came scuttling down the aisle, with a step so quick and reso. lute, as rather to alarm certain prejudices I had on the score of clerical solemnity. Had I met him on a parade ground, I should have singled him out as some general in undress, spite of the decided stoop contracted in study; the iron-gray hair brushed stiffly toward the back of the head; the keen, sagacious eyes, the firm, hard lines of the brown and wrinkled visage, and the passion and power latent about the mouth, with its long and scornful under lip, bespoke a character more likely to attack than to suffer. His manner did not change my first impression. The ceremonies preliminary to the sermon were dispatched in rather a summary way. A petition in the long prayer was expressed so pithily I have never forgotten it.

"I forget now what reprehensible intrigue our rulers were busy in at the time, but the doctor, after praying for their adoption of various useful measures, alluded to their conduct in the following terms: 'And, O Lord, grant we may not despise our rulers; and grant they may not act so, that we can't help it.' It may be doubted whether any English bishop has ever uttered a similar prayer for king and parliament. To deliver his sermon, the preacher stood bolt upright, stiff as a musket. At first, he twitched off and replaced his spectacles a dozen times in as many minutes, with a nervous motion, gesturing meanwhile with frequent pump-handle strokes of his right arm; but as he went on, his unaffected language began to glow with animation, his simple style became figurative and graphic, and flashes of irony lighted up the dark groundwork of his puritanical reasoning. Smiles and tears chased each other over the faces of many in the audience. His peroration was one of

J*

great beauty and power. I have heard him hundreds of times since, and he has never failed to justify his claim to the title of 'the old man eloquent.'

The "father of the Beechers" is worthy of everlasting remembrance, because of his manliness. We want iron men in these days, more than we want splendid preachers or passionate poets. Lyman Beecher has infused into the ministry a new spirit of reform. He is a living rebuke to all ministerial cowards. He has lived a life of incessant toil, yet has habituated himself to such manly recreations that he has not been obliged to waste one half his existence in recovering lost health. One hundred such men can revolutionize a nation, for they impress themselves ineffaceably upon their generation.