freshness and raciness of thought and expression that marked it as the growth of his own mind, and gave an interest to his familiar remarks, as well as to the more elaborate productions of his mighty genius. Possessed of art and refinement in the highest degree, he had the rare and strange felicity of retaining unim paired the charm of native beauty.

Among the predominant qualities of his nature, one of the most obvious was his openness, his ingenuous unreserve, his social communicativeness. Conversation was not less his congenial element than contemplation. He evidently delighted to disclose and impart the accumulated stores of his mind; while he seemed to luxuriate in that unequalled fluency of graceful or energetic language with which he was gifted. The warmth of his affections was proportioned to the strength of his intellect. His own mental opulence did not make him independent on the converse and friendship of those who were poor in comparison with himself. He felt, in the language of Cicero, and as he has elegantly portrayed his feelings in the sermon on the death of Dr. Ryland, that, "Caritate et benevolentia sublata, omnis est è vita sublata jucunditas."

The benevolence of his capacious heart greatly contributed at once to inspire and increase his love of society and conversation; while, in the social circle, and in the solemn assembly, he appeared as a distinguished representative, a most expressive organ of our nature, in all its more familiar sentiments, or in all its more sublime conceptions and aspirations. Hence he was regarded by the mul titudes who sought his public or his private presence as a kind of universal property, whom all parties had a right to enjoy, and none to monopolize: before him, all forgot their denominations, as he appeared to forget his own, in the comprehensive idea of the church of Christ.

In recollecting the moral features of his character, it is impossible to forget the consummate truth and sincerity which left its unequivocal stamp on all he said, of which a suspicion never occurred to any one, and which gave to his discourses a solidity and an impressiveness, which otherwise their argument and eloquence could never have commanded. Never has there been a stronger, a more universal confidence in the sacred orator, as one whose eloquence was kindled in his own heart; never were the testimony of faith, and the rapture of hope, exhibited in a more manifestly genuine, unaffected, and consequently in a more convincing form. His was truly the " generoso incoctum pectus Honesto." This added to his ministry a singular and inestimable charm. Hence, more than any other advocate of evangelical principles, he was revered, even by the irreligious. His peculiar ascendency over such was not acquired by any degree of compromise in his exhibition of spiritual religion; it was the involuntary result of their conviction that his earnestness was as perfect as his eloquence. Never can there have been a preacher more strikingly characterized by a dignified simplicity, a majesty unalloyed by pomp: never was there a finer combination of the utmost manliness and grandeur with the utmost delicacy and pathos. No wonder that such qualities, combined in such perfection, should have produced so strong and so extensive an enchantment.

It must be acknowledged that the moral graces of his character derived a peculiar and accidental advantage from the intellectual power and splendour with which they were united; a remark particularly applicable to that child-like simplicity by which he was distinguished, and to that delicate and refined modesty which was the natural indication of an interior and inwrought humility. "Be clothed with humility," was the subject of his last lecture preparatory to the communion, the last entire address which I heard from his lips (Jan. 1831); and, as I returned in company with some members of the Church of England, who privileged themselves with hearing him on these monthly opportunities, we were all impressed by the force which his pathetic exhortation acquired from his own conspicuous example of the grace he had recommended. His humility gave a charm to his character, and to his preaching, which all his more brilliant qualities, without it, could not have supplied; while it served as a dark background, from which their brilliant contrast rose the more impressive and sublime.

In thus slightly glancing at some of the more retired graces with which he was adorned, I cannot dismiss the hasty and unfinished sketch without referring to

that sweet sunshine of serenity, cheerfulness, and bland good-nature which, unobscured by so much acute or wearing pain, habitually beamed in his noble aspect, and diffused its genial influence alike over his converse and his preaching. A friend, subject to constitutional depression of spirits, assured me that, on several occasions, he has found his sadness soothed by the balm of a visit or a sermon, for which he had resorted to Mr. Hall. Nothing morose, nothing gloomy, either in his natural temper or in his religious views, impaired the fascination of his presence, or the benefit of his ministry.

The remembrance of such a man, especially as it is now embalmed and sanctified by death (and his death was altogether in harmony with his character), cannot leave any other than a beneficial influence, ennobling and elevating to the mind and the heart. The name of "Robert Hall" is rich in sacred as well as splendid associations; a memento of consecrated intellect and energy; an inspiring watchword for the cultivation of Christian graces and of heavenly affections; an antidote to all that is unworthy in principle or practice; an attraction to whatever, in the intellectual or moral system, bears the stamp of unaffected excellence; whatever qualifies for the fruition of spiritual and eternal blessings; whatever is allied to the love of CHRIST and GOD.

OBSERVATIONS

ON

MR. HALL'S CHARACTER AS A PREACHER.

BY JOHN FOSTER.

THE biographical and literary illustrations of Mr. Hall's character and performances expected from the highly qualified editor of his works, and from the eminent person who has engaged for a part of that tribute to his memory,* may render any formal attempt in addition liable to be regarded as both superfluous and intrusive; the public, besides, have been extensively and very long in possession of their own means of forming that judgment which has pronounced him the first preacher of the age and again, so soon after the removal of such a man, while the sentiments of friendship and admiration are finding their natural expression in the language of unrestrained eulogy, it is hardly permitted to assume a judicial impartiality. From these considerations it has been with very great reluctance that I have consented, in compliance with the wishes of some of Mr. Hall's friends, to attempt a short description of what he was in the special capacity of a preacher; a subject which must indeed be of chief account in any memorial of him; but may also admit of being taken in some degree separately from the general view of his life, character, and writings.

For more reasons than that it must be one cause, added to others, of an imperfect competence to describe him in that capacity, I have to regret the disadvantage of not having been, more than very occasionally, perhaps hardly ten times in all, a hearer of Mr. Hall till within the last few years of his life. It appears to be the opinion of all those attendants on his late ministrations, who had also been his hearers in former times (and from recollection of the few sermons which I heard many years since my own impression would be the same), that advancing age, together with the severe and almost continual pressure of pain, had produced a sensible effect on his preaching, perceptible in an abatement of the energy and splendour of his eloquence. He was less apt to be excited to that intense ardour of emotion and utterance which so often, animating to the extreme emphasis a train of sentiments impressive by their intrinsic force, had held dominion over every faculty of thought and feeling in a large assembly. It is not meant, however,

*These observations were written, and transmitted to the publishers, a considerable time before the lamented and unexpected decease of Sir J. Mackintosh. A very few slight notes have been added in the last revisal for the press.

that a considerable degree of this ancient fire did not frequently appear glowing and shining again. Within the course of a moderate number of sermons there would be one or more which brought back the preacher of the times long past to the view of those who had heard him in those times.

I have reason to believe that this representation of his diminished energy should be nearly limited to a very late period, the period when an increased but reluctant use of opiates became absolutely necessary, to enable him to endure the pain which he had suffered throughout his life, and when another obscure malady was gradually working towards a fatal termination. For at a time not more than seven or eight years since, I heard in close succession several sermons delivered in so ardent an excitement of sentiment and manner as I could not conceive it possible for himself or any other orator to have surpassed. Even so lately as within the last four or five years of his life, the recurrence of something approaching to this was not so infrequent as to leave any apprehension that it might not soon be displayed again.

There was some compensation for the abatement of this character of force and vehemence, supplied by a certain tone of kindness, a milder pathos, more sensibly expressive of benevolence towards his hearers, than the impetuous, the almost imperious energy so often predominant when an undepressed vitality of the physical system was auxiliary to the utmost excitement of his mind.

There seems to be a perfect agreement of opinion that a considerable decline of the power or the activity of his imagination was evident in the latter part of his life. The felicities of figure and allusion of all kinds, sometimes illustrative by close analogy, often gay and humorous, sometimes splendid, less abounded in his conversation. And in his public discourses there appeared to be a much rarer occurrence of those striking images in which a series of thoughts seemed to take fire in passing on, to end in a still more striking figure, with the effect of an explosion. So that, from persons who would occasionally go to hear him with much the same taste and notions as they would carry to a theatrical or mere oratorical exhibition, and caring little about religious truth and instruction, there might be heard complaints of disappointment, expressed in terms of more than hinted depreciation. They had hardly any other idea of eloquence, even that of the pulpit, than that it must be brilliant; and they certainly might happen to hear (at the late period in question) several of his sermons which had not more than a very moderate share of this attraction. But even such persons, if disposed to attend his preaching regularly for a few weeks, might have been sure to hear some sermons in which the solidity of thought was finely inspirited with the sparkling quality they were requiring.

But whatever reduction his imagination may have suffered from age and the oppression of disease and pain, it is on all hands admitted that there was no decline in what he valued far more in both himself and others, and what all, except very young or defectively cultivated persons and inferior poets, must regard as the highest of mental endowments-the intellectual power. His wonderful ability for comprehending and reasoning, his quickness of apprehension, his faculty for analyzing a subject to its elements, for seizing on the essential points, for going back to principles and forward to consequences, and for bringing out into an intelligible and sometimes very obvious form what appeared obscure or perplexed, remained unaltered to the last. This noble intellect, thus seen with a diminished lustre of imagination, suggested the idea of a lofty eminence raising its form and summit