Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z
History
Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z
Speeches, addresses, etc.
Now, Sir Frederic, I view that prospect with the gravest misgiving. What
is to become of our English landscape if it is to be simply a sanitary
or advertising appliance? [Laughter.] I appeal to my right honorable
friend the Chancellor of the Duchy [James Bryce], who sits opposite to
me. His whole heart is bound up in a proposition for obtaining free
access to the mountains of the Highlands. But what advantage will it be
to him, or to those whose case he so justly and eloquently espouses, if
at the top of Schiehallion, or any other mountain which you may have in
your mind's eye, the bewildered climber can only find an advertisement
of some remedy of the description of which I have mentioned [cheers], an
advertisement of a kind common, I am sorry to say, in the United
States--and I speak with reverence in the presence of the ambassador of
that great community--but it would be in the Highlands distressing to
the deer and infinitely perplexing even to the British tourist.
[Laughter and cheers.]
But I turned my eyes mentally from the land, and I said that, after all,
the great painter of the present may turn to the sea, and there at least
he is safe. There are effects on the ocean which no one can ruin, which
not even a pill can impair. [Laughter.] But I was informed in
confidence--it caused me some distress--that the same enterprising firm
which has placarded our rural recesses, has offered a mainsail free of
expense to every ship that will accept it, on condition that it bears
the same hideous legend upon it to which I have referred. [Laughter.]
Think, Mr. President, of the feelings of the illustrious Turner if he
returned to life to see the luggers and the coasting ships which he has
made so glorious in his paintings, converted into a simple vehicle for
the advertisement of a quack medicine--although I will not say "quack,"
because that is actionable [laughter]--I will say of a medicine of which
I do not know the properties. [Laughter.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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