has not corresponded with this natural or half-natural expectation. America has produced little but imitations, "resembling the original as the gilded and lettered back of a draft board does a princely volume. For Byron there was a Bryant, for Coleridge a Dana, for Wordsworth a Perceval."

"Sometimes it selected for its models writers inferior to its own capabilities, because they were British, and you were reminded of the prophet stretching himself eye to eye and foot to foot upon the child of the Shunamite. Still it has num. bered the following great names in its intellectual heraldry, Edwards, Dwight, Brockden Brown, Cooper, John Neale, Moses Stuart, Daniel Webster, Channing and Emerson."

Let not our readers fear; we are not going to say one word of any one of these American heroes, this being neither the time nor place for it. One sentence describing Edwards is all we can make room for

"In private he was one of the most austere, abstemious, and purged of human beings. His own family approached him trembling. He ate his spare diet out of silver. He assumed a manner high, remote, inscrutable. In the pulpit, his triumphs were those of the calm cherubic Reason. Unmoved himself, he sometimes set his audience in flame. He reminded you of Milton's line, The ground burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire.' A signal instance of this is recorded. A large congregation, including many ministers, were assembled to hear a popular preacher, who did not fulfil his appointment. Edwards was selected to fill his place, principally because, being in the habit of reading his discourses, he happened to have a sermon ready in his pocket. He ascended the pulpit accordingly, amid almost audible marks of disappointment from the audience, whom, however, respect for the abilities and character of the preacher prevented from leaving the church. He chose for his text, Their foot shall slide in due time,' and began to read in his usual quiet way. At first he had barely their attention; by and by he succeeded in rivetting every one of them to his lips: a few sentences more, and they began to rise by twos and threes; a little farther, and tears were flowing; at the close of another particular, deep groans were heard, and one or two went off in fits; and ere he reached the climax of his terrible appeals, the whole au

dience had risen up in one tumult of grief and consternation."

After some account of Dwight and Co. comes Mr. Gilfillan's estimate of Emerson" He is the first of a brood of Titans,who'shall yet laugh and leap on the continent, and run up the mountains of the west on the errands of Genius and Love."" "On the wide moor of his thought stands up every now and then a little sentence like a

fairy, and tells the way. His power comes and goes like spasms of shooting pain, but then how lucid are his intervals!" "There is a fine undersong in his eloquence which reminds you of the quiet tune sung by a log in the fire to one sitting half asleep at the eventide." At it again, George-nothing can be better than that hit of yours about the log. We'll now understand all about this Emerson of yours; but we interrupt. "Yet listen to that log, we charge you, ye sons of men! for there is an oracle in the simple unity of its sound, a deep mystery in its monotone. It has grown amid the old forests; in darkness it has drunk in strange meanings; whispers from the heart of the earth have come to it in secret; and hark how sweetly and sagely it discourses, touched into eloquence by the tongue of fire." Well done, king Log! "His theoretical views we do not perfectly comprehend." That's your modesty, George; you understand them just as well as Emerson. "They seem a strange dim something, compounded" [a vile metaphor]" of the views of a Plato, Plotinus, Fichte, and Swedenborgh," to which add, 66 a fir-tree odour from his own woods."

The phenomenon of Emerson's genius is well explained by the gifted Gilfillan. "He is, if not an 'innocent,' as it is beautifully called, an infant, and will for ever be a child." Innocent is, it would appear, used in Mr. Gilfillan's part of Scotland, in the sense which it still preserves in most parts of Ireland, and which it once bore in England-as in that passage of Hooker, where he says, " innocents are excused by reason of natural defect." Emerson, one of the most innocent of human

beings, finds in the extension of this childlike disposition, the hope of humanity. And thus he prophesies_ "All men shall yet be lovers, and then shall every calamity be dissolved in the universal sunshine."

"As a writer his mannerism lies in the exceeding unexpectedness of his transitions; in his strange, swift, and sudden yokings of the most distant and unrelated ideas; in brevity and abruptness of sentence; in the shreds of mysticism which are left deliberately on the web of his thought; and in the introduction, by almost ludicrous contrast, of the veriest vulgarisms of American civic phraseology and kitchen talk amid the flights of idealism."

In the old law books such a man would be classed, perhaps, with "Innocents," and enjoy all their immunities and privileges a different variety of the same disease.

"Our final and fearless verdict," says Gilfillan, "on Emerson is, that no mind in the present generation lies more abandoned to the spirit-breath of Eternal Nature. None admits through it more transparently, as through the soft veil of a summer tree, the broken particles (a sun shivered into fragments of glory!) of

The light that never was on sea or shore, The consecration and the poet's dream.' "Note.-A second series of Essays has recently issued from Emerson's pen, which, instead of showing in him spiritual progress, denote the very reverse, and have mortified all his British friends. He seems staring himself blind at the sun of absolute truth."

Enter now THOMAS DE QUINCEY.

"Conceive a little, pale-faced, wobegone, and attenuated man, with short indescribables, no coat, check shirt, and neckcloth twisted like a wisp of straw, opening the door of his room in

street, advancing towards you with hurried movement, and half-recognising glance; saluting you in low and hesitating tones, asking you to be seated; and after he has taken a seat opposite you, but without looking you in the face, beginning to pour into your willing ear, a stream of learning and wisdom as long as you are content to listen, or to lend him the slightest cue. Who is it? 'Tis De Quincey, the celebrated opium eater."

Of De Quincey nothing is added to what most men already know, except

that some papers in Tait and Blackwood are identified as his. JOHN FOSTER, the essayist, follows. His style is described as more terse and columnar than Isaac Taylor's, more nervous and native than Hall's, more subdued than Chalmers's, more profound than Harris, &c.

Wilson follows. We have room but for one word from Gilfillan about him:

"Professor Wilson's appearance is that of a hale, stout, broad-shouldered man, with a golden mass of hair, now, alas! waxing thin upon the temples, with study and sorrow. He is a man of powerful bone and muscle, above six feet high, and one whom every one stops on the street to gaze after. His brow is more ample than prominent a broad mass of imagination on either temple. His eye is quick, stern, and lively; but, greatly as it is praised, we have seen far finer and more expressive eyes in men of much more prosaic mould."

Then come sketches of Irving, Pollok, Landor, Brougham, and Campbell; Coleridge and Wordsworth follow; then Macaulay and Lockhart. There is a notice on Allan Cunningham, written in an affectionate spirit, and the volume closes with a warm panegyric on the poetry of Thomas Aird, in our author's admiration of which we entirely concur. All these essays we have read with pleasure. Mr. Gilfillan's effort to make his readers acquainted with the greatest men whom he has met on the highway of litera ture, is no doubt an ambitious one, and has on the whole been successfully executed. The great value, however, of a work of this kind, is to persons less acquainted with the writings reviewed by Mr. Gilfillan, than the class of readers, whom he must be supposed to be addressing from the fact of his never giving extracts from the works of the persons about whom he writes. A new edition of this work, considerably abridged, with a few extracts from each of the writers reviewed, and omitting some of the portraits, would very probably be a popular book.

WE had scareely brought our remarks on Mr. Gilfillan's volume to a close, when a book, called "Pen and Ink Sketches of Poets, Preachers, and Politicians," reached us. The author's name is not communicated. The book is more entertaining, but not, perhaps, as thoughtful as Gilfillan's. In a short preface, less is told than ought, and more is suggested than is distinctly told, and this in a case where reserve is certainly suspicious. The writer describes himself as the hearer of the great preachers whom he describes, and as the visitor and occasional guest of some of the poets. He tells us that "all the facts narrated" in his facts" are facts, although in some instances the scenes have been shifted, and the subordinate characters varied, for the sake of effect, just as a dramatist, by the judicious use of minor personages, brings into striking relief the heroes of his play, or as a painter, by the skilful aids of accessories, heightens the interest of his picture." Of this we must distinctly state that we do not know what it means. Brougham and others, for instance, are represented as listeners to a sermon of Hall's, at which author describes himself present. Hall is plainly the hero of this scene. suppose we wish to know whether our author saw Brougham or not assisting on the occasion, is it possible, after reading the sentence we have just transcribed, to make even the slightest guess on the subject? Are they, or are they not the minor personages

our

But

the subordinate characters - the accessories skilfully introduced to heighten the effect of the picture? Nay, is there the slightest reason to suppose our author himself was present. May he not have been engaged in imagining a sermon preached by a great man, and at which other men, great and little, were present? Is the amount of evidence, then, which we

We

receive from this gentleman on the subject of Hall's preaching, merely the fact that Hall preached? have an accidental meeting with Coleridge, immediately after leaving whom, our author stumbles upon Shelley, and describes a characteristic adventure. Had we read the book without the preface, we should have entertained no doubt whatever of both facts. As it is, we can make no guess whatever as to the occurrence of either. The facts vouched for are limited by the prefatory explanation to the circumstance that Coleridge and Shelley lived within walking distance of each other, if indeed time and space are elements in which such men are supposed by our author to live. A fact narrated as such is one thing; and we should see no reason whatever to distrust any statement given by our author as such-if any could be regarded as so given, when we remember the limitations which his preface describes. We have "sketches" of one of the London theatres, "from a private box," and "glimpses" of the House of Commons, "from the gallery." Consistently with his preface, our author might introduce into any group which he wished to describe, not only the persons present, but any one else he pleased. Cobbett's executor, for instance, may be imagined as saying, "Why, my poor friend was dead at the time." "Sir," the answer would be, "you mistake the matter. Whether he was dead or alive, makes no possible difference. The harmony of my picture required the contrast of his grey eyes and white hair, his nankeen trousers, and his glorious white hat. The question is not of truth and falsehood, of which you seem to know nothing, but of picturesque effect. That mass of white was there absolutely necessary. You do not seem to have read Newman. It is little matter whether such things be true or not

1846.

now; they will come to be true in time, if nobody contradicts them."

Our pleasure in the book is diminished in some degree, by regarding it rather as a romance founded on fact, than as an actual record of incidents. Something is done when any addition is given to our means of knowing our great men, and we welcome this volume accordingly; distinguishing, however, between it and volumes which do not claim the right of the poet and painter, to give their mermen and mermaids fishes' tails, festooned in love knots.

The first of these sketches is one of Robert Hall. Of Hall our author heard early. In his childhood he was taught to think of him as great and extraordinary. "My mother would tell me, how she had often seen him, when a student in the Baptist Theological School at Bristol, pacing the streets with only one stocking on, or occasionally with two on one foot."Witness! "Does your mother know you are out?"-How did she learn the latter fact?—Is this true ?—or—impious son that you are— -will you tell us that you regard your own mother as a minor personage?—a subordinate character as something no better than Lord Brougham, and only brought in "to heighten the interest of the picture."

The story of the stockings made our author long to behold the man of whom it was told. Hall's station of duty was at Leicester, where our author first heard him preach. He occasionally visited Bristol, and he preached at Broadmead Chapel. Our author went into the vestry, and he and a crowd of others remained there till Hall's arrival. On coming in, Hall threw off his great coat-threw himself on the hearth rug-got a pipe and tobacco, and began smoking. This was his usual habit before preaching. Tobacco and opium were at all times taken by him in great quantities, to deaden the sense of pain produced by some disease of the kidneys, from which he was never wholly free.

Our author left him to his pipe, and succeeded in getting a seat opposite the pulpit. The aisles were carpeted. This was a luxury then unusual; but necessary, both on account of Hall's nervousness, and also, because his

voice was so low that he could not otherwise be easily heard.

In a pew near him, our author saw Brougham and Mackintosh. Brougham's is not the nose of a hero! but it is a nose that will not be quiet; and it attracted the stranger's attention. It twitched. It wriggled. "It danced a jig, with the angles of the mouth for partners." It was our author's fate to see it often again—in Chancery-in Exeter Hall-in the House of Lords. When last seen, "it was wagging scornfully at the Bench of Bishops."

A feeling of dramatic propriety, or a severe sense of truth, compels our author to say that Brougham was shabbily dressed. His clothes seemed to have been bought an hour before in Seven Dials. His pantaloons reached about half way down a pair of unpolished Wellington boots. Next him was a well-dressed man, who nodded his head gently-perhaps, reprovingly-when the man with the nose (will you not order PUNCH and see that nose?) addressed him. This was Mackintosh.

Admiration of Hall's talents brought every one to hear. Cottle tells us of an Irish bishop, a dean, and thirteen clergymen being seen together at Broadmead Chapel, to listen to the great preacher of the Dissenters. Parr said the man is inspired ;" and Hannah More, speaking to a bishop or something of the kind, said "there is no man in the Church, nor out of it, comparable in talents to Robert Hall."*

"The services preliminary to the sermon had been nearly gone through, and a hymn was being sung, when Mr. Hall ascended slowly, and, I thought, wearily, the pulpit stairs. Few, on looking at his somewhat unwieldy and rather ungraceful figure, would have been prepossessed in his favour; and as he sat down in the pulpit, and looked languidly round on the congregation, I experienced, I know not why, a feeling of disappointment; but that speedily wore off. Having taken the Bible from the desk, and selected the place of the text, he returned it to the cushion, and then leaned back in his seat, his large head drooping so that his chin reposed on his broad chest. As if in deep reverie, he remained in this position until the last tones of the hymn ceased; when he rose, and read his text- The Father of

Lights.' At first his voice was scarcely audible, and there appeared some slight hesitation; but this soon wore off, and, as he warmed with his subject, he poured forth such a continuous strain of eloquence, that it seemed as if it flowed from an inexhaustible source. His tones were, although low, beautifully modulated; but, owing to some affection in his throat, his speech was, at short intervals, interrupted by a short spasmodic cough. During the delivery of his brilliant paragraphs, the most breathless silence reigned throughout the vast assemblage; but his momentary cessation was the signal for general relaxation from an attention so intense that it became almost painful. It was curious to observe how every neck was stretched out, so that not a word which fell from those eloquent lips should be lost; and the suspended breathings of those around me evinced how intensely all were hanging on his charmed words. Mr. Hall's fluency was wonderful, and his command of language unsurpassed. I will not mar the beauty of his discourse, by attempting to describe it; but, as his hearers followed him, whilst, by his vivid imagination, he conveyed his hearers through the starry skies, and reasoned from those lights of the universe, what the Father of Lights must be, all became lost in wonder and admiration. But the crowning glory of his sermon was his allusion to the hea venly world, whose beatific glories he expatiated on with almost the eloquence of an angel. He appeared like one inspired; and as he guided us by living streams, and led us over the celestial fields, he seemed carried away by his subject, and his face beamed as if it reflected heaven's own light. And this was the man who, but an hour before, had lain down on the ground, in the excess of his agony; and who, from his earliest years, had constantly endured the most excruciating torture which man can be called on to bear! For often has he been heard to say, that he had never known one waking hour free from extreme pain."

Some of the anecdotes which are transferred from one great man to another, are here told of Hall. They may or may not be true, but are as little worth repeating as Lord Eldon's jests. He described one preacher "as

a great man in his line." "And pray what is his line?" "Why," said Hall, "he is a remarkably good she preacher, sir." "A she preacher, sir." "Soft preaching is his line, sir." Hall mortified one of the autograph Furies, by writing in her album, instead of the expected compliment, "It is my humble opinion that albums are very foolish things.-ROBERT HALL."

Hall's mouth was large. At a breakfast party at Bristol, a young minister prayed, that the Lord would

66

open his mouth wider than ever." Hall afterwards asked him, "Why did you pray that my mouth might be opened wider than ever. It could not well be done, sir, unless it was slit from ear to ear, sir." The jest is an irreverent one, and the story was scarce worth telling; we transcribe it, however, as it seems to justify the strange portrait of Hall, engraved in Gilfillan's book.

There are particularities of style in this volume, which are justified rather by principles of philosophical grammar than by the practice of writers of English; and the sentence which commences our author's notice of Foster, and follows his account of Hall, gives a good example of this :

"The greatest of John Foster's Bristol contemporaries was him of whom we have, in the last chapters, penned some reminiscences."

His fa

Foster was born in 1770. ther was a weaver. Dr. Fawcett, of whose church Foster was a member, kept a large school, from which, after a few years, John Foster was sent to the Baptist College, Stoker Croft, Bristol. He appears to have first preached at Newcastle-on-Tyne. The Essays by which he is probably still best known, were written in a series of letters to his future wife. In 1805, the "Ecclectic Review was started. Foster was the principal contributor, and his essays have since been separated from the other papers of that very valuable review. Foster's writ