The first necessity for good speaking is a large audience; and of this advantage Mr.
Turnbull had made himself sure.

And yet it could hardly be said that he was a great orator.

He was gifted with a powerful voice, with strong, and I may, perhaps, call them broad convictions, with perfect self-reliance, with almost unlimited powers of endurance, with hot ambition, with no keen scruples, and with a moral skin of great thickness.

Nothing said against him pained him, no attacks wounded him, no raillery touched him in the least.

There was not a sore spot about him, and probably his first thoughts on waking every morning told him that he, at least, was totus teres atque rotundus.