scent from the apostles; that is, they declared that not only had the church ever maintained the three orders, but that an unbroken succession of individuals, canonically ordained, was enjoyed by the church, and essential to her existence; in short, that without this there could be no church at all. They held the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, of sacramental absolution, and of a real, in contradistinction to a figurative or symbolical presence in the Eucharist. They maintained the duty of fasting, of ritual obedience, and of communion with the apos-church at Cambridge. On his complete recovery, tolic church, declaring all dissenters, and, as a necessary consequence, the members of the church of Scotland, and all churches not episcopal, to be members of no church at all. They denied the validity of lay-baptism; they threw out hints from time to time which evidenced an attachment to the theological system supported by the nonjuring divines in the days of James II.; and the grand Protestant prin·ciple, as established by Luther-the right of private interpretation of Holy Scripture-they denied." The tracts were discontinued by order of the bishop of Oxford; but the same principles have been maintained in various publications, as in MR GLADSTONE'S two works, On the Relation of the Church to the State, and Church Principles; MR CHRISTMAS'S Discipline of the Anglican Church, &c. In 1843 Dr Pusey was suspended from preaching, and censured by the university for what was denounced as a heretical sermon, in which he advanced the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. The publications on this memorable controversy are not remarkable for any literary merit. The tracts are dry polemical treatises, interesting to comparatively few but zealous churchmen. REV. ROBERT HALL stirring-possessing, indeed, the fire and energy of a martial lyric or war-song. In November 1804 the noble intellect of Mr Hall was deranged, in consequence of severe study operating on an ardent and susceptible temperament. His friends set on foot a subscription for pecuniary assistance, and a lifeannuity of £100 was procured for him. He shortly afterwards resumed his ministerial functions, but in about twelve months he had another attack. This also was speedily removed; but Mr Hall resigned his he became pastor of a congregation at Leicester, where he resided for about twenty years. During this time he published a few sermons and criticisms in the Eclectic Review. The labour of writing for the press was opposed to his habits and feelings. He was fastidious as to style, and he suffered under a disease in the spine which entailed upon him acute pain. A sermon on the death of the Princess Charlotte in 1819 was justly considered one of the most impressive, touching, and lofty of his discourses. In 1826 he removed from Leicester to Bristol, where he officiated in charge of the Baptist congregation till within a fortnight of his death, which took place on the 21st of February 1831. The masculine intellect and extensive acquirements of Mr Hall have seldom been found united to so much rhetorical and even poetical brilliancy of imagination. His taste was more refined than that of Burke, and his style more chaste and correct. His solid learning and unfeigned piety gave a weight and impressiveness to all he uttered and wrote, while his classic taste enabled him to clothe his thoughts and imagery in language the most appropriate, beautiful, and commanding. Those who listened to his pulpit ministrations were entranced by his fervid eloquence, which truly disclosed the 'beauty of holiness,' and melted by the awe and fervour with which he dwelt on the mysteries of death and eternity. His published writings give but a brief and inadequate picture of his varied talents; yet they are so highly finished, and display such a combination of different powers-of logical precision, metaphysical acuteness, practical sense and sagacity, with a rich and luxuriant imagination, and all the graces of composition-that they must be considered among the most valuable contributions made to modern literature. A complete edition of his works has been published, with a life, by Dr Olinthus Gregory, in six volumes. [On Wisdom.] The REV. ROBERT HALL, A. M. is justly regarded as one of the most distinguished ornaments of the body of English dissenters. He was the son of a Baptist minister, and born at Arnsby, near Leicester, on the 2d of May 1764. He studied divinity at an academy in Bristol for the education of young men preparing for the ministerial office among the Baptists, and was admitted a preacher in 1780, but next year attended King's college, Aberdeen. Sir James Mackintosh was at the same time a student of the university, and the congenial tastes and pursuits of the young men led to an intimate friendship between them. From their partiality to Greek literature, they were named by their class-fellows Plato and Herodotus.' Both were also attached to the study of morals and metaphysics, which they ferior to wisdom, in the same sense as the mason who Every other quality besides is subordinate and incherished through life. Hall entered the church as lays the bricks and stones in a building is inferior to assistant to a Baptist minister at Bristol, whence he the architect who drew the plan and superintends the removed in 1790 to Cambridge. He first appeared work. The former executes only what the latter conas an author by publishing a controversial pamphlet trives and directs. Now, it is the prerogative of entitled Christianity Consistent with a Love of Free- wisdom to preside over every inferior principle, to dom, which appeared in 1791; in 1793 he published regulate the exercise of every power, and limit the his eloquent and powerful treatise, An Apology for indulgence of every appetite, as shall best conduce to the Freedom of the Press; and in 1799 his sermon, one great end. It being the province of wisdom to Modern Infidelity considered with respect to its Influence preside, it sits as umpire on every difficulty, and so on Society. The latter was designed to stem the gives the final direction and control to all the powers torrent of infidelity which had set in with the French of our nature. Hence it is entitled to be considered Revolution, and is no less remarkable for profound as the top and summit of perfection. It belongs to thought than for the elegance of its style and the wisdom to determine when to act, and when to ceasesplendour of its imagery. His celebrity as a writer when to reveal, and when to conceal a matter when was further extended by his Reflections on War, a to speak, and when to keep silence—when to give, and sermon published in 1802; and The Sentiments proper when to receive; in short, to regulate the measure of to the Present Crisis, another sermon preached in all things, as well as to determine the end, and proThe latter is highly eloquent and spirit-vide the means of obtaining the end pursued in every 1803. A New Spirit of the Age. Vol. i. p. 207. deliberate course of action. Every particular faculty or skill, besides, needs to derive direction from this 84 they are all quite incapable of directing themselves. The art of navigation, for instance, will teach us to steer a ship across the ocean, but it will never teach us on what occasions it is proper to take a voyage. The art of war will instruct us how to marshal an army, or to fight a battle to the greatest advantage, but you must learn from a higher school when it is fitting, just, and proper to wage war or to make peace. The art of the husbandman is to sow and bring to maturity the precious fruits of the earth; it belongs to another skill to regulate their consumption by a regard to our health, fortune, and other circumstances. In short, there is no faculty we can exert, no species of skill we can apply, but requires a superintending nand-but looks up, as it were, to some higher principle, as a maid to her mistress for direction, and this universal superintendent is wisdom. [From the Funeral Sermon for the Princess Charlotte of Wales.] story, and of once more attaching the epoch of British glory to the annals of a female reign. It is needless to add that the nation went with her, and probably outstripped her in these delightful anticipations. We fondly hoped that a life so inestimable would be protracted to a distant period, and that, after diffusing the blessings of a just and enlightened administration, and being surrounded by a numerous progeny, she would gradually, in a good old age, sink under the horizon amidst the embraces of her family and the benedictions of her country. But, alas! these delightful visions are fled; and what do we behold in their room but the funeral-pall and shroud, a palace in mourning, a nation in tears, and the shadow of death settled over both like a cloud! Oh the unspeakable vanity of human hopes the incurable blindness of man to futurity!-ever doomed to grasp at shadows; to seize' with avidity what turns to dust and ashes in his hands; to sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind. REV. JOHN FOSTER The REV. JOHN FOSTER (1770-1843) was author of a volume of Essays, in a Series of Letters, published in 1805, which was justly ranked among the most original and valuable works of the day. The essays are four in number on a man's writing memoirs of himself; on decision of character; on the application of the epithet romantic; and on some of the causes by which evangelical religion has been rendered less acceptable to persons of cultivated taste. Mr Foster's essays are excellent models of vigorous thought and expression, uniting metaphysical nicety and acuteness with practical sagacity and common sense. He also wrote a volume on the Evils of Popular Igno rance, several sermons, and critical contributions to the Eclectic Review. Like Hall, Mr Foster was pastor of a Baptist congregation. He died at Staple Born to inherit the most illustrious monarchy in the world, and united at an early period to the object of her choice, whose virtues amply justified her preference, she enjoyed (what is not always the privilege of that rank) the highest connubial felicity, and had the prospect of combining all the tranquil enjoyments of private life with the splendour of a royal station. Placed on the summit of society, to her every eye was turned, in her every hope was centred, and nothing was wanting to complete her felicity except perpetuity. To a grandeur of mind suited to her royal birth and lofty destination, she joined an exquisite taste for the beauties of nature and the charms of retirement, where, far from the gaze of the multitude, and the frivolous agitations of fashionable life, she employed her hours in visiting, with her distinguished consort, the cottages of the poor, in improving her virtues, in perfecting her reason, and acquiring the knowledge best adapted to qualify her for the pos-ton, near Bristol. session of power and the cares of empire. One thing only was wanting to render our satisfaction complete in the prospect of the accession of such a princess; it was, that she might become the living mother of children. The long-wished-for moment at length arrived; but, alas! the event anticipated with such eagerness will form the most melancholy part of our history. It is no reflection on this amiable princess, to suppose that in her early dawn, with the dew of her youth so fresh upon her, she anticipated a long series of years, and expected to be led through successive scenes of enchantment, rising above each other in fascination and beauty. It is natural to suppose she identified herself with this great nation which she was born to govern; and that, while she contemplated its pre-eminent lustre in arts and in arms, its commerce encircling the globe, its colonies diffused through both hemispheres, and the beneficial effects of its institutions extending to the whole earth, she considered them as so many component parts of her grandeur. Her heart, we may well conceive, would often be ruffled with emotions of trembling ecstacy when she reflected that it was her province to live entirely for others, to compass the felicity of a great people, to move in a sphere which would afford scope for the exercise of philanthropy the most enlarged, of wisdom the most enlightened; and that, while others are doomed to pass through the world in obscurity, she was to supply the materials of history, and to impart that impulse to society which was to decide the destiny of future generations. Fired with the ambition of equalling or surpassing the most distinguished of her predecessors, she probably did not despair of reviving the remembrance of the brightest parts of their Himself, Mr Foster thus speculates on a changeable In the essay On a Man's Writing Memoirs of character, and on the contempt which we entertain at an advanced period of life for what we were at an earlier period: Though in memoirs intended for publication a large share of incident and action would generally be necessary, yet there are some men whose mental history alone might be very interesting to reflective readers; as, for instance, that of a thinking man remarkable for a number of complete changes of his speculative system. From observing the usual tenacity of views once deliberately adopted in mature life, we regard as a curious phenomenon the man whose mind has been a kind of caravansera of opi nions, entertained a while, and then sent on pilgrimage; a man who has admired and dismissed sys tems with the same facility with which John Buncle found, adored, married, and interred his succession of wives, each one being, for the time, not only better than all that went before, but the best in the creation. You admire the versatile aptitude of a mind sliding into successive forms of belief in this intellectual meter psychosis, by which it animates so many new bodies of doctrines in their turn. And as none of those dying pangs which hurt you in a tale of India attend the desertion of each of these speculative forms which the soul has a while inhabited, you are ex tremely amused by the number of transitions, and eagerly ask what is to be the next, for you never deem the present state of such a man's views to be for permanence, unless perhaps when he has terminated his course of believing everything in ultimately be lieving nothing. Even then, unless he is very old, or feels more pride in being a sceptic, the conqueror of all systems, than he ever felt in being the champion of one, even then it is very possible he may spring up again, like a vapour of fire from a bog, and glimmer through new mazes, or retrace his course through half of those which he trod before. You will observe that no respect attaches to this Proteus of opinion after his changes have been multiplied, as no party expect him to remain with them, nor deem him much of an acquisition if he should. One, or perhaps two, considerable changes will be regarded as signs of a liberal inquirer, and therefore the party to which his first or his second intellectual conversion may assign him will receive him gladly. But he will be deemed to have abdicated the dignity of reason when it is found that he can adopt no principles but to betray them; and it will be perhaps justly suspected that there is something extremely infirm in the structure of that mind, whatever vigour may mark some of its operations, to which a series of very different, and sometimes contrasted theories, can appear in succession demonstratively true, and which imitates sincerely the perverseness which Petruchio only affected, declaring that which was yesterday to a certainty the sun, to be to-day as certainly the moon. It would be curious to observe in a man, who should make such an exhibition of the course of his mind, the sly deceit of self-love. While he despises the system which he has rejected, he does not deem it to imply so great a want of sense in him once to have embraced it, as in the rest who were then or are now its disciples and advocates. No; in him it was no debility of reason; it was at the utmost but a merge of it; and probably he is prepared to explain to you that such peculiar circumstances, as might warp even a very strong and liberal mind, attended his consideration of the subject, and misled him to admit the belief of what others prove themselves fools by believing. quities, after having been so long beguiled, like the mariners in a story which I remember to have read, who followed the direction of their compass, infallibly right as they thought, till they arrived at an enemy's port, where they were seized and doomed to slavery. It happened that the wicked captain, in order to betray the ship, had concealed a large loadstone at a little distance on one side of the needle. On the notions and expectations of one stage of life I suppose all reflecting men look back with a kind of contempt, though it may be often with the mingling wish that some of its enthusiasm of feeling could be recovered-I mean the period between proper childhood and maturity. They will allow that their reason was then feeble, and they are prompted to exclaim, What fools we have been-while they recollect how sincerely they entertained and advanced the most ridiculous speculations on the interests of life and the questions of truth; how regretfully astonished they were to find the mature sense of some of those around them so completely wrong; yet in other instances, what veneration they felt for authorities for which they have since lost all their respect; what a fantastic importance they attached to some most trivial things; what complaints against their fate were uttered on account of disappointments which they have since recollected with gaiety or self-congratulation; what happiness of Elysium they expected from sources which would soon have failed to impart even common satisfaction; and how certain they were that the feelings and opinions then predominant would continue through life. If a reflective aged man were to find at the bottom of an old chest-where it had lain forgotten fifty years-a record which he had written of himself when he was young, simply and vividly describing his whole heart and pursuits, and reciting verbatim many passages of the language which he sincerely uttered, would he not read it with more wonder than almost Another thing apparent in a record of changed every other writing could at his age inspire? He opinions would be, what I have noticed before, that would half lose the assurance of his identity, under there is scarcely any such thing in the world as simple the impression of this immense dissimilarity. It would conviction. It would be amusing to observe how seem as if it must be the tale of the juvenile days of reason had, in one instance, been overruled into some ancestor, with whom he had no connexion but acquiescence by the admiration of a celebrated name, that of name. He would feel the young man thus or in another into opposition by the envy of it; how introduced to him separated by so wide a distance of most opportunely reason discovered the truth just at character as to render all congenial sociality imposthe time that interest could be essentially served by sible. At every sentence he would be tempted to reavowing it; how easily the impartial examiner could peat-Foolish youth, I have no sympathy with your be induced to adopt some part of another man's opi- feelings, I can hold no converse with your understandnions, after that other had zealously approved some ing. Thus, you see that in the course of a long life a favourite, especially if unpopular part of his, as the man may be several moral persons, so various from Pharisees almost became partial even to Christ at the one another, that if you could find a real individual moment that he defended one of their doctrines against that should nearly exemplify the character in one of the Sadducees. It would be curious to see how a these stages, and another that should exemplify it in professed respect for a man's character and talents, the next, and so on to the last, and then bring these and concern for his interests, might be changed, in several persons together into one society, which would consequence of some personal inattention experienced thus be a representation of the successive states of one from him, into illiberal invective against him or his man, they would feel themselves a most heterogeneous intellectual performances, and yet the railer, though party, would oppose and probably despise one another, actuated solely by petty revenge, account himself the and soon after separate, not caring if they were never model of equity and candour all the while. It might to meet again. If the dissimilarity in mind were as be seen how the patronage of power could elevate great as in person, there would in both respects be a miserable prejudices into revered wisdom, while poor most striking contrast between the extremes at least, old Experience was mocked with thanks for her in-between the youth of seventeen and the sage of seventy. struction; and how the vicinity or society of the rich, and, as they are termed, great, could perhaps melt a soul that seemed to be of the stern consistence of early Rome, into the gentlest wax on which Corruption could wish to imprint the venerable creed- The right divine of kings to govern wrong,' with the pious inference that justice was outraged when virtuous Tarquin was expelled. I am supposing the observer to perceive all these accommodating dexterities of reason; for it were probably absurd to expect that any mind should tself be able in its review to detect all its own obli " The one of these contrasts an old man might contemplate if he had a true portrait for which he sat in the bloom of his life, and should hold it beside a mirror in which he looks at his present countenance; and the other would be powerfully felt if he had such a genuine and detailed memoir as I have supposed. Might it not be worth while for a self-observant person, in early life to preserve, for the inspection of the old man, if he should live so long, such a mental likeness of the young one? If it be not drawn near the time, it can never be drawn with sufficient accuracy. DR ADAM CLARKE. Another distinguished dissenter was DR ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832), a profound Oriental scholar, author of a Commentary on the Bible, and editor of a collection of state papers supplementary to Rymer's Foedera. Dr Clarke was a native of Moybeg, a village in Londonderry, Ireland, where his father was a schoolmaster. He was educated at Kingswood school, an establishment of Wesley's projecting for the instruction of itinerant preachers. In due time he himself became a preacher; and so indefatigable was he in propagating the doctrines of the Wesleyan persuasion, that he twice visited Shetland, and established there a Methodist mission. In the midst of his various journeys and active duties, Dr Clarke continued those researches which do honour to his name. He fell a victim to the cholera when that fatal pestilence visited our shores. REV. ARCHIBALD ALISON. The REV. ARCHIBALD ALISON (1757-1838) was senior minister of St Paul's chapel, Edinburgh. After a careful education at Glasgow university and Baliol college, Oxford (where he took his degree of B.C.L. in 1784), Mr Alison entered into sacred orders, and was presented to different livings by Sir William Pulteney, Lord Loughborough, and Dr Douglas, bishop of Salisbury. Having, in 1784, married the daughter of Dr John Gregory of Edinburgh, Mr Alison looked forward to a residence in Scotland, but it was not till the close of the last century that he was able to realise his wishes. In 1790 he published his admirable Essay on the Nature and Principles of Taste, and in 1814 two volumes of sermons, justly admired for the elegance and beauty of their language, and their gentle persuasive inculcation of Christian duty. On points of doctrine and controversy the author is wholly silent: his writings, as one of his critics remarked, were designed for those who want to be roused to a sense of the beauty and the good that exist in the universe around them, and who are only indifferent to the feelings of their fellow-creatures, and negligent of the duties they impose, for want of some persuasive monitor to awake the dormant capacities of their nature, and to make them see and feel the delights which providence has attached to their exercise.' A selection from the sermons of Mr Alison, consisting of those on the four seasons, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, was afterwards printed in a small volume. [From the Sermon on Autumn.] There is an eventide in the day-an hour when the sun retires and the shadows fall, and when nature assumes the appearances of soberness and silence. It is an hour from which everywhere the thoughtless fly, as peopled only in their imagination with images of gloom; it is the hour, on the other hand, which in every age the wise have loved, as bringing with it sentiments and affections more valuable than all the splendours of the day. Its first impression is to still all the turbulence of thought or passion which the day may have brought forth. We follow with our eye the descending sun -we listen to the decaying sounds of labour and of toil; and, when all the fields are silent around us, we feel a kindred stillness to breathe upon our souls, and to calm them from the agitations of society. From this first impression there is a second which naturally follows it: in the day we are living with men, in the eventide we begin to live with nature; we see the world withdrawn from us, the shades of night darken over the habitations of men, and we feel ourselves alone. It is an hour fitted, as it would seem, by Him who made us to still, but with gentle hand, the throb of every unruly passion, and the ardour of every impure desire; and, while it veils for a time the world that misleads us, to awaken in our hearts those legitimate affections which the heat of the day may have dissolved. There is yet a farther scene it presents to us. While the world withdraws from us, and while the shades of the evening darken upon our dwellings, the splendours of the firmament come forward to our view. In the moments when earth is overshadowed, heaven opens to our eyes the radiance of a sublimer being; our hearts follow the successive splendours of the scene; and while we forget for a time the obscurity of earthly concerns, we feel that there are 'yet greater things than these." There is, in the second place, an eventide' in the year a season, as we now witness, when the sun withdraws his propitious light, when the winds arise and the leaves fall, and nature around us seems to sink into decay. It is said, in general, to be the season of melancholy; and if by this word be meant that it is the time of solemn and of serious thought, it is undoubtedly the season of melancholy; yet it is a melancholy so soothing, so gentle in its approach, and so prophetic in its influence, that they who have known it feel, as instinctively, that it is the doing of God, and that the heart of man is not thus finely touched but to fine issues. When we go out into the fields in the evening of the year, a different voice approaches us. We regard, even in spite of ourselves, the still but steady advances of time. A few days ago, and the summer of the year was grateful, and every element was filled with life, and the sun of heaven seemed to glory in his ascendant. He is now enfeebled in his power; the desert no more blossoms like the rose; the song of joy is no more heard among the branches; and the earth is strewed with that foliage which once bespoke the magnificence of summer. Whatever may be the pas sions which society has awakened, we pause amid this apparent desolation of nature. We sit down in the lodge of the wayfaring man in the wilderness,' and we feel that all we witness is the emblem of our own fate. Such also in a few years will be our own condition. The blossoms of our spring, the pride of our summer, will also fade into decay; and the pulse that now beats high with virtuous or with vicious desire, We rise from our meditations with hearts softened will gradually sink, and then must stop for ever. and subdued, and we return into life as into a shadowy scene, where we have 'disquieted ourselves in vain.' Yet a few years, we think, and all that now bless, or all that now convulse humanity, will also have perished. The mightiest pageantry of life will passthe loudest notes of triumph or of conquest will be silent in the grave; the wicked, wherever active, 'will cease from troubling,' and the weary, wherever suffering, will be at rest. Under an impression so profound we feel our own hearts better. The cares, the animosities, the hatreds which society may have engendered, sink unperceived from our bosoms. In the general desolation of nature we feel the littleness of our own passions-we look forward to that kindred evening which time must bring to all-we anticipate the graves of those we hate as of those we love. Every unkind passion falls with the leaves that fall around us; and we return slowly to our homes, and to the society which surrounds us, with the wish only to enlighten or to bless them. If there were no other effects, my brethren, of such appearances of nature upon our minds, they would still be valuable-they would teach us humility, and with it they would teach us charity. DR ANDREW THOMSON. DR ANDREW THOMSON (1779-1831), an active and able minister of the Scottish church, was author of various sermons and lectures, and editor of the Scottish Christian Instructor, a periodical which exercised no small influence in Scotland on ecclesiastical questions. Dr Thomson was successively minister of Sprouston, in the presbytery of Kelso, of the East Church, Perth, and of St George's Church, Edinburgh. In the annual meetings of the general assembly he displayed great ardour and eloquence as a debater, and was the recognized leader of one of the church parties. He waged a long and keen warfare with the British and Foreign Bible Society for circulating the books of the Apocrypha along with the Bible, and his speeches on this subject, though exaggerated in tone and manner, produced a powerful effect. There was, in truth, always more of the debater than the divine in his public addresses; and he was an unmerciful opponent in controversy. When the question of the abolition of colonial slavery was agitated in Scotland, he took his stand on the expediency of immediate abolition, and by his public appearances on this subject, and the energy of his eloquence, carried the feelings of his countrymen completely along with him. The life of this ardent, impetuous, and independent-minded man was brought suddenly and awfully to a close. In the prime of health and vigour he fell down dead at the threshold of his own door. The sermons of Dr Thomson scarcely support his high reputation as a church leader and debater. They are weighty and earnest, but without pathos or elegance of style. DR THOMAS CHALMERS. The most distinguished and able of living Scottish divines is THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D. and LL.D., one of the first Presbyterian ministers who obtained an honorary degree from the university of Cambridge, Dr Thomas Chalmers. and one of the few Scotsmen who have been elected a corresponding member of the Royal Institute of France. The collected works of Dr Chalmers fill twenty-five duodecimo volumes. Of these the two first are devoted to Natural Theology; three and four to Evidences of Christianity; five, Moral Philosophy; six, Commercial Discourses; seven, Astronomical Discourses; eight, nine, and ten, Congregational Sermons; eleven, Sermons on Public Occasions; twelve, Tracts and Essays; thirteen, Introductory Essays, originally prefixed to editions of Select Christian Authors; fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen, Christian and Economic Polity of a Nation, more especially with reference to its Large Towns; seventeen, On Church and College Endowments; eighteen, On Church Extension; nineteen and twenty, Political Economy; twenty-one, The Sufficiency of a Parochial System without a Poor-Rate; twenty-two, three, four, and five, Lectures on the Romans. In all Dr Chalmers's works there is great energy and earnestness, accompanied with a vast variety of illustration. His knowledge is extensive, including science no less than literature, the learning of the philosopher with the fancy of the poet, and a fami liar acquaintance with the habits, feelings, and daily life of the Scottish poor and middle classes. The ardour with which he pursues any favourite topic, presenting it to the reader or hearer in every possible point of view, and investing it with the charms of a rich poetical imagination, is a peculiar feature in his intellectual character, and one well calculated to arrest attention.* It gives peculiar effect to his *Robert Hall seems to have been struck with this peculiarity. In some Gleanings from Hall's Conversational Remarks, appended to Dr Gregory's Memoir, we find the following criticism, understood to refer to the Scottish divine:- Mr Hall repeatedly referred to Dr, and always in terms of great esteem as well as high admiration of his general character, exercising, however, his usual free and independent judgment. The following are some remarks on that extraordinary individual:-"Pray, sir, did you ever know any man who had that singular faculty of repetition possessed by Dr-? Why, sir, he often reiterates the same thing ten or twelve times in the course of a few pages. Even Burke himself had not so much of that peculiarity. His mind resembles that optical instrument lately invented; what do you call it?" "You mean, I suppose, the kaleidoscope." "Yes, sir, an idea thrown into his mind is just as if thrown into a kaleidoscope. Every turn presents the object in a new and beautiful form; but the object presented is still the same. * *His mind seems to move on hinges, not on wheels. There is incessant motion, but no progress. When he was at Leicester, he preached a most admirable sermon on the necessity of immediate repentance; but there were only two ideas in it, and on these his mind revolved as on a pivot." A writer in the London Magazine gives a graphic account of Dr Chalmers's appearances in London. When he visited London, the hold that he took on the minds of men was unprecedented. It was a time of strong political feeling; but even that was unheeded, and all parties thronged to hear the Scottish preacher. The very best judges were not prepared for the display that they heard. Canning and Wilberforce went together, and got into a pow near the door. The elder in attendance stood close by the pew. Chalmers began in his usual unpromising way, by stating a few nearly self-evident propositions neither in the choicest language nor in the most impressive voice. "If this be all," said Canning to his companion, "it will never do." Chalmers went on-the shuffling of the congregation gradually subsided. He got into the mass of his subject; his weakness became strength, his hesitation was turned into energy; and, bringing the whole volume of his mind to bear upon it, he poured forth a torrent of the most close and conclusive argument, brilliant with all the exuberance of an imagination which ranged over all nature for illustrations, and yet managed and applied each of them with the same unerring dexterity, as if that single one had been the study of a whole life. "The tartan beats us," said Mr Canning; "we have no preaching like that in England." Chalmers, like the celebrated French divines (according to Goldsmith), assumed all that dignity and zeal which become men who are ambassadors from Christ The English divines, like timorous envoys, seem more solici tous not to offend the court to which they are sent, than to drive home the interests of their employers. The style of Dr |