These speeches, when they do not produce nausea, which they are very apt to do, or at least a disagreeable feeling of squeamishness, are powerful soporifics, and, possessing this quality, would be rather grateful than otherwise, if one were in bed when within hearing of them; but unhappily this pleasant effect is neutralised by the roaring and stamping that accompanies their delivery: so that this sort of orator is in reality a positive nuisance. The oratorical genius is nearly, if not every bit, as conceited as the poetical genius. He has the same provoking, self-satisfied simper, and is in other respects a still greater bore, for his forensic habits and practices, without furnishing him with a single additional idea, have given him an unhappy fluency of speech, which he himself mistakes for eloquence, and with which he mercilessly inundates every one whom he can get beneath the spout of his oratorical pump. Every thing he says to you is said in set phrase--in the stiff, formal, affected language of the debating society. His remarks on the most ordinary subjects are all regular built speeches--dull, long-winded, prosy things, smelling strong of the forum. We know a speculative or debating society man the moment he opens his mouth. We know him by his studied, prolix phraseology, and much, much do we dread him, for of all earthly bores he is the most intolerable. To be obliged to listen to his maudlin philosophy and misty metaphysics--for they are all to a man philosophers or metaphysicians--is about one of the most distressing inflictions we know. The next genius on our list is the Universal Genius, perhaps the most amusing of the whole fraternity. This gentleman, although perfectly satisfied that he is a genius, and a very great genius too, does not know himself precisely in what he excels. He has no definite ideas on the subject, and in this respect is rather at a loss. But he enjoys a delightful consciousness of a capacity that would enable him to surpass in anything to which he might choose to devote himself, and that in fact he does surpass in everything. His pretensions therefore rest on a very broad basis, and embrace all human attainments. He is in short a universal genius. This gentleman is very apt to assume peculiarities in dress and exterior appearance, to wear odd things in an odd way, and to sport a few eccentricities because he has heard or imagines that all geniuses are eccentric. These are common and favourite expedients with the would-be genius, who moreover frequently adds dissipation to his distinguishing characteristics, it being a pretty general notion that genius is drunken, and of a wild and irregular life.