bellowed, that I have thought some of nature's journeymen had made men and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. "First Player. I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us. "Ham. O reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns, speak no more then is set down for them, for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the mean time some necessary question of the play be then to be considered; that's villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready.

แ 'Aye, so, God be wi' you.-Now I am alone,
O what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit,
That from her working all his visage wanned;
Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,

A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
For Hecuba!

What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba

That he should weep for her? What would he do

Had he the motive and the cue for passion

That I have? He would drown the stage with tears,
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech;

Make mad the guilty, and appal the free,

Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears.

Yet I,

A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak

Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A vile defeat was made.

Humph! I have heard

That guilty creatures, sitting at a play,
Have, by the very cunning of the scene,
Been struck so to the soul, that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions;

For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father

Before mine uncle. I'll observe his looks;
I'll cut him to the quick; if he do blench
I know my course. The spirit that I have seen
May be a devil; and the devil hath power
To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
(As he is very potent with such spirits,)
Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds
More relative than this. The play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

C.-See page 38.

We cannot indorse the writer's view in this passage. The reasons assigned are invalid. If it were true that religious sentiment" would not be universally received in a "mixed meeting," does that show that such sentiments should not be used in such a place? We might ask, What other persuasion would influence all? If we should refuse to employ arguments or persuasions which would not have universally the desired effect, we should use none at all. But he overlooks the obvious fact, that man is universally a being of "religious sentiment," with a profound inherent sense of right and wrong deep seated in his moral nature. However defective his standard of judgment may be, man everywhere is found with a strong admiration of what he judges to be right, and detestation of what is wrong; the operations of a universal conscience. Hence, all men worship, however erroneously, and no depths of ignorance or degradation are so great as to prevent it. It may indeed be doubted whether any other argument or persuasion is so universal in its adaptation and success as a religious one. This principle in man is as strong as general, and as safe as it is strong. The honest religious convictions of men are the last they yield. Even life itself will be sacrificed before these. This is the primary and ultimate principle of our being, to which earth and heaven make their final appeal, touching man's highest interests, and we aver that all eloquence culminates around this glowing truth. When the orator has shorn himself of this mighty impulse of the human heart, he has lost his leverage to move the world. What is it that imparts to the inspired penmen their superhuman eloquence, but their religious themes and their application to man's spiritual nature. Without emotion it is idle to talk of eloquence. The Christian orator, in the fact that he is a Christian, is moved by a deeper, purer, and stronger class of emotions than any other. Hence it

has become notorious that pagan orators have fallen very far below when compared with the Christian. Whoever is constituted by nature or culture for high attainments in oratory, has a soul of the purest and most lofty conceptions and exquisite sensibilities; and such a soul kindles into a glowing eloquence on no subject as it does on moral truth and beauty, God's attributes and man's immortality.

D.-See page 68.

What is here said of the House of Commons should be applied with a slight modification to the pulpit. Embellishment seems out of place in a Gospel sermon, except under strong excitement, and of the most thoroughly chastened and refined character. Dazzling, gorgeous, or flippant imagery attached to the solemn and weighty truths of God is an incongruity, obscuring those truths or diverting attention from them. Thoughtful people feel that their common sense is trifled with while the preacher seeks to amuse rather than instruct and save them, by which he shows he has no deep and abiding sense or truthful appreciation of what he utters.

Pulpit declamation produces a similar result. With many noble exceptions the training of modern scholars in our first institutions of learning tends directly to establish an empty, heartless, and declamatory style of speaking. Let almost any student for six or nine years repeat in public every two weeks the composition of others, composition which does not excite a single emotion of his own soul; let him also put on all the airs of some eloquent man, when he will appear like David in Saul's armor, and nothing but a miracle will prevent him from falling into this style of speaking.

Habit contracted during all these forming years will never be counteracted. A close observer will perceive that the most prominent feature in modern pulpit speaking is declamation, and it is not strange it produces no more effect. Cicero said: "We must never separate philosophy from eloquence.”

We see no possible remedy for this lamentable state of pulpit oratory, except what our author here recommends, namely, that the basis of all delivery should be a conversational tone. What was true with the House of Commons is true with all informed and thoughtful hearers, either there, in the Senate, or in the house of the Lord. When public speaking varies from a conversational tone, under strong excitement of the speaker, producing a corresponding emotion of the hearers, they will move on together without repulsion. But when a speaker attempts

to seize and carry by storm his auditors, while he is as cold and unmoved as they are, he commits a blunder by which he loses his power over all enlightened mind. Such hearers feel at once that they are not reasoned with as rational beings, but that an attempt is made to sweep them away as by a whirlwind, they know not where. Alas! for our modern eloquence, how much of it is of this kind?

E.-See page 76.

This is a terrible sarcasm. With a large class of English and American clergymen we are certain it is not true; but we are not sure but it applies to a minority, at least, in our own country. The fear of advancing an idea never before put forth; the fear of using an illustration never before used; the fear of making a gesture not named in the books, cripples the originality and naturalness of a minister. Hence the apparent constraint and stiff mechanical style so common in pulpit manner. Dullness and deadness among the hearers follow, while the clergy, like a becalmed sea, fall to a stupid level of a harmless mediocrity. Because there are a few cardinal points of revealed truth which it is admitted should be often repeated and insisted upon, keeping them prominently before the public mind, many seem to suppose nothing else should be preached! This is called "loyalty to old Christianity,” "abiding in the old paths." "Whatsoever is new in Christianity,' it is said, "is false." This may be true of religion when spoken of as having been exhaustively studied, and the last truth and its application found out. But if everything in Christianity is false beyond what many clergymen know of it, there is very little in it either true or false. This is a fine subterfuge for forceless and unstudious men to hide behind: the orthodoxy of a few fundamental doctrines as an apology for non-progress in Biblical learning. The truth is, there is more in the book of God than has ever yet been taught or found out. Those ministers of Christ who study his word as closely and severely as they do their classics and philosophies, are able to bring forth things both new and old. Much of the sterility of pulpit themes and mannerisms grows out of a too close confinement to a few theological points, to the general exclusion of those subjects lying in the rich and comparatively unexhausted fields of Christian morality, or the application of Christian principles to practical life. This neglect has proved exceedingly detrimental to the Christian Church, not only as it affects the interest and vivacity of pulpit style, but also the intelligent and exemplary character of Christian life.

F.-See page 78.

If what talent, learning, and piety there is in the pulpit were used to the greatest possible advantage, we believe the good accomplished thereby would be immensely increased. There are several facts confronting us at once, as we come to pass judgment on the talents and success of clergymen. Success not unfrequently bears no proportion to ability, but often seems to be the inverse ratio of it. Men acknowledged to be powerful in thought and literary accomplishments, make but a small impression as speakers. Why is this? Their power is latent, "undeveloped." What has caused this? It is not a lack of effort; for usually these men are laborious and faithful. It is because the development has been obstructed. Trace it back and it will be found to lie in their wrong manner. If the style is monotonous, dull, and without emphasis; if the voice is harsh and unsuited to the utterances; if the logic is cold and unsympathizing; if the language and illustrations have not vivacity and pertinency, no matter what the strength, the populace will leave that speaker. Were all hearers, scholars, and logical thinkers it would be otherwise.

But we see, again, some inferior man in all these respects, who draws after him the crowd, and is powerfully effective. How is this? It is his manner, nothing more nor less. Who believes that a Spurgeon bears any comparison in intellectual strength to a Butler, Paley, or Watson? Yet it is no hyperbole to say that, as a speaker, he influences his thousands where they did their hundreds. Every one knows there is something repulsive and deadening in a certain kind of speaking, while a different mode of utterance is attracting and moving. Two things, however, trouble us greatly in contemplating this aspect of the subject; we can hardly discover what it is that constitutes this difference, and to which of the two classes we ourselves belong. need very much the kind offices of some intelligent and thoroughly faithful friend, more faithful doubtless than we are with others, or we shall live and die in a perplexing ignorance of the causes of our inefficiency, but greatly wondering that we are not better appreciated

Here we

G.-See page 95.

One will see from this instance alone how very dangerous, and fatal even, to dignified and solemn discourse is a careless and distasteful use of comparison. Let all accustomed to use it study well the effect thus produced. But when selected with good literary taste and refinement