Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XII.djvu/684

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670 ORATORY ORCHESTRA ORATORY, the art of public speaking. Aris- totle distinguished three kinds of oratory: demonstrative, deliberative, and judicial. The first included panegyrics, invectives, and aca- demic discourses ; the second included legisla- tive and other debates on public policy, moral lectures, and all instructive oratory ; and the third included pleading, accusation, and de- fence, as before a court of justice. The same philosopher divides rhetoric into the depart- ments of persuasion, language or expression, and arrangement. He makes the oration to consist of~ introduction, proposition, confir- mation, and peroration ; and most writers on oratory have adopted his division. Oratory comprises the departments of rhetoric or com- position and elocution, the latter including the tones of the voice, utterance, enunciation, and gesture, to which belongs the expression of the countenance. The history of oratory goes back to the earliest days. The Old Tes- tament contains the valedictory of Joshua, and the able address of King Abijah to the ar- mies of Judah and Israel on the eve of bat- tle. Homer records speeches of the Greek heroes which may be called orations. The golden age of Greece is the age of her greatest orators, Pericles ably heading the list, which culminates in Demosthenes. Roman oratory reached its height in Cicero, and declined with the decline of Roman liberty. Ancient orators were generally ignorant of law, the Greeks being assisted by practitioners called pragma- tici, while the Romans generally intrusted the maintenance of the law to their professed ju- rists. Classic oratory adopted a minute sys- tem of rules reaching every tone and gesture. Greek eloquence was more simple and severe, the Latin more florid. In neither was there any pretence to humor or wit. In the 4th and 5th centuries the preachers of Christianity had a wide reputation for eloquence, Chrysos- tom being generally given the foremost place. The middle ages show only the eloquence of Peter the Hermit, Abelard, Bernard, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, and some other ecclesiastics ; but the reformation brought out the rough but powerful preaching of Luther contrasted with the gentle dignity of Melanch- thon. The highest eloquence of the next gen- eration is found in the Catholic pulpit of France, where Bossuet, F6nelon, Massillon, and Bourdaloue raised pulpit oratory to the very highest place. The 18th century witnessed the wonderful parliamentary oratory of Chatham and Pitt, Sheridan, Burke, and Fox. This cen- tury saw also the great religious awakening under Wesley, and both England and America were stirred by the preaching of Whitefield. The American revolution brought out the elo- quence of James Otis and Patrick Henry, and the French revolution inspired and was stimu- lated by Mirabeau and Vergniaud. More re- cent times have been distinguished by the elo- quent sermons of Robert Hall and Thomas Chalmers, and the political oratory of Lord Brougham and Canning, Mr. Gladstone and John Bright, Berryer and Guizot, O'Connell and Kossuth. In the United States the sena- torial speeches of Henry Clay, John C. Cal- houn, and Daniel Webster may be compared with the most perfect orations of any time. ORBIGM. I. JJcide Dessaiines d', a French naturalist, born at Coueron, Loire-Inferieure, Sept. 6, 1802, died at Pierrefitte, near Paris, June 30, 1857. He was educated at La Ro- chelle, and in 1826 he was sent by the govern- ment to South America, which he explored for eight years, from Brazil and Peru to Patagonia. He collected many valuable historical manu- scripts, 36 vocabularies of American languages, 7,000 species of animals, a large portion of which were entirely new, and 2,500 species of plants. He published Voyage dans VAme- rigue du Sud (9 vols. 4to, 1834-'52), Paleon- tologie franfaise (14 vols., 1840-'54), and oth- er important works on natural history and on palaeontology, on which he lectured in the museum of natural history from 1836 to 1853. II. Charles Dessaiines d', a French geologist, brother of the preceding, born at Coueron, Dec. 2, 1806. For the past 40 years he has been attached to the museum of natural his- tory in Paris, and he has edited, in conjunc- tion with others, the Dictionnaire universel dhistoire naturelle (24 vols., Paris, 1839-'49; abridged ed., 2 vols., 1844). Several of his other works relate to geology. ORCA. See GRAMPUS. ORCAGNA, or Orgagna (ANDEEA DI CIONE), an Italian artist, born in Florence in the early part of the 14th century, died in 1375 or 1389. He was the son of a Florentine sculptor and goldsmith named Cione, and acquired the sur- name of L'Archagnuolo (the archangel), which was contracted into Orcagna. He was instruct- ed by his father and an elder brother, Bernar- do, a painter. His most memorable frescoes are the series on the north wall of the Campo Santo at Pisa, representing "The Triumph of Death," "The Last Judgment," and "Hell." These have been greatly injured by time and neglect. They were profoundly studied by succeeding painters, and Michel Angelo and Raphael borrowed largely from the attitudes and arrangements of Orcagna. As a sculptor and architect Orcagna, according to Vasari, was even greater than as a painter. One of his most celebrated productions was the tab- ernacle of the Virgin in the church of San Michele at Florence, a pyramidal altar of white marble, one of the figures on which represents the artist himself, and is inscribed with his name and the date (1359). The church itself was also built from his designs ; but his mas- terpiece in architecture was the Loggia de' Lanzi in Florence. ORCHELLA. See LITMUS. ORCHESTRA (Gr. bprfffrpa, from bpxeladai, to dance), that part of the Greek theatre in which the chorus performed its dances and evolutions. It was circular, except that a segment was