Mr. Isaac Pitman is a frank man and a truthful.
He was a National schoolmaster, and stenography has made his fortune, besides spreading his name wherever throughout the world men talk in public ; but he told the Congress of Stenographers gathered this week in London, that he did not love his " art " as an "art." He only loved it for its utility. Does he not, however, exaggerate this latter recommendation of his system of writing shorthand !) It has helped, we suppose, to preserve some oratory, though Cicero lived and Demosthenes moved crowds before Mr. Pitman ; but then, it has also helped to diffuse the flabby political chatter which is now debasing the thoughts of the foremost nations of the world. The stenographer reports Mr. Bright, but also Mr. Labou- chere. Mr. Pitman hopes to see his system supersede all others, and even to become the instrument of the great author. He forgets that very quick writing involves very shallow thinking, and that the man who dictates his books falls under the temptations of the orator. Oratory is a great art, and has done much both in politics and religion; but it is essentially different, both in form and in kind of effectiveness, from good literature. Gibbon dictating would have been com- paratively as ineffective as Mr. Gladstone writing.
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