And this is a sober truth, for, to reveal the statesman, perspective is required.

Pericles built and maintained a State, and he did it, as every statesman must, by recognizing and binding to him ability. It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test. While Pericles lived, there also lived AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Pythagoras, Socrates, Herodotus, Zeno, Hippocrates, Pindar, Empedocles and Democritus. Such a galaxy of stars has never been seen before nor since--unless we have it now--and Pericles was their one central sun.

Pericles was great in many ways--great as an orator, musician, philosopher, politician, financier, and great and wise as a practical leader. Lovers of beauty are apt to be dreamers, but this man had the ability to plan, devise, lay out work and carry it through to a successful conclusion. He infused others with his own animation, and managed to set a whole cityful of lazy people building a temple grander far in its rich simplicity than the world had ever seen. By his masterly eloquence and the magic of his presence, Pericles infused the Greeks with a passion for beauty and a desire to create. And no man can inspire others with the desire to create who has not taken sacred fire from the altar of the gods. The creative genius is the highest gift vouchsafed to man, and wherein man is likest God. The desire to create does not burn the heart of the serf, and only free people can respond to the greatest power ever given to any First Citizen.

In beautifying the city there was a necessity for workers in stone, brass, iron, ivory, gold, silver and wood. Six thousand of the citizens were under daily pay as jurors, to be called upon if their services were needed; most of the other male adults were soldiers. Through the genius of Pericles and his generals these men were set to work as masons, carpenters, braziers, goldsmiths, painters and sculptors. Talent was discovered where before it was supposed there was none; music found a voice; playwriters discovered actors; actors found an audience; and philosophy had a hearing. A theater was built, carved almost out of solid stone, that seated ten thousand people, and on the stage there was often heard a chorus of a thousand voices. Physical culture developed the perfect body so that the Greek forms of that time are today the despair of the human race. The recognition of the sacredness of the temple of the soul was taught as a duty; and to make the body beautiful by right exercise and by right life became a science. The sculptor must have models approaching perfection, and the exhibition of the sculptor's work, together with occasional public religious processions of naked youths, kept before the people ideals superb and splendid.

For several years everybody worked, carrying stone, hewing, tugging, lifting, carving. Up the steep road that led to the Acropolis was a constant procession carrying materials. So infused was everybody and everything with the work that a story is told of a certain mule that had hauled a cart in the endless procession. This worthy worker, "who was sustained by neither pride of ancestry nor hope of posterity," finally became galled and lame and was turned out to die. But the mule did not die--nothing dies until hope dies. That mule pushed his way back into the throng and up and down he went, filled and comforted with the thought that he was doing his work--and all respected him and made way. If this story was invented by a comic poet of the time, devised by an enemy of Pericles, we see its moral, and think no less of Pericles. To inspire a mule with a passion for work and loyalty in a great cause is no mean thing.

So richly endowed was Pericles that he was able to appreciate the best not only in men, but in literature, painting, sculpture, music, architecture and life as well. In him there was as near a perfect harmony as we have ever seen--in him all the various lines of Greek culture united, and we get the perfect man. Under the right conditions there might be produced a race of such men--but such a race never lived in Greece and never could. Greece was a splendid experiment. Greece was God's finest plaything--devised to show what He could do.

* * * * *

I have sometimes thought that comeliness of feature and fine physical proportions were a handicap to an orator. If a man is handsome, it is quite enough--let him act as chairman and limit his words to stating the pleasure he has in introducing the speaker. No man in a full-dress suit can sway a thousand people to mingled mirth and tears, play upon their emotions and make them remember the things they have forgotten, drive conviction home, and change the ideals of a lifetime in an hour. The man in spotless attire, with necktie mathematically adjusted, is an usher. If too much attention to dress is in evidence, we at once conclude that the attire is first in importance and the message secondary.

The orator is a man we hate, fear or love, and are curious to see. His raiment is incidental; the usher's clothes are vital. The attire of the usher may reveal the man--but not so the speaker. If our first impressions are disappointing, so much the better, provided the man is a man.

The best thing in Winston Churchill's book, "The Crisis," is his description of Lincoln's speech at Freeport. Churchill got that description from a man who was there. Where the issue was great, Lincoln was always at first a disappointment. His unkempt appearance, his awkwardness, his shrill voice--these things made people laugh, then they were ashamed because they laughed, then they pitied, next followed surprise, and before they knew it, they were being wrapped 'round by words so gracious, so fair, so convincing, so free from prejudice, so earnest and so charged with soul that they were taken captive, bound hand and foot.

Talmage, who knew his business, used to work this element of disappointment as an art. When the event was important and he wished to make a particularly good impression, he would begin in a very low, sing-song voice, and in a monotonous manner, dealing in trite nothings for five minutes or more. His angular form would seem to take on more angles and his homely face would grow more homely, if that were possible--disappointment would spread itself over the audience like a fog; people would settle back in their pews, sigh and determine to endure. And then suddenly the speaker would glide to the front, his great chest would fill, his immense mouth would open and there would leap forth a sentence like a thunderbolt.

Visitors at "The Temple," London, will recall how Joseph Parker works the matter of surprise, and often piques curiosity by beginning his sermon to two thousand people in a voice that is just above a whisper.

One of the most impressive orators of modern times was John P. Altgeld, yet to those who heard him for the first time his appearance was always a disappointment. Altgeld was so earnest and sincere, so full of his message that he scorned all the tricks of oratory, but still he must have been aware that his insignificant form and commonplace appearance were a perfect foil for the gloomy, melancholy and foreboding note of earnestness that riveted his words into a perfect whole.

Over against the type of oratory represented by Altgeld, America has produced one orator who fascinated first by his personal appearance, next exasperated by his imperturbable calm, then disappointed through a reserve that nothing could baffle, and finally won through all three, more than by his message. This man was Roscoe Conkling, he of the Hyperion curls and Jovelike front.

The chief enemy of Conkling (and he had a goodly list) was James G. Blaine, who once said of him, "He wins, like Pericles, by his grand and god-like manner--and knows it." In appearance and manner Pericles and Conkling had much in common, but there the parallel stops.

Pericles appeared only on great occasions. We are told that in twenty years he was seen on the streets of Athens only once a year, and that was in going from his house to the Assembly where he made his annual report of his stewardship. He never made himself cheap. His speeches were prepared with great care and must have been memorized. Before he spoke he prayed the gods that not a single unworthy word might escape his lips. We are told that his manner was so calm, so well poised, that during his speech his mantle was never disarranged.

In his speeches Pericles never championed an unpopular cause--he never led a forlorn hope--he never flung reasons into the teeth of a mob. His addresses were the orderly, gracious words of eulogy and congratulation. He won the approval of his constituents often against their will, and did the thing he wished to do, without giving offense. Thucydides says his words were like the honey of Hymettus--persuasion sat upon his lips.

No man wins his greatest fame in that to which he has given most of his time; it's his side issue, the thing he does for recreation, his heart's play-spell, that gives him immortality. There is too much tension in that where his all is staked. But in his leisure the pressure is removed, his heart is free and judgment may for the time take a back seat--there was where Dean Swift picked his laurels. Although Pericles was the greatest orator of his day, yet his business was not oratory. Public speaking was to him merely incidental and accidental. He doubtless would have avoided it if he could--he was a man of affairs, a leader of practical men, and he was a teacher. He held his place by a suavity, gentleness and gracious show of reasons unparalleled. In oratory it is manner that wins, not words. One virtue Pericles had in such generous measure that the world yet takes note of it, and that is his patience. If interrupted in a speech, he gave way and never answered sharply, nor used his position to the other's discomfiture. In his speeches there was no challenge, no vituperation, no irony, no arraignment. He assumed that everybody was honest, everybody just, and that all men were doing what they thought was best for themselves and others. His enemies were not rogues--simply good men who were temporarily in error. He impeached no man's motives; but went much out of his way to give due credit.