share in the general activity. And so verily it is. There is scarcely such a being now-a-days as your sluggish and slumbering literateur, reposing under the petty shadow of his laurels, dreaming of immortality, and soothing his soul with the pleasing idea that, because he is the stare of a coterie, he is the "observed of all observers ;" and that every body else is as intensely conscious of his minute merits as a happy vanity has rendered himself. Nor are there, on the other hand, many specimens, now-a-days, of a still sadder species of illusion,—a man of fancied genius, dividing his days between the study and the tavern, enacting the part of Savage and Dermody, without a ray of their talent. This disgusting kind of absurdity is dead and buried. Genius, in our time, is up and doing, "working while it is day." The most vigorous are now also the most active, and may we not say, the most virtuous of minds.

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And were we to name one quality amid the assemblage of peculiarities distinguishing the subject of this sketch, as more than another his, it would be that of activity; of rest less, burning, unappeasable activity. Some necessity of action seems laid upon him. Some invisible scourge seems suspended over his head, urging him onwards. see this quality as strong on him at this hour, when the gray hairs of age are beginning, like a crown of glory, to gather round his head, as it was in his fiery youth. "A great river, in its ordinary state, is equal to a small one when swollen into a torrent.' So the aged and ordinary state of Dr. Chalmers' feelings is equal to the extremes, the paroxysms, the juvenile raptures of less energetic minds. What others shrink from as the very brink of insanity, is his starting point, the first step of his aspiring spirit.

We heard him the other day addressing an audience of two thousand persons. The audience was exciting, and we

saw from the first that he was to be sucked into the Mahlstrom of his passion sooner than is ordinary with him. Generally he rises by distinct and gradual stages into the full swell of his power; but in the present case, after a few introductory remarks, he rushed at once into his most rapid and fervid manner. Ere the middle of his two hours' speech, he had reached a climax whence to rise seemed hopeless. Like an eagle who has reached his highest limit, and who remits and lowers his strong flight, so he consented to let himself down to a less giddy elevation, to dally with, if not to slur over his subject. A yawn began to spread through the audience. There were ominous revertings to the door; watches, so appalling to orators, were beginning to appear; and there were fearful whispers, with "dry lips," "When will he close?" And soon it became apparent that he was closing; he suddenly struck again his former high key note; he quoted the lines of Burns, "From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs," &c. It was answered by a burst of applause. He replied by a ten minutes' torrent of the most brilliant eloquence, and sat down amid thunders of acclamations. The triumph of the orator was complete.

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Dr. Chalmers has already found his level, and it is one equally removed from the over-estimates of partial friends, and the depreciation of party, he has no personal foes. great thinker, enkindling original thought into eloquence, he can hardly be called. He is no Hall in the pellucid perfections of style; no Coleridge, showering from the painted window of his mind rich and mystic light into the interior of the sanctuary. To Burke he has been often compared, though we could never well understand why. The only point of resemblance we can perceive between the two, is a certain hurrying, impetuous motion of style, which denotes the extreme degree of possible excitement; which reveals in both the contortions of the Sybil along with the inspira

tion. We notice this particularly in Burke's later and Chalmers' earlier works. In their fierce pages, the very connecting particles,-the very "ands" seem inspired and enkindled by the surrounding fury. But, bating this similarity, which is one rather of temperament than of genius, no two intellects can be more different than those of Burke and Chalmers. The great forte of Chalmers is immediate impression. Burke's speeches were, we know, generally delivered to empty benches. Chalmers' intellect is spacious and lofty, but in every thing like depth and comprehensiveness, inferior to Burke's. Chalmers' fancy is bold, but in its colours there is a sameness as well as splendour. Those of Burke are varied and brilliant as the hues of nature; his "imperial imagination" has brought the universe within its range. Of almost all styles, that of Chalmers is the most tinctured with mannerism. Burke's is much more diversified; it wanders at will, like the wind which bloweth where it listeth, now uttering sounds of deepest tragedy, and now of tenderest beauty. It is, like Shakspeare's, a style not to be anticipated, which changes upon you evermore, uncertain and unexpected. In the course of Chalmers' writings, there are many passages over which you hang and pause, in breathless admiration; but there are few striking things, few compact and aphoristic sentences, at which you start, which fix themselves down upon your memory, and which, once heard, are never forgotten. What you do carry away is generally a forcible alliteration. It is, on the other hand, the charm of Edmund Burke, that his winged words are heavy with golden ideas, that he scatters sentences of the most memorable character and precious worth, embodying in them lessons of profound and practical wisdom, amid the rushing whirlwind of his eloquence. Chalmers writes a barbarous and Babylonish diction, redeemed by great energy, and steeped in genuine enthusiasm, and set off with

rugged ornaments. Burke's style is English, or, if ever he coins new words, or makes new combinations, it is because the resources of the language are sometimes all unequal to the double demand of his understanding and his genius.

While admitting Chalmers to be the most powerful Christian orator, Irving excepted, our country has produced for two centuries, we must place him, as a writer, in the second rank, alike of past and present preachers. When you compare his style with Barrow's, you are ashamed to think that, in the course of two hundred years, the language seems so to have retrograded; the contrast is so great between the true taste, the copiousness, and the power of at once cutting the most delicate discriminations, and catching the freshest colours, which belongs to the diction of the one, and the comparative coarseness, and scantiness, and mannerism of the other. When you compare his imagination with Jeremy Taylor's, you become sensible of the difference between a strong, but bounded, and an inexhaustible faculty. When you put his discourses as wholes beside those of Horsley in their manly vigour, they seem imperfect, spasmodic, and monotonous. As a thinker, he is, compared to Foster, hackneyed, and to Isaac Taylor, timorous. But as an orator, hurried away himself by a demoniac energy, his faculties and his heart alike subservient to, and swimming in a current of ungovernable eloquence; and with the power of conveying entire to others his most peculiar emotions, and of breathing out upon them, as from snorting nostrils, his contagious fire; not only does he stand alone in this age, but we question if in any period, in this single quality, his equal has appeared. Demosthenes, every body knows, had immense energy, but his devoτns was broken, interrupted, and had rarely the rushing fluency we mean to ascribe to Chalmers. Cicero is ornate and elaborate; he is a river cut

through an artificial bed, rather than a mountain torrent. Jeremy Taylor's stream meanders, "gliding at its own sweet will," rather than sweeps right onward to the sea of its object. Barrow, to vary the figure, takes sometimes the gallop in grand style, but his eye never gets red in the race, nor do his nostrils breathe fire, or spring blood. Howe makes every now and then a noble leap, and then subsides into a quiet and deliberate pace. Burke is next him in this quality. Curran, Grattan, Sheil, and Phillips, frequently exhibit this rapid and involuntary movement of mind and style; but it is marred in the first by diffusion; in the two next by a certain irregular and starting motion, springing from their continual antithesis; and in the last by the enormous degree in which he possesses his country's diseases, of intellectual incontinence, and diabetes verborum. Hall occasionally rises to this style; but is too fastidious and careful of minute elegancies to sustain it long or reach it often. Irving shines in brief and passionate bursts, but never indulges in long and strong sweeps through the gulfs of ether. But with Chalmers such perilous movement is a mere necessity of his mind: his works read like one great sentence; a unique enthusiasm inspirits with one deep glow all his sermons, and all his volumes; and, so far from needing to lash, or sting himself into this rapid rate, he must pursue a break-neck pace, or come to a full stop. Animation is a poor word for describing either his style or manner. Excitement, convulsion, are fit, yet feeble terms for his appearance, either at the desk or the pulpit. And yet, what painter has ever ventured to draw him preaching? And hence the dulness and paltriness of almost all the prints; they show the sibyl off the stool, the eye dim and meaningless, not shot with excitement, and glaring at vacancy; the lion sleeping, not the mane-shaking, tail-tossing, and sand-spurn