as to bring one ear almost into contact with the cushion, knit his brow, assumed a sort of smile or leer, and when the period was closed, returned to his position with a kind of triumphant jerk, precisely like a man who felt that he had just made a good satirical hit. There was one circumstance in Mr. Irving's method that would alone have destroyed the effect of any eloquence. He read his discourse, and it so happened that throughout he read it incorrectly. After taking up the commencing clauses of a period, he drew back from the book, and recited them with all the fervour of extemporaneous creation, but suddenly, in the very midst of the sentence, he had to break off and refer to the manuscript again, and here he perpetually failed to catch at once the point from which he was to continue. Five or six times his eye lighted upon the matter he had just delivered, and the congregation had it over again with a clumsy "I say," to give it the air of an intended repetition. This, and frequent mistakings of particular words, and a good many false quantities, (for Mr. Irving seems to be no prosodian,) gave altogether a slovenly and bungling character to the entire exhibition. During a discourse of an hour and forty minutes, there was but one short passage that we can except from these remarks. It was a description of Paradise; and he delivered it well. There was no extravagance of posture or gesticulation, and his tones had sweetness, sincerity, and elevation. With this single exception, he made little impression. As far as we could judge from the demeanour of those around us, they were utterly unmoved. There were now and then some unseemly, though not unnatural titterings among the younger females, at the warmth of the metaphors and personifications introduced into a description of the effects of Spring upon the animal and vegetable worlds.

We had almost omitted to state, that Mr. Irving used a regular white handkerchief, with which he had frequent occasion to remove the starting drops from his brow. We are afraid that the colour was chosen for effect. On retiring from the chapel, when we cast a last look to catch the character of his countenance in repose, we observed him, as he reclined in the back of the pulpit, performing the same operation with an honest Belcher pattern.

We have read Mr. Irving's book. It was no slight task, but we positively have read it through. It now and then evinces some power; more however in the way of phrase, and in the accumulation of forcible common-places, than in original conception: but on the whole, we regard it as an imprudent publication, and considered with reference to its main object, which has been very pompously announced, the conversion or exposure of the intellectual classes, as an utter failure. The author appears to us to be a man of a capacity a little above mediocrity. He is, we doubt not, thoroughly versed in the theological doctrines of his church; for this is a matter upon which we do not presume to pronounce. His reading among popular English authors seems to have been tolerably extensive. We also give him credit for the most genuine zeal, notwithstanding the unnecessary tone of exaggeration and defiance with which it is accompanied but here our commendations must cease. His taste is vicious in the extreme. His style is at once coarse and flashy. It is, in truth, the strangest jumble we have ever encountered. There is no single term by which it can be de

scribed. He announces his preference for the models in the days of Milton, but he writes the language of no age. The phraseology of different centuries is often pressed into the service of a single period. We have some quaint turn from the times of Sir Thomas More, puritanical compounds that flourished under Cromwell, followed by a cavalcade of gaudy epithets, bringing down the diction to the day of publication. His affectation of antiquated words is excessive, and quite beneath the dignity of a Christian preacher. Mr. Irving should recollect that wot and wis and ween, and do and doth and hath, upon the latter of which he so delights to ring the changes, are all miserable matters of convention, having nothing in life to do with the objects of his ministry that there is no charity in giving refuge to a discarded expletiveno glory in raising a departed monosyllable from the dead. His style has another great defect. It is grievously incorrect. When he comes to imagery, his mind is in a mist. He talks of "abolishing pulses," "evacuating the uses of a law," the "quietus of torment," "erecting the platform of our being upon a new condition of probation." Some of his sentences are models of "metaphorical confusion." We seldom met with a more perfect adept in the art of " torturing one poor thought a thousand ways." He contrives that a leading idea shall change its dress and character with a pantomimic rapidity of execution. The Bible is with him, at one moment, a star, the very next a pavilion, Again," the rich and mellow word, with God's own wisdom mellow, and rich with all mortal and immortal attractions, is a better net to catch childhood, to catch manhood withal, than these pieces of man's wording." We could multiply examples without number; they occur in every page.

Apart from these defects, which might have been overlooked in a work of less pretension, but which, wherever they prevail, are unequivocal proofs of slovenly habits of thinking, we may generally say of Mr. Irving's composition, that in the unadorned passages, where he prefaces or sums up a topic, it resembles the version of a Papal document, cumbrous, verbose, and authoritatively meek; that in his scriptural imitations, he sometimes succeeds in bringing together masses of awful imagery, the complete effect of which, however, is too often counteracted by the intrusion of some petty quaintness; and that his Platonic personifications of the soul, and the description of its final beatitude, have a good deal of the pastoral manner and gorgeous colouring which render certain parts of the Pilgrim's Progress so delicious a treat to the imagination of the unlettered Christian.

In justice to Mr. Irving we shall select one or two of the most faultless of his impressive passages that we can find. His death-bed scenes are perhaps among the best :

"And another of a more dark and dauntless mood, who hath braved a thousand terrors, will also make a stand against terror's grisly king-and he will seek his ancient intrepidity, and search for his wonted indifference; and light smiles npon his ghastly visage, and affect levity with his palsied tongue, and parry his rising fears, and wear smoothness on his outward heart, while there is nothing but tossing and uproar beneath. He may expire in the terrible struggle-nature may fail under the unnatural contest; then he dies with desperation imprinted on his clay!

"But if he succeed in keeping the first onset down, then mark how a second and a third comes on as he waxeth feebler. Nature no longer enduring so much,

strange and incoherent words burst forth, with now and then a sentence of stern and loud defiance. This escape perceiving, he will gather up his strength, and laugh it off as reverie. And then remark him in his sleep-how his countenance suffereth change, and his breast swelleth like the deep; and his hands grasp for a hold, as if his soul were drowning; and his lips tremble and mutter, and his breath comes in sighs, or stays with long suppression, like the gusts which precede the bursting storm; and his frame shudders, and shakes the couch on which this awful scene of death is transacted. Ah! these are the ebbings and flowings of strong resolve and strong remorse. That might have been a noble man; but he rejected all, and chose wickedness, in the face of visitings of God, and therefore he is now so severely holden of death.

"And reason doth often resign her seat at the latter end of these God-despisers. Then the eye looks forth from its naked socket, ghastly and wild-terror sits enthroned upon the pale brow-he starts-he thinks that the fiends of hell are already upon him-his disordered brain gives them form and fearful shape-he speaks to them-he craves their mercy. His tender relatives beseech him to be silent, and with words of comfort assuage his terror, and recall him from his paroxysm of remorse. A calm succeeds, until disordered imagination hath recruited strength for a fresh creation of terror; and he dies with a fearful lookingfor of judgment, and of fiery indignation to consume him.”

This is undoubtedly striking; but is it original vigour, or a mere collection of appalling circumstances, which it required little skill to assemble? We have marked in italics the single idea that we did not recognise as common-place.

We like the following much better. The prevailing sentiment has little novelty, but it is natural and affecting, and is given in better taste. Describing the lukewarmness of modern Christians, and their addiction to worldly enjoyments and pursuits, he proceeds

"They carry on commerce with all lands, the bustle and noise of their traffic fill the whole earth-they go to and fro, and knowledge is increased-but how few in the hasting crowd are hasting after the kingdom of God! Meanwhile, death sweepeth on with his chilling blast, freezing up the life of generations, catching their spirits unblessed with any preparation of peace, quenching hope, and binding destiny for evermore. Their graves are dressed, and their tombs are adorned; but their spirits, where are they? How oft hath this city, where I now write these lamentations over a thoughtless age, been filled and emptied of her people since first she reared her imperial head! How many generations of her revellers have gone to another kind of revelry!-how many generations of her gay courtiers to a royal residence where courtier-arts are not!-how many generations of her toilsome tradesmen to the place of silence, where no gain can follow them! How time hath swept over her, age after age, with its consuming wave, swallowing every living thing, and bearing it away unto the shores of eternity! The sight and thought of all which is my assurance that I have not in the heat of my feelings surpassed the merit of the case. The theme is fitter for an indignant prophet, than an uninspired sinful man."

We cannot forbear extracting one more passage for the singularity, if not the excellence of the style. It is quite in the manner of an ancient Covenanter

"I would try these flush and flashy spirits with their own weapons, and play a little with them at their own game. They do but prate about their exploits at fighting, drinking, and death-despising. I can tell them of those who fought with savage beasts; yea, of maidens who durst enter as coolly as a modern bully into the ring, to take their chance with infuriated beasts of prey; and I can tell them of those who drank the molten lead as cheerfully as they do the juice of the grape, and handled the red fire and played with the bickering flames as gaily as they do with love's dimples or woman's amorous tresses. And what do

they talk of war? Have they forgot Cromwell's iron hand, who made their chivalry to skip? or the Scots Cameronians, who seven times, with their Christian chief, received the thanks of Marlborough, that first of English captains? or Gustavus of the North, whose camp sung psalms in every tent? It is not so long that they should forget Nelson's Methodists, who were the most trusted of that hero's crew. Poor men! they know nothing who do not know out of their country's history, who it was that set at nought the wilfulness of Henry VIII. and the sharp rage of the virgin Queen, against liberty, and bore the black cruelty of her Popish sister; and presented the petition of rights, and the bill of rights, and the claim of rights. Was it chivalry? was it blind bravery? No-these second-rate qualities may do for a pitched field, or a fenced ring; but, when it comes to death or liberty, death or virtue, death or religion, they wax dubious, generally bend their necks under hardship, or turn their backs for a bait of honour, or a mess of solid and substantial meat. This chivalry and brutal bravery can fight if you feed them well and bribe them well, or set them well on edge; but in the midst of hunger, and nakedness, and want, and persecution, in the day of a country's direst need, they are cowardly, treacherous, and of no avail.-Oh! these topers, these gamesters, these idle revellers, these hardened death-despisers !—they are a nation's disgrace, a nation's downfall,"

It would be beside our province to engage in any discussions upon the purely theological parts of Mr. Irving's work; but there are other matters rather hastily introduced, as it strikes us, and intemperately handled, and indeed in some degree affecting ourselves, upon which we cannot refrain from offering a few remarks. We allude to his vehement and sweeping denunciations against the literature of the day—

"Our zeal towards God, (he says) and the public good, hath been stung almost to madness by the writings of reproachable men, who give the tone to the sentimental and political world. Their poems, their criticisms, and their blasphemous pamphlets, have been like gall and wormwood to my spirit, and I have longed to summon into the field some arm of strength, which might evaporate their vile and filthy speculation, into the limbo of vanity, whence it came."

This must not be taken to apply solely to those publications that have been recently under prosecution, and which we, profane as Mr. Irving may think us, reprobate as sincerely as himself; neither is it an incidental ebullition, but one of the ever-recurring anathemas in which he has indulged against his intellectual contemporaries, with their ungodly recreations," their Magazines of wit and fashion," their "deathdespising" Reviews of the latest publications. Poor Mr. Colburn, he little dreamt, some few months back, of what was brewing for him at the other side of the Tweed; he little expected that one of these Sundays he might be summoned, with a duces tecum of the New Monthly and its contributors, to the bar of this spiritual police-office in Hatton Garden, to answer for their dark and Anti-Calvinistic ways. But there we are and without cavilling upon points of jurisdiction, we would simply ask our judge to examine us before he condemns us, and then candidly to say whether, in point of fact, we are to be classed among the sinister signs of the times. Is it unholy to indulge once a month in a little unwounding pleasantry? Is a letter from the Alps a deed of darkness? A description of St. Peter's, or Notre Dame, a lurking attack upon the kirk of Scotland? Had our Parthian Glance at a departed year any tendency to shake the public confidence in a future

state? Is the Ghost of Grimm as graceless and vicious as the embodied Baron himself was? We would respectfully put it to Mr. Irving's conscience, in his uninspired moments, whether these are matters that can endanger the souls of the readers or the writers? and whether, as a Christian censor of the age, he may not be risking his dignity and influence in exaggerating, like an ostentatious sophist in want of topics, the innocent pastimes of, on the whole, a tolerably well-conducted generation, into abominations that will surely be visited with neverending wrath?

But there is another and a more important question which this gentleman has been indiscreet enough to raise. He has crossed the Tweed with the avowed design of calling out, as it were, the intellect of the age for the supposed affronts it has offered to his notions of religion. We say nothing of the self-possession of any single person undertaking so adventurous a project; but, as the sincere friends of religion, we deprecate it as an ill-considered and dangerous proceeding. With regard to the main point, the malignant influence against which his zeal is directed, we consider Mr. Irving's assertions on the subject to be full of his characteristic exaggeration. There are now, as there at most times have been, many men of talent among the influential classes, who, unfortunately for themselves, are cut off by their peculiar habits of thinking from the consolations of Christianity, but perhaps there never was a period when such persons so cautiously abstained from the promulgation of their particular opinions. There may be one or two exceptions, but the great mass of the persons to whom we refer feel too deeply the importance of religious sanctions to the well-being of society to think of substituting in their place the cold and unavailing dogmas of a philosophical creed. Feelings of decorum, of good taste, and even of personal respectability, come in aid, and confirm those habits of salutary forbearance. The question then is, whether any service can be rendered to religion by the tone and manner which Mr. Irving has assumed towards this class. Will defiance and abuse convert them? Will offensive personalities even against those who have declared their opinions, conciliate the rest? Is it wise, by unfairly confounding poetry and criticism with blasphemy, to alarm the self-love of many, who are already, tacitly it may be, but virtually upon his side? And lastly, is there no danger in impressing upon the other orders of the community that among the high and educated all sense of religion is extinguished? These are matters upon which we cannot undertake to dwell, but it really does occur to us that they deserve Mr. Irving's most serious consideration. It would be a miserable ending of his mission to discover too late that his zeal had produced mischiefs beyond the powers of his oratory to heal.

Mr. Irving is a man of warm feelings, and can eulogise as exorbitantly as he censures. It may be interesting to know that one of the schools of modern poetry has escaped his condemnation. In the midst of his treatise upon "Judgment to come," we have the following burst of rhetorical criticism. The subject is Mr. Wordsworth

"There is one man in these realms who hath addressed himself to such a godly life, and dwelt alone amidst the grand and lovely scenes of nature, and