their passionate expostulations with their fellow men to turn their hearts to those objects which will endure for ever.

It appears, therefore, at first observation, strange, that in this country, where an irreligious spirit has never become general, the oratory of the pulpit has made so little progress. The ministers of the Established Church have not, on the whole, fulfilled the promise given in the days of its early zeal. The noble enthusiasm of Hooker-the pregnant wit of South-the genial and tolerant warmth of Tillotson-the vast power of reasoning and observation of Barrow-have rarely been copied, even feebly, by their successors. Jeremy Taylor stands altogether alone among churchmen. Who has ever manifested any portion of that exquisite intermixture of a yearning love with a heavenly fancy, which enabled him to embody and render palpable the holy charities of his religion in the loveliest and most delicate images? Who has ever so encrusted his subjects with candied words; or has seemed, like him, to take away the sting of death with "rich conceit;" or has, like him, half persuaded his hearers to believe that they heard the voice of pitying angels? Few, indeed, of the ministers of the church have been endued with the divine imagination which might combine, enlarge, and vivify the objects of sense, so as, by stately pictures, to present us with symbols of that uncreated beauty and grandeur in which hereafter we shall expatiate. The most celebrated of them have been little more than students of vast learning and research, unless, with Warburton and Horseley, they have aspired at once boldly to speculate, and imperiously to dogmatize.

Liturgy sunk deep into the heart, and prevented the devout worshipper from feeling the want of strength or variety in the discourses of the preacher. The church-yard, with its gentle risings, and pensive memorials of affection, was a silent teacher, both of vigilance and love. And the village spire, whose "silent finger points to heaven," has supplied the place of loftiest imaginings of celestial glory. Obstacles of a far different kind long prevented the advancement of pulpit eloquence among the Protestant Dissenters. The ministers first ejected for non-conformity were men of rigid honesty and virtue, but their intellectual sphere was little extended beyond that of their fellows. There cannot be a greater mistake than to suppose that they sacrificed their worldly interest from any regard to the principles of free inquiry, which have since almost become axioms. They believed that their compliance with the requisitions of the monarch would be offensive to God, and that in refusing to yield it they were doing his will; but they were prepared in their turn to assume the right of interpreting the Bible for others, and of condemning them for a more extended application of their example. Harassed, ridiculed, and afflicted, they naturally contracted an air of rigidity, and refused, in their turn, with horror, an extensive sympathy with the world. The controversies in which the learned men among the Dissenters were long occupied, having respect, not to grand and universal principles, but to petty questions of ceremony and minor points of faith, tended yet farther to confine and depress their genius. Their families were not the less scenes of love, because they preserved parental authority in its It cannot be doubted, that the species of pa- state; but the austerity of their manner tended tronage, by which the honours and emoluments to repress the imaginative faculties of the of the establishment are distributed, has tended young. If they indulged themselves in any to prevent the development of genius within relaxation of manner, it was not with flowing its pale. But, perhaps, we may find a more eloquence, but with the quaint conceit and adequate cause for the low state of its preach-grave jest that they garnished their conversaing in the very beauty and impressiveness of its rites and appointed services. The tendency of religious ceremonies, of the recurrence of old festivals, and of a solemn and dignified form of worship, is, doubtless, to keep alive A great change has taken place, of late tender associations in the heart, and to pre- years, in the literature and eloquence of Proserve the flame of devotion steady and pure, testant Dissenters. As they ceased to be ob but not to incite men to look abroad into their jects of persecution or of scorn, they insensibly nature, or to prompt any lofty excursions of lost the austerity and exclusiveness of their religious fancy. There have, doubtless, been character. They descended from their dusty eloquent preachers in the church of Rome,- retirements to share in the pursuits and innobecause in her communion the ceremonies cent enjoyments of "this bright and breathing themselves are august and fearful, and because world." Their honest bigotries gave way at her proselyting zeal inspired her sons with the warm touch of social intercourse with peculiar energy. But episcopacy in England those from whom they dissented. Meanwhile, is by far the most tolerant of systems ever the exertions of Whitefield, his glowing, pas associated with worldly power. Its ministers, sionate, and awful eloquence; his daring and until the claim of some of them, to the exclu- quenchless enthusiasm, and the deep and exsive title of evangelical, created dissensions, tensive impression which he made throughout breathed almost uniformly a spirit of mildness the kingdom, necessarily aroused those who and peace. Within its sacred boundaries, all received his essential doctrines, into new zeal. was order, repose, and charity. Its rights and The impulse thus given was happily refined observances were the helps and leaning-places by a taste for classical learning, and for the of the soul, on which it delighted to rest amidst the vicissitudes of the world, and in its approach to its final change. The fulness, the majesty, and the dignified benignities of the

tion or their discourses. Their religion wore a dark and uncouth garb; but to this we are indebted, in no small degree, for its preservation through times of demoralizing luxury.

arts and embellishments of life, which was then gradually insinuating itself into their churches. Some of the new converts who forsook the establishment, not from repug

nance to its constitution, but to its preachers, distinguished of these, we propose to direct maintained, in the first eagerness of their faith, the attention of our readers.

highly-wrought and sparkling embellishments are like ornaments of crystal, which, even in their brilliant inequalities of surface, give back to the eye little pieces of true imagery set before them.

the barbarous notion that human knowledge MR. HALL, though perhaps the most distinwas useless, and even dangerous, to the Chris-guished ornament of the Calvinistic Dissenttian minister. The absurdity of this position, ers, does not afford the best opportunity for however strikingly exemplified in the advan-criticism. His excellence does not consist in tages gained by the enemies of those who the predominance of one of his powers, but in acted on it, served only to increase the desire the exquisite proportion and harmony of all. of the more enlightened and liberal among the The richness, variety, and extent of his knownon-conformists, to emulate the church in the ledge, are not so remarkable as his absolute intellectual qualification of their preachers. mastery over it. He moves about in the lofThey speedily enlarged the means of educa- tiest sphere of contemplation, as though he tion among them for the sacred office, and en- were "native and endued to its element." He couraged those habits of study, which promote uses the finest classical allusions, the noblest a refinement and delicacy of feeling in the images, and the most exquisite words, as though minds which they enlighten. Meanwhile, their they were those which came first to his mind, active participation in the noblest schemes of and which formed his natural dialect. There benevolence, tended yet farther to expand their is not the least appearance of straining after moral horizon. Youths were found among greatness in his most magnificent excursions, them prepared to sacrifice all the enjoyments but he rises to the loftiest heights with a childof civilized life, and at the peril of their lives like ease. His style is one of the clearest and to traverse the remotest and the wildest re- simplest-the least encumbered with its own gions, that they might diffuse that religion beauty-of any which ever has been written. which is everywhere the parent of arts, chari-It is bright and lucid as a mirror, and its most ties, and peace. It is not the least benefit of their Missionary exertions, that they have given a romantic tinge to the feelings of men "in populous city pent,” and engrossed with the petty and distracting cares of commerce. These form the true Evangelical chivalry, supplying to their promoters no small measure of that mental refinement and elevation, which the far less noble endeavours to recover the Holy Sepulchre shed on Europe in the middle ages. It is not easy to estimate the advantages which spring from the extension of the imagination into the grandest regions of the earth, and from the excitement of sympathies for the condition of the most distant and degraded of the species. The merchant, whose thoughts would else rarely travel beyond his desk and his fire-side, is thus busied with high musings on the progress of the Gospel in the deserts of Africa-skims with the lonely bark over tropical seas and sends his wishes and his prayers over deserts which human footstep has rarely trodden. Missionary zeal, thus diffused among the people, has necessarily operated yet more strongly on the minds of the ministers, who have leisure to indulge in these delicious dreamings which such a cause may sanction. These excellent men are now, for the most part, not only the instructors, but the ornaments of the circles in which they move. The time which they are able to give to literature is well employed for the benefit of their flocks. In the country, more especially, their gentle manners, their extended information, and their pure and blameless lives, do incalculable good to the hearts of their ruder hearers, independent of their public services. Not only in the more solemn of their duties,-in admonishing the guilty, comforting the afflicted, and cheering the dying-do they bless those around them; but by their demeanour, usually dignified, yet cheerful, and their conversation decorous, yet lively; they raise incalculably the tone of social intercourse, and heighten the innocent enjoyment of their friends. Some of them are, at the present day, exhibiting no ordinary gifts and energies;-and to the most

The works of this great preacher are, in the highest sense of the term, imaginative, as distinguished not only from the didactic, but from the fanciful. He possesses "the vision and the faculty divine," in as high a degree as any of our writers in prose. His noblest passages do but make truth visible in the form of beauty, and "clothe upon" abstract ideas, till they be come palpable in exquisite shapes. The dullest writer would not convey the same meaning in so few words, as he has done in the most sublime of his illustrations. Imagination, when like his of the purest water, is so far from being improperly employed on divine subjects, that it only finds its real objects in the true and the eternal. This power it is which disdains the scattered elements of beauty, as they appear distinctly in an imperfect world, and strives by accumulation, and by rejecting the alloy cast on all things, to imbody to the mind that ideal beauty which shall be realized hereafter. This, by shedding a consecrating light on all it touches, and "bringing them into one," anticipates the future harmony of creation. This already sees the "soul of goodness in things evil," which shall one day change the evil into its likeness. This already begins the triumph over the separating powers of death and time, and renders their victory doubtful, by making us feel the immortality of the affec tions. Such is the faculty which is employed by Mr. Hall to its noblest uses. There is no rhetorical flourish-no mere pomp of wordsin his most eloquent discourses. With vast excursive power, indeed, he can range through all the glories of the Pagan world, and seizing those traits of beauty which they derived from

We use this epithet merely as that which will most distinctively characterize the extensive class to which it is applied-well aware that there are shades of difference among them-and that many of them would decline to call themselves after any name but that of Christ.

H

primeval revelation, restore them to the system of truth. But he is ever best when he is intensest-when he unveils the mighty foundations of the rock of ages-or makes the hearts of his hearers vibrate with a strange joy which they will recognise in more exalted stages of their being.

decide whether that freedom, at whose voice the kingdoms of Europe awoke from the sleep of ages, to run a career of virtuous emulation in every thing great and good; the freedom which dispelled the mists of superstition, and invited the nations to behold their God; whose magic touch kindled the rays of genius, the enthusiasm of poetry, and the flame of eloquence; the freedom which poured into our lap opulence and arts, and embellished life with innumerable institutions and improvements, till it became a theatre of wonders; it is for you to decide whether this freedom shall yet survive, or be covered with a funeral pall, and wrapped in eternal gloom. It is not necessary to await your determination. In the solicitude you feel to approve yourselves worthy of such a trust, every thought of what is afflicting in warfare, every apprehension of danger must vanish, and you are impatient to mingle in the battle of the civilized world. Go then, ye defenders of your country, accompa nied with every auspicious omen; advance with alacrity into the field, where God himself musters the hosts to war. Religion is too much interested in your success, not to lend you her aid; she will shed over this enter

Mr. Hall has, unfortunately, committed but few of his discourses to the press. His Sermon on the tendencies of Modern Infidelity is one of the noblest specimens of his genius. Nothing can be more fearfully sublime, than the picture which he gives of the desolate state to which Atheism would reduce the world; or more beautiful and triumphant, than his vindication of the social affections. His Sermon on the Death of Princess Charlotte contains a philosophical and eloquent development of the causes which make the sorrows of those who are encircled by the brightest appearances of happiness, peculiarly affecting; and gives an exquisite picture of the gentle victim adorned with sacrificial glories. His discourses on War-on the Discouragements and supports of the Christian Ministry and on the Work of the Holy Spirit-are of great and various excellence. But, as our limits will allow only a single extract, we pre-prise her selectest influence. While you are fer giving the close of a Sermon preached in the prospect of the invasion of England by Napoleon, in which he blends the finest remembrance of the antique world-the dearest associations of British patriotism-and the pure spirit of the gospel-in a strain as noble as could have been poured out by Tyrtæus.

engaged in the field many will repair to the closet, many to the sanctuary; the faithful of every name will employ that prayer which has power with God; the feeble hands which are unequal to any other weapon, will grasp the sword of the Spirit; and from myriads of humble, contrite hearts, the voice of intercession, supplication, and weeping, will mingle in its ascent to heaven with the shout of battle and the shock of arms.

"To form an adequate idea of the duties of this crisis, it will be necessary to raise your minds to a level with your station, to extend your views to a distant futurity, and to conse- "While you have every thing to fear from quences the most certain, though most remote. the success of the enemy, you have every By a series of criminal enterprises, by the means of preventing that success, so that it is successes of guilty ambition, the liberties of next to impossible for victory not to crown Europe have been gradually extinguished: your exertions. The extent of your resources, the subjugation of Holland, Switzerland, and under God, is equal to the justice of our cause. the free towns of Germany, has completed that But should Providence determine otherwise, catastrophe; and we are the only people in should you fall in this struggle, should the the eastern hemisphere who are in possession nation fall, you will have the satisfaction (the of equal laws, and a free constitution. Free- purest allotted to man) of having performed dom, driven from every spot on the continent, your part; your names will be enrolled with has sought an asylum in a country which she the most illustrious dead, while posterity to always chose for her favourite abode: but she the end of time, as often as they revolve the is pursued even here, and threatened with de- events of this period, (and they will incessantly struction. The inundation of lawless power, revolve them,) will turn to you a reverential after covering the whole earth, threatens to eye, while they mourn over the freedom which follow us here; and we are most exactly, most is entombed in your sepulchre. I cannot but critically placed in the only aperture where it imagine the virtuous heroes, legislators, and can be successfully repelled, in the Thermopyla patriots, of every age and country, are bending of the universe. As far as the interests of free- from their elevated seats to witness this condom are concerned, the most important by far test, as if they were incapable, till it be brought of sublunary interests, you, my countrymen, to a favourable issue, of enjoying their eternal stand in the capacity of the federal representatives of the human race; for with you it is to determine (under God) in what condition the latest posterity shall be born; their fortunes are intrusted to your care, and on your conduct at this moment depends the colour and complexion of their destiny. If liberty, after being extinguished on the continent, is suffered to expire here, whence is it ever to emerge in the midst of that thick night that will invest it? It remains with you then to

repose. Enjoy that repose, illustrious immortals! Your mantle fell when you ascended; and thousands, inflamed with your spirit, and impatient to tread in your steps, are ready to swear by Him that sitteth upon the throne, and liveth for ever and ever, they will protect freedom in her last asylum, and never desert that cause which you sustained by your labours, and cemented with your blood. And thou, sole Ruler among the children of men, to whom the shields of the earth belong, gird on thy sword, thou Most

Mighty: go forth with our hosts in the day of | channel than can be supplied by the bodily battle! Impart, in addition to their hereditary organs. The plainest, and least inspired of valour, that confidence of success which springs his discourses, are not without delicate gleams from thy presence! Pour into their hearts the of imagery and felicitous turns of expression. spirit of departed heroes! Inspire them with He expatiates on the prophecies with a kindred thine own; and, while led by thine hand, and spirit, and affords awful glimpses into the valley fighting under thy banners, open thou their of vision. He often seems to conduct his heareyes to behold in every valley and in every ers to the top of the "Delectable Mountains," plain, what the prophet beheld by the same whence they can see from afar the glorious illumination-chariots of fire, and horses of gates of the eternal city. He seems at home fire: Then shall the strong man be as tow, and the among the marvellous Revelations of St. John; maker of it as a spark; and they shall burn toge- and, while he expatiates on them, leads his ther, and none shall quench them.” hearers breathless through ever-varying scenes of mystery, far more glorious and surprising than the wildest of oriental fables. He stops when they most desire that he should proceed

There is nothing very remarkable in Mr. Hall's manner of delivering his sermons. His simplicity, yet solemnity of deportment, engage the attention, but do not promise any of—when he has just disclosed the dawnings of his most rapturous effusions. His voice is feeble, but distinct, and, as he proceeds, trembles beneath his images, and conveys the idea, that the spring of sublimity and beauty in his mind is exhaustless, and would pour forth a more copious stream, if it had a wider

the inmost glory to their enraptured mindsand leaves them full of imaginations of " things not made with hands,"-of joys too ravishing for smiles-and of impulses which wing their hearts," along the line of limitless desires."

RECOLLECTIONS OF LISBON.

[NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.]

outer courts of splendour, while it feels that they are but for a moment, gay mockeries of the state of man on earth. Often, during my

of the vessel on the dark water, think of the beautiful delineation by the most profound of living poets, of the tender imaginations of a mariner who had been reared among the mountains, and in his heart was "half a shepherd on the stormy seas," who was wont to hear in the piping shrouds "the tones of waterfalls and inland sounds of caves and trees," and

Or the first of May, 1818, I sailed in one of the government packets, from the beautiful harbour of Falmouth, for Lisbon. The voyage, though it only lasted eight days, was suf-little voyage, did I, while looking over the side ficiently long to excite an earnest desire for our arrival at the port of our destiny. The water which so majestically stretches before us, when seen from a promontory or headland, loses much of its interest and its grandeur when it actually circles round us and shuts us in from the world. The part which we are able to discern from the deck of a vessel, appears of very small diameter, and its aspect in fine weather is so uniform as to weary the eye, which seems to sicken with following the dance of the sunbeams, which alone diversify its surface. There is something painfully restless and shadowy in all around us, which forces on our hearts that feeling of the instability and transitoriness of our nature, which we lose among the moveless grandeurs of the universe. On the sea, all without, instead of affording a resting-place for the soul, is emblematic of the fluctuation of our mortal being. Those who have long been accustomed to it seem accommodated to their lot in feeling and in character; snatch a hasty joy with eagerness wherever it can be found, careless of the future, and borne lightly on the wave of life without forethought or struggle. To a landsman there is something inexpressibly sad in the want of material objects which endure. The eye turns disappointed from the glorious panoply of clouds which attend the setting sun, where it has fancied thrones, and golden cities, and temples with their holy shrines far sunken within

"When the regular wind
Between the tropics fill'd the steady sail,
And blew with the same breath through days and weeks,
Lengthening invisibly its weary line
Along the cloudless main, who in those hours
of tiresome indolence, would often hang
Over the vessel's side, and gaze and gaze:
And while the broad green wave and sparkling foam
Flashed round him images and hues that wrought
In union with the employment of his heart,
He, thus by feverish passion overcome,
Even with the organs of his bodily eye,
Below him, in the bosom of the deep,
Saw mountains-saw the forms of sheep that grazed
And shepherds clad in the same country gray
On verdant hills-with dwellings among trees,
Which he himself had worn."*

I remember, however, with gratitude two evenings, just after the renewal of the moon, which were rendered singularly lovely by a soft, tender, and penetrating light which seemed

*See Wordsworth's most affecting pastoral of "The Brothers."

scarcely of this world. The moon on its first | us softly onwards. On both sides, the shore appearance, before the western lustre had en- rose into a series of hills on the right side; tirely faded away, cast no reflection, however pale, on the waves; but seemed like some princely maiden exposed for the first time to vulgar gaze, gently to shrink back as though she feared some contamination to her pure and celestial beauty from shining forth on so busy and turbulent a sphere. As night advanced, it was a solemn pleasure to stand on the deck of the vessel, borne swiftly along the noiseless sea, and gaze on the far-retiring stars in the azure distance. The mind seems, in such a scene, almost to "o'er-inform its tenement of clay," and to leap beyond it. It dwells not on the changes of the world; for in its high abstraction, all material things seem but passing shadows. Life, with its realities, appears like a vanishing dream, and the past a tale scarcely credited. The pulses of mortal existence are almost suspended-"thought is not-in enjoyment it expires." Nothing seems to be in the universe but one's self and God. No feeling of loneliness has entrance, for the great spirit of Eternal Good seems shedding mildest and selectest influences on all things.

wild, abrupt, mazy, and tangled, and on the left, covered with the freshest verdure and interspersed with luxuriant trees. Noble seats appeared crowning the hills and sloping on their sides; and in the spaces between the elevated spots, glimpses were caught of sweet valleys winding among scattered woods, or of princely domes and spires in the richness of the distance. All wore, not the pale livery of an opening spring, but the full bloom of maturest summer. The transition to such a scene, sparkling in the richest tints of sunshine and overhung by a cloudless sky of the deepest blue, from the scanty and just-budding foliage of Cornwall, as I left it, was like the change of a Midsummer Night's Dream; a sudden admission into fairy worlds. As we glided up the enchanted channel, the elevations on the left became overspread with magnificent buildings, like mingled temples and palaces, rising one above another into segments of vast amphitheatres, and interspersed with groves of the fullest yet most delicate green. Close to the water lay a barbaric edifice, of rich though On the eighth morning after our departure fantastic architecture, a relic of Moorish granfrom Falmouth, on coming as usual on the deur, now converted into the last earthly abode deck, I found that we were sailing almost close of the monarchs of Portugal. Hence the under "the Rock of Lisbon," which breasts buildings continued to thicken over the hills the vale of Cintra. It is a stupendous moun- and to assume a more confused, though tain of rock, extending very far into the sea, scarcely less romantic aspect, till we anchored and rising to a dizzy height above it. The sides in front of the most populous part of Lisbon. are broken into huge precipices and caverns The city was stretched beyond the reach of of various and grotesque forms, are covered the eye, on every side, upon the ascents and with dark moss, or exhibit naked stones black-summits of very lofty and steep elevations. ened with a thousand storms. The top consists of an unequal ridge of apparently shivered rock, sometimes descending in jagged lines, and at others rising into sharp, angular and pointed pyramids, which seem to strike into the clouds. What a feeling does such a monument excite, shapeless, rugged, and setting all form at defiance-when the heart feels that it has outlived a thousand generations of pe--"all bright and glittering in the smokeless rishable man, and belongs to an antiquity compared with which the wonders of Egypt are modern! It seems like the unhewn citadel of a giant race; the mighty wreck of an older

and more substantial world.

Leaving the steeps and everlasting recesses of this huge mass, we passed the coasts of Portugal. The fields lying near the shore appeared for the most part barren, though broken into gentle undulations, and adorned with large spreading mansions and neat villages. A pleasant breeze brought us soon to the mouth of the Tagus, where a scene of enchantment, "too bright and fair almost for remembrance," burst upon my view. We sailed between the two fortresses which guard the entrance of the river, here several miles in width, close to the walls of that on the left, denominated "Fort St. Julian." The river, seen up to the beautiful castle of Belem, lay before us, not serpentine nor perceptibly contracting, but between almost parallel shores, like a noble avenue of crystal. It was studded with vessels of every region, as the sky is sprinkled with stars, which rested on a bosom of waters so calm as scarcely to be curled by the air which wafted

The white houses, thickly intersected with windows, mostly framed with green and white lattice-work, seemed to have their foundations on the tops of others: terraces appeared lifted far above the lofty buildings, and other edifices rose above them; gardens looked as suspended by magic in the clouds, and the whole scene wore an aspect of the most gorgeous confusion

air." We landed, and the enchantment vanished, at least for a season. Very narrow streets, winding in ceaseless turnings over steep ascents and declivities, paved only with sharp flints, and filthy beyond compare, now seemed to form the interior of the promised elysium. Nature and the founders of the city appeared to have done their best to render the spot a paradise, and modern generations their worst to reduce it to a sink of misery.

Lisbon, like ancient Rome, is built on at least seven hills. It is fitted by situation to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Seated, or rather enthroned on such a spot, commanding a magnificent harbour, and overlooking one of the noblest rivers of Europe, it might be more distinguished for external beauty than Athens in the days of her freedom. Now it seems rather to be the theatre in which the two great powers of deformity and loveliness are perpetually struggling for the mastery. The highest admiration and the most sickening disgust alternately prevail in the mind of the beholder. Never was there so strange an intermixture of the mighty and the mean of the pride of wealth and the abject