British greeting, that almost deafens his ears, while it opens his heart, makes him feel himself at once at home. Well, popular enthusiasm has toned down—the audience has reseated itself—a song of welcome has been sung, and there stands up a man of middle size and middle age. Lord Bacon deemed himself ancient when he was thirty-one—we moderns, in our excessive self-love, delude each other into the belief that we are middle-aged when we are anywhere between forty and sixty. In reality, a middle-aged man should be somewhere about thirty-five, and such we take to be Mr. Gough’s age. He is dressed in sober black—his hair is dark, and so is his face; but there is a muscular vigour in his frame for which we were not prepared. We should judge Gough has a large share of the true _elixir vitæ_—animal spirits. His voice is one of great power and pathos, and he speaks without an effort. The first sentence, as it falls gently and easily from his lips, tells us that Gough has that true oratorical power which neither money, nor industry, nor persevering study, can ever win. Like the poet, the orator must be born. You may take a man six feet high; he shall be good-looking, have a good voice, and speak English with a correct pronunciation—you shall write for that man a splendid speech—you shall have him taught elocution by Mr. Webster, and yet you shall no more make that man an orator than, to use a homely phrase, you can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Gough is an orator born. Pope tells us he “lisped in numbers,” and in his boyhood Gough must have had the true tones of the orator on his tongue. There was no effort—no fluster—all was easy and natural. He was speaking for the first time to a public meeting in his native land—speaking to thousands who had come with the highest expectations—who expected much and required much—speaking, by means of the press, to the whole British public. Under such circumstances, occasional nervousness would have been pardonable; but, from the first, Gough was perfectly self-possessed. There are some men who have prodigious advantages on account of appearance alone. We think it was Fox who said it was impossible for any one to be as wise as Thurlow looked. The great Lord Chatham was particularly favoured by nature in this respect. In our own time—in the case of Lord Denman—we have seen how much can be done by means of a portly presence and a stately air. Gough has nothing of this. He is just as plain a personage as George Dawson of Birmingham would be if he were to cut his hair and shave off his moustache; but, though we have named George Dawson, Gough does not speak like him, or any other living man. Gough is no servile copy, but a real original. We have no one in England we can compare him to. Our popular lecturers, such as George Dawson, Henry Vincent, George Thompson, are very different men. They have all a studied quaintness or a studied rhetoric. There is something artificial about them all. In