Anna Jameson (1794-1860), art critic, the eldest of the four daughters of Brownell Murphy, miniaturist, was born at Dublin and brought up in England at Whitehaven, at Newcastle, and in or near London. From sixteen a governess, in 1825 she married Robert Jameson, a barrister, who from 1829 held appointments in Dominica and Canada. They never got on well together, and from that date, with the exception of a dismal visit to Canada (1836–38), she lived apart from him. Her numerous writings include The Diary of an Ennuyée (1826), memoranda made during a tour in France and Italy; Loves of the Poets (1829); Lives of Celebrated Female Sovereigns (1831); Characteristics of Women (1832); Beauties of the Court of Charles II. (1833); Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad (1834); Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838); Pictures of the Social Life of Germany, as represented in the Dramas of the Princess Amelia of Saxony (1840). Works so various cannot all be of like temper or equal interest, but there was good ground for Professor Wilson's warm eulogium on Mrs Jameson as 'one of the most eloquent of our female writers; full of feeling and fancy; a true enthusiast with a glowing soul.' Her most famous contributions to literature were in the department of art criticism, and her Handbook to the Public Galleries of Art (1842) and Companion to Private Galleries of Art in and near London (1844) were long standard works. Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters and Memoirs on Art, Literature, and Social Morals (1845 and 1846) gave more scope to her literary gifts and artistic sympathies. But she is now mainly remembered as authoress of Sacred and Legendary Art (2 vols. 1848), dealing with the evangelists, apostles, and other scriptural characters, with the early saints and doctors, as represented in art. To this succeeded Legends of the Monastic Orders (1850), practically a second series; Legends of the Madonna (1852), a third; and The History of Our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art, a fourth, which was finished after her death by Lady Eastlake. So that her magnum opus constituted a history of Christian art, and of the Church through art, down to the seventeenth century. Her Commonplace Book was issued in 1854; and her niece, Geraldine Macpherson, published Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson in 1878. She took a keen interest in philanthropic enterprises, warmly supported the Sisters of Mercy, promoted the training of nurses, and, before most of her contemporaries, advocated the thorough education of women so as to qualify them for various employment.

Mrs Jameson's work has not quite lost either its value or its popularity, though new art canons have had their vogue and Raphael has yielded the palm to Botticelli. Her criticism is some of it out of date, and at her best and even for her own day her technical knowledge of art was very defective. She was an art critic of the pre-Ruskinian period, and of quite pre-Morellian methods and principles.

Her legends she took from the obvious sources, quite uncritically, as in duty bound-from the Legenda Aurea, from Ribadeneyra, or from Alban Butler, as was most convenient or picturesque ; her historical equipment was that of an accomplished, sympathetic, well-read, and industrious but not profoundly or really learned woman. Her sensibilities often ran away with her judgment, or she wandered off into the history of the picture and then talked of all it suggested to her rather than of the picture itself. Therein lies part of her charm ; she wrote out of the fullness of her heart, and became one of the most popular and attractive teachers on subjects for which the movement associated with Tractarianism had prepared the English public. Her technical weakness in nowise affects the beauty of her stories; her work was for many much more than a history. Longfellow wrote to her God bless you for this book! How very precious it is to me! Indeed, I can hardly try to express to you the feelings of affection with which I have cherished it from the first moment it reached us. It most amply supplies the cravings of the religious nature.'

Sir Gerard Noel.

Our Chef de Voyage-for so we chose to entitle him who was the planner and director of the excursion—was one of the most accomplished and most eccentric of human beings: even courtesy might have termed him old at seventy; but old age and he were many miles asunder, and it seemed as though he had made some compact with Time, like that of Faust with the Devil, and was not to surrender to his inevitable adversary till the last moment. Years could not quench his vivacity nor 'stale his infinite variety.' He had been one of the Prince's wild companions in the days of Sheridan and Fox, and could play alternately blackguard and gentleman, each in perfection; but the high-born gentleman ever prevailed. He had been heir to an enormous income, most of which had slipped through his fingers unknownst, as the Irish say, and had stood in the way of a coronet, which somehow or other had passed over his head to light on that of his eldest son. He had lived a life which would have ruined twenty iron constitutions, and had suffered what might well have broken twenty hearts of common stuff; but his self-complacency was invulnerable, his animal spirits inexhaustible, his activity indefatigable. The eccentricities of this singular man have been matter of celebrity; but against each of these stories it would be easy to place some act of benevolence, some trait of gentlemanly feeling, which would at least neutralise their effect. He often told me that he had early in life selected three models after which to form his own character and conduct-namely, De Grammont, Hotspur, and Lord Herbert of Cherbury; and he certainly did unite, in a greater degree than he knew himself, the characteristics of all three. .. On looking round after Donna Anna's song, I was surprised to see our Chef de Voyage bathed in tears; but, no whit disconcerted, he merely wiped them away, saying, with a smile, 'It is the very prettiest, softest thing to cry to one's self!' Afterwards, when we were in the carriage, he expressed his surprise that any man should be ashamed of tears. For my own part,' he added, 'when I wish

to enjoy the very high sublime of luxury, I dine alone, order a mutton cutlet cuite à point, with a bottle of Burgundy on one side and Ovid's Epistle of Penelope to Ulysses on the other. And so I read, and eat, and cry to myself.' And then he repeated with enthusiasm —

'Hanc tua Penelope lento tibi mittit, Ulysse :

Nil mihi rescribas, attamen ipse veni;'

his eyes glistening as he recited the lines.

(From the Memoirs of Mrs Jameson.) It was shortly after her husband's departure for the West Indies that Mrs Jameson made a tour on the Continent with her father and her father's patron, the Sir Gerard of the above reminiscence.

From the 'Commonplace Book.'

It is a common observation, that girls of lively talents are apt to grow pert and satirical. I fell into this danger when about ten years old. Sallies at the expense of certain people, ill-looking, or ill-dressed, or ridiculous, or foolish, had been laughed at and applauded in company, until, without being naturally malignant, I ran some risk of becoming so from sheer vanity.

The fables which appeal to our high moral sympathies may sometimes do as much for us as the truths of science. So thought our Saviour when He taught the multitude in parables. A good clergyman who lived near us, a famous Persian scholar, took it into his head to teach me Persian- I was then about seven years oldand I set to work with infinite delight and earnestness. All I learned was soon forgotten; but a few years afterwards, happening to stumble on a volume of Sir William Jones's works-his Persian Grammar-it revived my Orientalism, and I began to study it eagerly. Among the exercises given was a Persian fable or poem-one of those traditions of our Lord which are preserved in the East. The beautiful apologue of St Peter and the Cherries,' which Goethe has versified or imitated, is a well-known example. This fable I allude to was something similar, but I have not met with the original these forty years, and must give it here from memory.

6

'Jesus,' says the story, arrived one evening at the gates of a certain city, and He sent His disciples forward to prepare supper, while He Himself, intent on doing good, walked through the streets into the market-place. And He saw at the corner of the market some people gathered together looking at an object on the ground; and He drew near to see what it might be. It was a dead dog, with a halter round his neck, by which he appeared to have been dragged through the dirt; and a viler, a more abject, a more unclean thing never met the eyes of man. And those who stood by looked on with abhorrence. "Faugh!” said one, stopping his nose; "it pollutes the air." "How long," said another, "shall this foul beast offend our sight?" "Look at his torn hide," said a third; "one could not even cut a shoe out of it." 'And his ears," said a fourth, all draggled and bleeding!" "No doubt," said a fifth, "he hath been hanged for thieving! And Jesus heard them, and looking down compassionately on the dead creature, He said, "Pearls are not equal to the whiteness of his teeth!" Then the people turned towards Him with amazement, and said among themselves : "Who is this? This must be Jesus of Nazareth, for only He could find something to pity and approve even in a dead dog;" and being ashamed, they bowed their heads before Him, and went each on his way.'

I can recall at this hour the vivid yet softening and pathetic impression left on my fancy by this old Eastern

story.

It struck me as exquisitely humorous, as well as exquisitely beautiful. It gave me a pain in my conscience, for it seemed thenceforward so easy and so vulgar to say satirical things, and so much nobler to be benign and merciful, and I took the lesson so home that I was in great danger of falling into the opposite extreme-of seeking the beautiful even in the midst of the corrupt and the repulsive.

From the 'Legends of the Madonna.'

Of the pictures in our galleries, public or private-of the architectural adornments of those majestic edifices which sprang up in the Middle Ages (where they have not been despoiled or desecrated by a zeal as fervent as that which reared them), the largest and most beautiful portion have reference to the Madonna-her character, her person, her history. It was a theme which never tired her votaries-whether, as in the hands of great and sincere artists, it became one of the noblest and loveliest, or, as in the hands of superficial, unbelieving, time-serving artists, one of the most degraded. All that human genius, inspired by faith, could achieve of best-all that fanaticism, sensualism, atheism, could perpetuate of worst, do we find in the cycle of those representations which have been dedicated to the glory of the Virgin. And, indeed, the ethics of the Madonnaworship, as evolved in art, might be not unaptly likened to the ethics of human love: so long as the object of sense remained in subjection to the moral idea-so long as the appeal was to the best of our faculties and affections so long was the image grand or refined, and the influences to be ranked with those which have helped to humanise and civilise our race; but so soon as the object became a mere idol, then worship and worshippers, art and artists, were together degraded.

From 'The Loves of the Poets.'

The theory which I wish to illustrate, as far as my limited powers permit, is this, that where a Woman has been exalted above the rest of her sex by the talents of a lover, and consigned to enduring fame and perpetuity of praise, the passion was real, and was merited; that no deep or lasting interest was ever founded in fancy or in fiction; that truth, in short, is the basis of all excellence in amatory poetry as in everything else; for where truth is, there is good of some sort, and where there is truth and good, there must be beauty, there must be durability of fame. Truth is the golden chain which links the terrestrial with the celestial, which sets the seal of Heaven on the things of this earth, and stamps them to immortality. Poets have risen up and been the mere fashion of a day, and have set up idols which have been the idols of a day. If the worship be out of date and the idols cast down, it is because those adorers wanted sincerity of purpose and feeling; their raptures were feigned; their incense was bought or adulterate. In the brain or in the fancy, one beauty may eclipse another-one coquette may drive out another, and, tricked off in airy verse, they float away unregarded like morning vapours, which the beam of genius has tinged with a transient brightness; but let the heart be once touched, and it is not only wakened but inspired; the lover kindled into the poet presents to her he loves his cup of ambrosial praise; she tastes and the woman is transmuted into a divinity. When the Grecian sculptor carved out his deities in marble, and left us wondrous and godlike shapes,

Where

the time I was at Venice I was in a rage with Canaletti. I could not come upon a palace, or a church, or a corner of a canal which I had not seen in one or other of his pictures. At every moment I was reminded of him. But how has he painted Venice! Just as we have the face of a beloved friend reproduced by the daguerreotype, or by some bad conscientious painter-some fellow who gives us eyes, nose, and mouth by measure of compass, and leaves out all sentiment, all countenance; we cannot deny the identity, and we cannot endure it. in Canaletti are the glowing evening skies-the transparent gleaming waters-the bright green of the vineshadowed Traghetto-the freshness and the glory-the dreamy, aërial, fantastic splendour of this city of the sea? Look at one of his pictures-all is real, opaque, solid, stony, formal; even his skies and water-and is that Venice? 'But,' says my friend, if you would have Venice, seek it in Turner's pictures!' True, I may seek it, but shall I find it? Venice is like a dream-but this dream upon the canvas, do you call this Venice? The exquisite precision of form, the wondrous beauty of detail, the clear, delicate lines of the flying perspective --so sharp and defined in the midst of a flood of brightness-where are they? Canaletti gives us the forms without the colour or light; Turner, the colour and light without the forms. But if you would take into your soul the very soul and inward life and spirit of Venice-breathe the same air-go to Titian; there is more of Venice in his 'Cornaro Family' or his 'Pesaro Madonna' than in all the Canalettis in the corridor at Windsor. Beautiful they are, I must needs say it; but when I think of enchanting Venice, the most beautiful are to me like prose translations of poetry-petrifactions, materialities: 'We start, for life is wanting there!' I know not how it is, but certainly things that would elsewhere displease, delight us at Venice. It has been said, for instance, Put down the church of St Mark anywhere but in the Piazza, it is barbarous :' here, where east and west have met to blend together, it is glorious. And again, with regard to the sepulchral effigies in our churches, I have always been of Mr Westmacott's principles and party; always on the side of those who denounce the intrusion of monuments of human pride insolently paraded in God's temple; and surely cavaliers on prancing horses in a church should seem the very acme of such irreverence and impropriety in taste; but here the impression is far different. O those awful, grim, mounted warriors and doges, high over our heads against the walls of the San Giovanni e Paolo and the Frari!-man and horse in panoply of state, colossal, lifelike-suspended, as it were, so far above us that we cannot conceive how they came there,

·

or are kept there, by human means alone. It seems as though they had been lifted up and fixed on their airy pedestals as by a spell. At whatever hour I visited those churches-and that was almost daily--whether at morn, or noon, or in the deepening twilight, still did those marvellous effigies-man and steed, and trampled Turk; or mitred doge, upright and stiff in his saddlefix me as if fascinated; and still I looked up at them, wondering every day with a new wonder, and scarce repressing the startled exclamation, Good heavens ! how came they there?' And not to forget the great wonder of modern times-I hear people talking of a railway across the Lagune, as if it were to unpoetise Venice; as if this new approach were a malignant invention to bring the siren of the Adriatic into the 'dull catalogue of common things;' and they call on me to join the outcry, to echo sentimental denunciations, quoted out of Murray's Hand-book; but I cannot-I have no sympathy with them. To me that tremendous bridge, spanning the sea, only adds to the wonderful one wonder more; to great sources of thought one yet greater. Those persons, methinks, must be strangely prosaic au fond who can see poetry in a Gothic pinnacle, or a crumbling temple, or a gladiator's circus, and in this gigantic causeway and its seventy-five arches, traversed with fiery speed by dragons, brazen-winged, to which neither alp nor ocean can oppose a barrier, nothing but a commonplace. I must say I pity them. I see a future fraught with hopes for Venice'Twining memories of old time

With new virtues more sublime!'

To the last extract, which is from 'The House of Titian' in her Memoirs and Essays (1846), Mrs Jameson adds in a footnote: 'Guardi gives the local colouring of Venice better than Canaletti; Bonnington better than either, in one or two examples that remain to us.' See also the Commonplace Book (1854) and the Life of her by her niece above mentioned. The series of the Sacred and Legendary Art volumes were republished in handsome form in 1889 and 1890.

Mary Somerville (1780–1872) was a worthy younger contemporary of Caroline Herschel, and was perhaps the most remarkable woman of her time. She attained to all but the very highest proficiency in physical science, was a member of various learned societies at home and abroad, received the approbation and esteem of Laplace, Humboldt, Wollaston, Playfair, Herschel, and other eminent contemporaries, and at the age of ninetytwo was still engaged in solving mathematical problems! Born in her uncle's manse of Jedburgh, she was the daughter of Sir William George Fairfax, Vice-Admiral of the Red, Lord Duncan's captain at the battle of Camperdown in 1797. Brought up at Burntisland, she had before she was fourteen studied Euclid and Algebra, but concealed as much as possible her acquirements. In 1804 she was married to her cousin, Captain Samuel Greig, son of a Russian admiral, and himself Russian consul in London. Captain Greig died two years after their union; and in 1812 his widow married another cousin, Dr William Somerville (1769-1860), Inspector of the Army Medical Board. His father, the minister of Jedburgh, was author of two historical works-histories of the Revolution and of the reign of Queen Anne,

and of memoirs of his own Life and Times, in which the old man records with pride that Mary Fairfax had been born and nursed in his house, her father being at that time abroad on public service, and that she had long lived in his family and was occasionally his pupil. Mrs Somerville, whose second husband warmly fostered her studies, attracted notice by experiments on the magnetic influence of the violet rays of the solar spectrum. Lord Brougham then asked her to prepare for the Society for Diffusion of Useful Knowledge a popular summary of the Mécanique Céleste of Laplace. When her manuscript was submitted to Sir John Herschel, he pronounced it a book for posterity, and quite above the class for which Lord Brougham's course was intended. Mrs Somerville herself modestly said of it, 'I simply translated Laplace's work from algebra into common language.' When she consented to publish it as an independent work, her version of The Mechanism of the Heavens (1831) fixed her reputation. The Royal Society admitted her a member, and commissioned a bust of her by Chantrey. When Mrs Somerville met Laplace in Paris, the great geometer (who did not live to see the English version of his great work) is reported to have said, 'There have been only three women who have understood me-yourself, Caroline Herschel, and a Mrs Greig, of whom I have never been able to learn anything.' 'I was Mrs Greig,' said the modest little woman. 'So, then, there are only two of you!' exclaimed Laplace. In 1834 Mrs Somerville published The Connection of the Physical Sciences, giving a summary of the phenomena of the universe, which in her lifetime reached a ninth edition. Her Physical Geography (1848) was chiefly written in Rome. Eighteen years after her Physical Geography, Mrs Somerville published two volumes On Molecular and Microscopic Science (1866). She still continued her scientific studies; and in January 1872 a visitor wrote: 'She is still full of vigour, and working away at her mathematical researches, being particularly occupied just now with the theory of quaternions, a branch of transcendent mathematics which very few, if any, persons of Mrs Somerville's age and sex have ever had the wish or power to study. For many years she lived with her family at Florence, where she was as assiduous in the cultivation of her flowergarden and of music as of mathematics. Sir Robert Peel- of all Prime-Ministers since the days of Halifax the most attentive to literary and scientific claims-had in 1835 placed her on the pension list for £300 per annum. In her old age Mrs Somerville had amused herself by writing her reminiscences, which were published in 1873 by her daughter as the Personal Recollections of Mary Somerville, admirable like her scientific writings not merely from the interest of the matter, but for their clear and lively style. She thus describes the twelvemonth that she passed at Musselburgh:

School Methods in 1790.

At ten years old I was sent to a boarding-school kept by a Miss Primrose at Musselburgh, where I was utterly wretched. The change from perfect liberty to perpetual restraint was in itself a great trial; besides, being naturally shy and timid, I was afraid of strangers, and although Miss Primrose was not unkind she had an habitual frown, which even the elder girls dreaded. My future companions, who were all older than I, came round me like a swarm of bees, and asked if my father had a title, what was the name of our estate, if we kept a carriage, and other such questions, which made me first feel the difference of station. However, the girls were very kind, and often bathed my eyes to prevent our stern mistress from seeing that I was perpetually in tears. A few days after my arrival, although perfectly straight and well made, I was enclosed in stiff stays with a steel busk in front, while, above my frock, bands drew my shoulders back till the shoulder-blades met. Then a

steel rod, with a semicircle which went under the chin, was clasped to the steel busk in my stays. In this constrained state I, and most of the younger girls, had to prepare our lessons. The chief thing I had to do was to learn by heart a page of Johnson's Dictionary; not only to spell the words, give their parts of speech and meaning, but as an exercise of memory to remember their order of succession. Besides I had to learn the first principles of writing, and the rudiments of French and English grammar. The method of teaching was extremely tedious and inefficient. Our religious duties were attended to in a remarkable way. Some of the girls were Presbyterians, others belonged to the Church of England, so Miss Primrose cut the matter short by taking us all to the kirk in the morning and to church in the afternoon. In our play-hours we amused ourselves with playing at balls, marbles, and especially at 'Scotch and English,' a game which represented a raid on the debatable land, or Border between Scotland and England, in which each party tried to rob the other of their playthings. The little ones were always compelled to be English, for the bigger girls thought it too degrading.

A Recollection of the Campagna.

I had very great delight in the Campagna of Rome; the fine range of Apennines bounding the plain, over which the fleeting shadows of the passing clouds fell, ever changing and always beautiful, whether viewed in the early morning or in the glory of the setting sun, I was never tired of admiring; and whenever I drove out, preferred a country drive to the more fashionable Villa Borghese. One day Somerville and I and our daughters went to drive towards the Tavolato, on the road to Albano. We got out of the carriage and went into a field, tempted by the wild-flowers. On one side of this field ran the aqueduct; on the other, a deep and wide ditch full of water. I had gone towards the aqueduct, leaving the others in the field. All at once we heard a loud shouting, when an enormous drove of the beautiful Campagna gray cattle, with their wide-spreading horns, came rushing wildly between us, with their heads down and their tails erect, driven by men with long spears, mounted on little spirited horses at full gallop. It was so sudden and so rapid that only after it was over did we perceive the danger we had run. As there was no possible escape, there was nothing for it but standing

still, which Somerville and my girls had presence of mind to do, and the drove, dividing, rushed like a whirlwind to the right and left of them. The danger was not so much of being gored as of being run over by the excited and terrified animals, and round the walls of Rome places of refuge are provided for those who may be passing when the cattle are driven. Near where this occurred there is a house with the inscription, 'Casa Dei Spiriti ;' but I do not think the Italians believe in either ghosts or witches; their chief superstition seems to be the 'Jettatura' or evil eye, which they have inherited from the early Romans and, I believe, Etruscans. They consider it a bad omen to meet a monk or priest on first going out in the morning. My daughters were engaged to ride with a large party, and the meet was at our house. A Roman, who happened to go out first, saw a friar, and rushed in again laughing, and waited till he was out of sight. Soon after they set off, this gentleman was thrown from his horse and ducked in a pool; so the Jettatura was fulfilled. But my daughters thought his bad seat on horseback enough to account for his fall without the evil eye.

Eliza Fletcher (1770-1858) was the daughter of a Yorkshire yeoman and land-surveyor at Oxton near Tadcaster, and against her father's wish married Archibald Fletcher (1746-1828), a Perthshire Highlander, who as an advocate in Edinburgh was conspicuous amongst the early reformers -was indeed called 'the father of burgh reform'-and acted as counsel for some of 'the Friends of the People' tried for sedition. The Fletchers were intimates of Henry Erskine, Jeffrey, Cockburn, Brougham, and the Edinburgh Review set; and Mrs Fletcher's Autobiography gives interesting glimpses of them, of the poets Campbell and Grahame, of Mrs Barbauld and Joanna Baillie, and other literary personages of the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. The book was not published till 1875. Thus she records her impressions when a friend brought her 'to read for the first time Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads :' Never shall I forget the charm I found in these poems. It was like a new era in my existence. They were in my waking thoughts day and night. They had to me all the vivid effects of the finest pictures, with the enchantment of the sweetest music, and they did much to tranquillise and strengthen my heart and mind, which bodily indisposition had somewhat weakened. My favourites were the 'Lines on Tintern Abbey,' the 'Lines left on a Yew Tree at Esthwaite Lake,' 'The Brothers,' and 'Old Michael;' and I taught my children to recite 'We are Seven' and several others.

Anne Marsh-Caldwell (1791-1874), the daughter of James Caldwell, Recorder of Newcastle-under-Lyme, and born at Linley Wood, Staffordshire, married in 1817 the junior partner of the forger Fauntleroy; and in 1834-57 produced a score of novels-the best Two Old Men's Tales, Emilia Wyndham (1846; new ed. 1888), and Norman's Bridge. In 1858 she succeeded a brother in the Linley Wood property, and resumed the name Caldwell.

Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), the greatest of Scottish nineteenth-century divines, was the son of a shipowner and general merchant at Anstruther in Fife, and at the age of twelve was sent to the college at St Andrews, where he showed a strong predilection for mathematical studies. In 1803 he was ordained minister of Kilmany, a rural parish in his native county. In addition to his parochial labours, he lectured in the different towns on chemistry and other subjects; he became an officer of a Volunteer corps; he wrote a book on the Resources of the Country, besides pamphlets on some of the topics of the day; and his interests lay elsewhere than in religious work. Bereavement and severe illness brought about a change of temper; and in preparing the article 'Christianity' for the Edinburgh Encyclopædia, he for the first time saw the incalculable importance of realising the vital truths of the Christian faith. From Kilmany Chalmers, now heart and soul a minister of the Word, removed to Glasgow; to the Tron Church in 1815, and to St John's in 1819. Here his principal sermons were delivered and published; and his fame as a preacher and author spread over Europe and to America. His appearance and manner were not prepossessing. Two acute observers-John Gibson Lockhart and Henry Cockburn described his peculiarities minutely. His voice was neither strong nor melodious, his gestures were awkward, his pronunciation broadly provincial; he also read his sermons from the manuscript, so that one wondered wherein lay the charm of his oratory. 'The magic,' says Cockburn in the Memorials of his Time, 'lies in the concentrated intensity which agitates every fibre of the man, and brings out his meaning by words and emphasis of significant force, and rolls his magnificent periods clearly and irresistibly along, and kindles the whole composition with living fire. He no sooner approaches the edge of his high region than his animation makes the commencing awkwardness be forgotten, and then converts his external defects into positive advantages, by showing the intellectual power that overcomes them; and getting us at last within the flame of his enthusiasm. Jeffrey's description, that he "buried his adversaries under the fragments of burning mountains," is the only image that suggests an idea of his eloquent imagination and terrible energy.' A writer in the London Magazine gave a graphic account of Chalmers's appearance 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 pew 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