poetry, where it was dictated and animated by energy of thought; and very reasonably wished that Christian sentiments might assume a language as impressive as any subject had ever employed to fascinate or command. But, unfortunately, they forgot that eloquence resides essentially in the thought; and that no words can make genuine eloquence of that which would not be such in the plainest, that could fully express the sense. Or, probably, they were quite confident of the excellence of the thoughts that were demanding to be so finely sounded forth. Perhaps they concluded them to be vigorous and sublime, from the very circumstance that they disdained to shew themselves in plain lan. guage. The writers would be but little inclined to suspect poverty or feebleness in the thoughts which seemed so naturally to be assuming in their minds and on their pages such a magnificent style. A gaudy verbosity is always eloquence, in the opinion of him that writes it; but what is the effect on the reader? Real eloquence strikes with immediate force, and leaves not the possibility of asking or thinking, whether it be eloquence; but the sounding sentences of these writers leave you cool enough to examine, with doubtful curiosity, a language that seems threatening to move or astonish you without actually doing so. It is something like the case of a false alarm of thunder; where a sober man, who is not apt to startle at sounds, looks out to see whether it be not the rumbling of a cart. Very much at your ease, you contrast the pomp of the expression with the quality of the thoughts; and then read on for amusement, or cease to read, from disgust. In a serious hour, indeed, the feelings both of amusement and disgust give place to the regret that it should be in the power of bad writing to bring the most important subjects in danger of something worse than failing to interest. The unpleasing effect it has on your own mind, will lead you to apprehend its having a very injurious one on many others.

"A principal device in the fabrication of this style is to multiply epithets, dry epithets, laid on the surface, and into which no vitality of the sentiment is found to circulate. You may take a number of the words out of each page, and find that the sense is neither more nor less for your having cleared the composition of these epithets of chalk of various colours, with which the tame thoughts had submitted to be dappled and made fine."

No one who is in any degree acquainted with what is called the religious world, can

fail to have suggested to his recollection a number of preachers, whose professional portraits are painted to the life in the above paragraphs. The singularly just and happy remarks upon verbiage, with which it commences, will, we imagine, remind every reader of a certain northern divine, who has acquired — perhaps more by his writings than his sermons-a considerable reputation in Scotland, to which he has added not a little by his orations during occasional visits to England. Notwithstanding the great popularity of this individual, we will hazard an opinion, that he is described with admirable fidelity in the passage we have quoted. If any one wll so far withstand the infectious influence of his overstrained and incessant energy in the delivery of his discourses, to analyze them carefully, or, (which will be the easier task of the two,) if he will sit down to a careful examination of his writings, he will, we are satisfied, conclude that their chief distinction is the disproportion, both in quantity and quality, between the thought and the language employed. A very characteristic and

effective discourse from this individual was described by a greater than he, who was one of his auditory, as containing but two ideas, "and upon these," continued the critic, "his mind turned as upon a pivot." His printed productions amply corroborate the justice of this remark. Pages upon pages are occupied in the diversified illustration of a single idea, and that generally by no means of a profound or recondite character, and the whole force of which, and its entire bearing on the argument, might have been distinctly shewn in one brief, unadorned sentence. The author seems as if he were continually labouring to shew that truth exceeds gold as much in its malleability as in its value, and beating out a very small portion of it till it becomes co-extensive with "many a rood of language; though, in some instances, it must be added, there are large portions of the soil, on which the naked eye can discern not a particle of the more precious material. In the construction of his sentences, moreover, he seems frequently to be making the experiment how many superfluous words and clauses he may accumulate_without wholly concealing the sense. Some of these sentences are produced and attenuated at the close, as if they were designed to suggest to the fancy of the reader the idea of those small animals of the lizard tribe, whose tails are so long and taper, that the end of them seems too far removed from the centre of the system, to be under the control of the muscles of motion, and

are dragged after the animal in all manner of irregular and accidental windings. A sentence in one of this author's printed lectures occurs to us at this moment which may illustrate our ineaning. It concludes with these words " a succession," (we are not sure that this substantive is not qualified with the adjective infinite,) "which ever flows, without stop, and without termination," words which,

for all the purposes of elucidation and euphony, might have been replaced by a series of those uncouth monosyllables which form the chorus of some of our old English songs. But it is not in the spirit of literary criticism that we are making these remarks. We are desirous of shewing that the habit of composition and of pulpit oratory, on which we are animadverting, constitutes one of those causes of the inefficiency of preaching, which it is the purpose of this paper to specify. Little need be said in order to substantiate this opinion. Let it only be remembered that this inveterate vice of amplification is necessarily hostile to that closeness of argument, by which alone the preacher can hope to impress on the minds of his hearers the evidences and the doctrines of Christianity. Nor is it less inconsistent with that consecutive prosecution of a scriptural topic by which alone the grand object of religious instruction can be secured.

The popularity of the individual to whom we have been referring has, of course, engendered a multitude of servile imitators, and these, as usual, have only succeeded in representing the defects of their prototype. For these we must look nearer home and many of our readers who reside in the metropolis will at once fix upon a knot of popular preachers in the suburbs, both clergymen and dissenters, who, with some shades of difference between them, may all be classed among those "mock-eloquent" orators, whom Mr. Foster describes in the latter part of the remarks we have extracted. There is one, for example, of whom it is scarcely too much to say, that the staple commodity of his discourses is metaphor. His figures are drawn from every department of nature; and, unless, like the great bard, he can, not only exhaust worlds," but, also "imagine new," we should conceive that the materials of his rhetoric must by this time have well nigh failed him. He appears to err in limine. He does not seem to know that in prose a metaphor is out of place whenever the meaning of the speaker may be explained with equal brevity and clearness by the more simple and direct mode of expression. Yet a little

reflection will shew that it is a just principle; for, with all the advantages which this figure possesses, it must be obvious that it necessarily diverts the attention from the very subject for the elucidation of which it is adopted. Erring on this cardinal point, it may well be supposed that a large proportion of these metaphors only serve to obscure the subject, or to render "darkness visible;" and of this, those hearers who take the trouble to think as well as listen, must be painfully conscious. But even this is not the most serious evil arising from that profuse adoption of metaphorical language, which is the prominent feature in the school we are noticing. Its effects, unhappily, are not solely of this negative character. A large proportion of the figures thus gratuitously introduced are vicious in their construction, lame and monstrous, and must often remind the hearer of "the porteress of hell-gate," who 66. seem'd woman to the waist, and fair, But ended foul in many a scaly fold Voluminous and vast.'"

Without describing further this style of preaching, it will be obvious that it must be almost necessarily fatal to simplicity of manner and of purpose. The facility with which it produces its effect upon that vast majority who are captivated by what is showy and superficial, is of itself a strong temptation to that serious fault in a teacher of religion, which an inspired apostle designates "preaching himself;" and it may not be inappropriate here to notice that class in which it has produced this effect by fostering affectation and the love of display. Of this the religious world in England has a lamentable instance in one whose love of popularity has driven him from one ridiculous novelty to another, until, having apparently exhausted all the arts by which weak minds are imposed upon, he has sunk into a miserable fanatic, the idol only of those whom he either found deranged, or made them so. Perhaps no man has done more serious injury to religion than this individual, by drawing down upon it those indiscriminate vituperations which are only due to fanaticism and folly. There was a time when from the evidence he gave of considerable talents, and the unusual attention which he excited in the higher ranks of society, better things were expected from him. The utmost hope that can now be entertained of him is, that his occasional appearance above the low tide in which he has sunk may serve as a beacon to those who are tempted to follow the same course.

The majority of this class, however, seem not to have been intended to exercise