ART. VII.-A DISCOURSE ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF THE REV. JOSEPH TUCKERMAN, D.D.-Delivered at the Warren Street Chapel, on Sunday Evening, Jan. 31, 1841, by WILLIAM E. CHANNING, D.D. Boston: William Crosby and Co. London: John Green, 121, Newgate Street.

We must unburthen ourselves of something of what we have felt in reading this delightful effusion. It has been long since we have read anything that has given us such pleasure. This discourse must not be confounded with what are commonly called funeral sermons. Neither is it a funeral oration, or a panegyric. It belongs to none of them, and yet it touches upon them all. It is the Moral Portrait of a Christian by the first living Christian Master. The lines are struck forth with equal firmness and freedom; the colours are laid on with as much brilliance as delicacy; and the expression of the whole-that indefinable and indispensable something, by the presence of which genius is proved, and by the kind and degree of which it is tested-is so affectionate and endearing, so truly benign and beautiful, so clear with truth, and so radiant with holiness and love, that we should imagine it impossible for any one to lay down this little record without saying to himself, "And I too am a Christian! Why is this man's life so unlike my own?"

This power of imparting the love of what he loves is, we think, a very peculiar and distinctive quality of Dr. Channing's writings. He found little to love in Napoleon's dazzling character; and, accordingly, we rise from the perusal of his estimate of it without any dangerous glow of enthusiasm for the Man of Austerlitz and of Lodi. But his reverence for Milton was a settled passion of his soul; and his analysis of the great poet's life and genius communicated, not only the conception, but the participation of his feelings. His sympathy for the character of the gentle and noble Fenelon was obviously a portion of his . own heart and life; and he imparted it accordingly, he multiplied the lovers of Fenelon with every copy of his calm yet glowing delineation. And in treating of a character yet superior to them all, to which Napoleon's greatness is imbecility, which eclipses in act the sublimities of Milton's song, and which rises above even the last delightful character by a superiority so vast, that even Fenelon's love seems human, when compared with the love of CHRIST,--in treating of this, the heavenliest character of Earth, he has, we think, preserved the same high peculiarity,

and made the love which he describes, not only a communicated impression of the moment, but, in many, very many, cases, a transferred and independent affection of the soul. This it is, and nothing so much as this, that gives us our value for the writings of Dr. Channing. They impart the love which they express. They do not excite only, but conduct, the ethereal fire. And, in the paper before us, this high distinction is preserved. We have a portrait of Dr. Tuckerman, such as not only makes us say, "This man shall have a place in our list of true philanthropists and Christians," but,-returning to the mental comment stated in substance before,- "How divine a thing is the philanthropy of Christianity! We are thankful, that it is not yet too late to go and do likewise."

We do not mean, of course, that the reading of this paper will send men forth upon a mission like that of Dr. Tuckerman. We must expect, that, as yet, such angel visits will be few and far between; and that, even among those who devote themselves to his peculiar ministry, few will be found who enter it with such a full and glorious sense of the mortality of evil, and the omnipotence of Good. What we mean is, that these writings have a direct tendency to produce that spirit which makes life itself more Christian in all its connections and communions,-with rich and poor, with home and society, with Man and with Heaven. We envy not his feelings, who, under such a flood of hallowing and revealing light, sees no dim or dark places in himself, which it is fitted to penetrate and to purify. We value them, not because they were uttered from an influential pulpit, not because they have received the applause of two hemispheres, but because we feel that a virtue goes out of them to make Christianity itself more beloved, and the life of the follower of Jesus more guided by the spirit of his Master. These works are dear to us, neither for their eloquence nor for their fame, but, mainly and growingly for their Christianizing power.

We love to trace what appears to us to be the self-interpretings of Providence. In a world, where so much is dark, we rejoice when we see breaks and gleamings of what strikes us as distinct providential light. Such appears to us to be the synchronism and juxta-position of two such minds as those of Tuckerman and Channing. They mutually gave, and reflected light; and that light was indeed light from heaven. We disclaim any ungenerous desire to depreciate the literary productions of Dr. Tuckerman. They contain a rich mass both of the Beautiful and the Useful. They are precious and indispensable studies for the philanthropist and the Christian. We trust they will never perish; and we should think it a bad prognostic for

society if they were ever in danger of perishing. But with all this, we imagine that the most important light thrown upon this excellent man's character and life has not come from his own writings. We owe our own highest appreciation of them to Dr. Channing. We confess that, personally strangers as we were to this distinguished Christian, we should not have conceived of him, from his own writings so noble, or we believe so correct, an opinion, as we have derived from those of his surviving contemporary and friend; and, in particular, from the Discourse which is now before us. We now believe that we know Dr. Tuckerman. We have him before us, not as a character free from the clinging frailties of humanity, but as One, in whom those frailties were lost in the glory that a great and holy purpose threw around him, and which made his whole course bright with a light that was not of this world. The Providence, which raised up the Agent of this purpose, seems to us to have raised up also the fellow-being who was to explain the principles of its agency. Dr. Tuckerman never did justice to himself or to his cause. He never could have done so. It was a hopeless impossibility. He could no more have done so, than Raffaelle could have done justice to the Ideal of Beauty within him, or Dante to his own conception of the Simple and the Terrible, or Shakspere to his own vast grasp of the general and the particular, the infinite and the infinitismal, in the Universe (his own reign) of Human Nature and Character. In the present case, Dr. Channing has supplied the great deficiency. He has applied his own intimacy with his departed friend to the delicate and important task of developing the finer mysteries of his character, the modes of his operation, and the sources of his power. And he has done this in such a loving, and honouring, and self-forgetting spirit, that the beauty of this brotherhood of fine Christian Minds comes out upon us with a force that we cannot express, and, in endeavouring to express which, we feel, with shrinking and throbbing hearts, the feebleness of Words, when they have such Truth to deal with.

The eye, which sees all other beauty, sees not its own. The mind, which feels the warmest and the widest love, rarely finds or makes leisure to describe the intensity or the extent of what it feels. Strong passion leads less to expression than to action. Love pours itself into works, while it oversweeps all words. Thus it is, that some of the greatest philosophers and philanthropists have written little or nothing on the subject of philosophy or philanthropy. Socrates wrote nothing. CHRIST wrote nothing. Possibly he could not write ;-but if he could write, and had written, we are convinced that a less perfect idea of his Charac

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ter would have been conveyed by his own writings, than we have received of it from the impressions and effects of his own life upon others. With a fine and reverent touch-with a full sense of the disparities-we would compare one of the best of the followers of CHRIST with his Master. In doing this we do neither wrong. Our friend "sleepeth ;" and, had Jesus stood by his grave, we should have had to exclaim, on witnessing his emotion, Behold, how he loved him!" We say, then, that as the idea we have formed of the character and life of Jesus,derived, as it is, from the impressions made by them upon his disciples, is more complete and satisfactory than any which he himself could have imparted; so the character and life of the true Christian of whom we are speaking, have been revealed to us in a much more ample and luminous manner, by the pen of his wise and sympathizing contemporary, than they could have been by his own, even though he had had equal power in the use of it. And we hope we shall be forgiven if we call this a Providence, in something more than the loose and common acceptation of the term. We cannot refer it to a mere fortuitous coincidence. We cannot regard it as the ordinary and casual falling-in of one gifted mind with another. It was a great, a complex, and a far-extending Want, suited with its correspondent and proportionate Supply. It was at least it seems to us-a rare Providential Agency, needing an Interpreter, and unconsciously drawing one to itself, and carrying him along with it. And if, in our thus speaking of the surviving friend as the disciple of the lost one, there be anything that may give offence to a certain class of his admirers, we would remind them (though to them we are not writing) that this is the light in which, with affecting ingenuousness and simplicity, Dr. Channing constantly shows us that he regards himself. He is content to place his Intellect at the footstool of his friend's Heart. He constantly refers to their long and lovely intercourse in the character of a heart-disciple. We would not interfere with a representation, whose beauty lies in its truth. If Dr. Channing saw, in his lamented brother, one of the rarest and finest Incarnations of Christianity, we would join with him in his reverence for it, without any wish to remove him, under the vain idea of raising him, from the attitude in which he has placed himself to express it.

In these last remarks, we have been referring, not to this Discourse alone, but to no inconsiderable portion of Dr. Channing's printed writings, which was either composed expressly for the furtherance of the Ministry at Large, or is imbued with the very spirit which called it forth, and which alone can sus

tain it. We have no doubt whatever, that Dr. Channing would unhesitatingly ascribe the peculiar and sustained interest, which he has long taken in the subject, to the "communications which he had by the way" with the Friend to whom his sympathy was of such inestimable help and value. And it is from the whole of these writings-inclusive of this last censer of incense, kindled by Christian Genius at the altar of Christian Lovethat we estimate the worth at which the living Friend prized the character and labours of the fine spirit that has gone to its home, and to what an extent he felt the high theophilanthropy of a being, who, instead of complaining of having "fallen on evil days and evil men," gathered to him, in the nineteenth age, so much of the Spirit of Christ, and put it into act in a life so nearly resembling the life of an Apostle. We know not, on recalling what we have read or heard of their beautiful intercourse, which of the parties was the more benefited by its influences; but we believe that the eye of the GREAT FATHER must look down with serene and sublime approval upon such rare and hallowed communions, and that another life will renew them with "thoughts that wander through eternity."

Passing on to the Discourse itself, we are arrested at the very outset by the following striking remarks on the true Dignity and Duty of Society:

"The glory and happiness of a city consist not in the number, but the character of its population. Of all the fine arts in a city, the grandest is the art of forming noble specimens of humanity. The costliest productions of our manufactures are cheap, compared with a wise and good human being. A city, which should practically adopt the principle, that man is worth more than wealth or show, would gain an impulse that would place it at the head of cities. A city, in which men should be trained worthy of the name, would become the metropolis of the earth.

God has prospered us, and, as we believe, is again to prosper us in our business; and let us show our gratitude by inquiring for what end prosperity is given, and how it may best accomplish the end of the giver. Let us use it to give a higher character to our city, to send refining, purifying influences through every department of life. Let us especially use it, to multiply good influences in those classes which are most exposed to temptation. Let us use it to prevent the propagation of crime from parent to child. Let us use it in behalf of those in whom our nature is most depressed, and who, if neglected, will probably bring on themselves the arm of penal law. Nothing is so just a cause of self-respect in a city, as the healthy, moral condition of those who are most exposed to crime. This is the best proof, that the prosperous classes are wise, intelligent, and worthy of their prosperity. Crime is to the State what dangerous disease is to the human frame, and to expel