It is said that the great mastery O'Connell exercised over the people mainly sprang from the passionate earnestness of his conviction. The nation's heart seemed merged into his own. He stood forth her living, breathing symbol. When he spoke it was Ireland spoke. Her passions rocked his soul; her humour flashed from his eye; her scorn gleamed in his glances, and her sobs choked his utterance. Ah! if preachers were as filled with the Spirit of Christ as this man was with the spirit of patriotism, what a revolution we might witness! You ask--"How then do actors move people since there can be no enthusiasm when men know they simulate unreal people and unreal passions?" I answer, that the first step towards becoming a great actor is to fling aside that knowledge and hand yourself over the willing victim of a delusion. You must not _act_ but _live_ your part: persuade yourself that you are the character you personate: surrender your heart to be torn by real passions and wrung by real sorrows. The answer is well known which a celebrated actor once gave to a divine:--"How is it that you so move people by fiction and our preachers fail to move them by truth?" "Sir, we speak fiction as if it were fact, and your preachers speak truth as if it were fiction." Here we leave our preacher facing his audience and filled with but one idea: I have a great message to deliver and I will lay hold of every means to send that message home; voice, passion, style, gesture, these are my arms, and with these I hope to conquer. [Side note: Parting glance at the preacher's mission] In parting we take a glance at the preacher's exalted mission, and we may well ask: What in the whole range of human occupations does this world hold worthy of being compared to it? The battle-field, it is true, has its glories, but it has its horrors also. Who can paint the pride with which Napoleon saw the triumph of his skill crush two Emperors at Austerlitz or the rapture with which he beheld the trophies of great kingdoms at his feet? The fatigues of winter marches were forgotten when in the fiery flashes of his veterans' eyes he read his own renown, while their applauding shouts fell like music on his ears. But blood soils the proudest trophies of war, and across the perspective of victory the spectres of murdered men will stalk. Human eloquence, too, has its conquests, the purest, the most beautiful in the natural order. How the pride flush heightens on the orator's cheek as he watches the crusts of prejudice melt and hostile hearts surrender; when he marks the bated breath and the hushed silence attesting his victory more eloquently than the stormiest applause! He sees the varied moods of his own soul mirrored in the faces around him, as he summons forth what spirit he lists: tears or laughter, murmurs or applause answer to his call.