longer term of years than any other favorite of the lyceums. He was a born orator, with great dramatic power. Men of greater culture but less natural ability used to be fond of attributing his success to the supposed fact that he was the “evangelical comedian,” that the unco’ good, whose religious prejudices would not suffer them to go to the theatre, found a substitute in listening to the comic stories and the dramatic delivery of Gough.