What then _is_ the characteristic style of Demosthenes?--It is one which grew naturally, as did his defects (by which I mean faults of _omission_, in contradiction to such as are positive), from the composition of his audience. His audience, comprehending so much ignorance, and, above all, so much high-spirited impatience, being, in fact, always on the fret, kept the orator always on the fret. Hence arose short sentences; hence, the impossibility of the long, voluminous sweeps of beautiful rhythmus which we find in Cicero; hence, the animated form of apostrophe and crowded interrogations addressed to the audience. This gives, undoubtedly, a spirited and animated character to the style of Demosthenes; but it robs him of a large variety of structure applied to the logic, or the embellishment, or the music of his composition. His style is full of life, but not (like Cicero's) full of pomp and continuous grandeur. On the contrary, as the necessity of rousing attention, or of sustaining it, obliged the Attic orator to rely too much on the _personality_ of direct question to the audience, and to use brief sentences, so also the same impatient and fretful irritability forbade him to linger much upon an idea--to theorise, to speculate, or, generally, to quit the direct business path of the question then under consideration--no matter for what purpose of beauty, dignity, instruction, or even of _ultimate_ effect. In all things, the _immediate_--the instant--the _praesens praesentissimum_, was kept steadily before the eye of the Athenian orator, by the mere coercion of self-interest.