"Words that breathed fire are ashes on the page," and the utterances that have stirred a thousand hearts in the Senates of old days too often leave the modern reader cold and unmoved. We miss the inflections of a magical voice, the stimulating plaudits of friends or followers, the magnetism that can only be communicated by a personal intercourse between a speaker and his audience. The reading of old speeches is, as Lord Rosebery has observed, a dreary and reluctant pilgrimage which few willingly undertake. It supplies, as a rule, but a poor explanation of the effect which the eloquence of past orators produced upon their contemporaries. It is like attending an undress rehearsal of a play in an empty theatre on a cold winter's afternoon. The glamour of costume, of limelight, is lacking; the atmosphere of appreciation, excitement, enthusiasm, is absent. The difference between the spoken and the published oration has been aptly defined as the difference between some magnificent temple laid open to the studious contemplation of a solitary visitant, and the same edifice beheld amidst the fullest accompaniments of sacrificial movement and splendour, thronged with adoring crowds, and resounding with solemn harmonies.[315] [315] "Quarterly Review," vol. xxii. p. 496. It has often been affirmed that no speech in Parliament has ever resulted in the winning of a division. Byron declared that "not Cicero himself, nor probably the Messiah, could have altered the vote of a single lord of the Bedchamber or Bishop."[316] There are, however, one or two instances of orations which have been so moving in their appeal that they may claim to be exceptions to this rule. Plunket's famous speech in the debate on Grattan's motion for Catholic Emancipation in 1807 is said to have gained many votes. Macaulay won the support of several opponents by an eloquent speech on the second reading of Lord Mahon's Copyright Bill in 1842, and, on a Bill introduced by Lord Hotham to exclude certain persons holding offices from the House of Commons, actually caused the anticipated majority to be reversed. [316] Moore's "Life of Byron," 185.