of another great thinker -(for, reader, we may at once say that Dr. Edward Beecher is a great thinker) — John Foster, though the Boston minister does not carry his disregard of conventionalities to quite so great an extent as did the Essayist of Bristol. Neither of them, however, could have belonged to a race of men- and such there are who fancy that their piety is in proportion to their dirt. Many of our students and others have a trick of abstraction and vacancy; we sometimes meet with interesting greenhorn youths, with a sleek, footman-looking, whitey-brown appearance about them; moral mulattoes, determined to impress you with the idea of their profound obliviousness to all around them, while you, unfortunately, found them oblivious only of their own vanity. Of such creatures we think not, when we refer to those who are not ambitious of always looking as though they had just come out of a band-box.

gray

To return to Foster, of whom we said Dr. Edward Beecher somewhat reminded us, in this matter of etiquette. Our present subject, however, would never walk four miles, as we have known "glorious John," do, in a old ink-stained study-gown, and trudge up into the pulpit of a crowded chapel in ignorance of his condition and dress. It may be that such entire abstraction is not desirable. In manner, a very great difference exists (or existed for the one part) between these two men. Foster had a careless, slouching gait; Beecher has quite a nonchalantic air. Foster in his abstraction was utterly regardless of life; he seemed sometimes to cut the last mooring, and sail away through the pure seas of thought.

Beecher, we dare say, never does this; his abstraction is seldom entire. Look at the shock head of Foster; a tangled mass of hair, combed into propriety with brambles -very different to the fine, open brow of Beecher, surrounded with short, iron gray locks; yet both heads are the heads of profound men; indeed, of philosophers.

Two things give currency to the fame of a popular orator; either the possession of a mannerism, an idiosyncrasy of appearance, voice, gesture, stamping that man in his talking as one altogether unlike any other, or the utterance of words altogether beyond count, compared with the number of ideas. Now Dr. Beecher professes neither of these fortunate peculiarities; he has his manner, but is neither gaudy, nor meretricious, nor noisy, nor eccentric. His voice does sometimes rise, and the author of "Crayon Sketches," in his notice of him, says: "He often seems to attempt to work up his feelings to a pitch of intense excitement. Under such circumstances, there will be noise without eloquence, extreme gesture without extreme unction. In that way he exchanges the sublime for the sledge hammer style." It has not fallen to my lot to witness such Boanergic efforts; but it would be strange, indeed, if in a Beecher there was not occasional outbursts.

Dr. Beecher is seldom wordy; not often is it that he uses a word too much; you seldom feel that another word could have better served the purpose of that one, never, unless the speaker has been hurried along, as he sometimes is, by a more impulsive and impetuous motion than that which characterizes his ordinary style. Of few

preachers may it be more emphatically said, that words represent things; and therefore, those who want mere. words can never feel much satisfaction in attending Salem street church; but those to whom words are the sheathing of ideas the shell which must be cracked to disclose the kernel will find, perhaps, every sermon wealthy; suggestive in the highest degree. The work is not all done for you when the sermon is over; you may beat out from the "nuggets" of the shining ore, thoughts for a lifetime.

Dr. Edward Beecher does not confine himself closely to his notes. Occasionally with one hand buried in the folds of his vest, he extemporizes fluently, and then we like him best. Untrammelled by the written page, his thoughts take a bolder and a wider flight; and then it is remarkable to notice how his eyes kindle, and his face becomes the index of his mind. From his discourses a volume of pithy sayings might be selected, such as "History is the judgment seat of the world," and the like. The series of lectures on Church History, which he is now delivering on Sabbath mornings, are unique, and supply a blank which has long existed, for hitherto we have failed to recognize the importance of a general and popular history of the church. Truly did the preacher say in his opening lecture, that it is the central and most important subject of God's Book of Providence.

We believe it is universally admitted that Dr. Edward Beecher ranks among the most profound divines of the day. His opinions, in all matters connected with his sacred office, possess great weight with his ministerial

brethren as well as with the laity, and if he is not so popular with the multitude as his brother Henry, his reputation rests perhaps on a more durable foundation. He is one of the editors of The Congregationalist, a first class religious newspaper, to whose columns he frequently contributes articles pregnant with power. In common with his family he is a stout advocate of the Temperance cause. At one time he was, I believe, President of a western College. At present he undoubtedly stands in the first rank of American preachers and theologians.

CHAPTER VII.

A

BROOKLYN, ANCIENT AND MODERN. ITS CHURCHES. CHURCH ARCHITECTURE AS IT IS

WORD OR TWO ON

AND AS IT SHOULD BE. DR. COX'S CHURCH.

SKETCH

OF THE PREACHER. HIS STYLE. HIS DEFEAT OF THE MORMONS.

ANECDOTE OF WM. JAY.

A PLEASANT place is the suburban city of Brooklyn, with its tree-bordered streets, its spacious avenues, its "Heights" commanding a charming prospect of river, bay, and the countless host of buildings in the great mart opposite. Pleasant, too, is the quiet which reigns

within its borders; doubly so, from the contrast which the saunterer in streets, named after "willow," or "chestnut," finds after the brief ferry-voyage from the noisy thoroughfares of New York. Indeed some portions of Brooklyn remain to this day almost as still as they were in the days when Sarah Rapelye, the first white child, was born on Long Island, some two hundred and twenty-eight years ago. But how changed, taken altogether, is the scene! A writer in Harper's Magazine, speaking of the growth of this city, says: "The hills around were called Breucklen (broken land) by the Dutch, and the orthoepy has but little changed, now that beautiful city covers their slopes and crowns their summits, and the Dutch language is no more heard."

Perhaps there is no feature of this charming city which so forcibly strikes a stranger, as the multitude of churches that are here to be met with. Scarcely a street is there in which you may not find at least one. Sometimes three or four cluster together, and, seen from a little distance, 'spires and towers appear almost as numerous as the dwelling houses. "The City of Churches" it has well been named, but it is only of late years that it has attained to such ecclesiastical dignity. In the year 1811, Brooklyn contained but three churches, the worshippers in which were chiefly from the adjacent farms. In the Brooklyn of eighteen hundred and fiftythree, there is scarcely a religious sect (and their name is legion) which has not there its own particular place of worship.

Many of these are very beautiful. It is, however, a