read Johnson with frequency and admiration, you will soon find yourself on stilts. If you imbue your soul with Addison, beautiful and faultless as he is, you will be likely to move prettily, but with a wearisome tameness. If you hang over the pages of Chalmers with delight and wonder, you will be found, perhaps, stringing together, with ayes and ands, enormous and laboring paragraphs; or, it may be, to use a very homely figure, puffing off bladders of nonsense. Many have prostrated their literary reputation by foolishly seizing upon and appropriating the vitiosities of some admired and stately genius. It is good advice which one gives "Let the stripling beware how he meddles with Saul's armor. Let him remember that Hercules must carry his own club, and Jupiter launch his own thunders, and let him be sure that he has attained to six cubits and a span, before he ventures to make the staff of his spear of a weaver's beam." Hall may be handled without any hazard of the deforming contagion. It was a propitious Providence which procured such pages for such a time. We are an extravagant generation. Hall stands up in mildness, elegance and purity, to sober and restrain us. Let his voice be heard, his elegance be felt. Let the mind be imbued with his matured and polished productions, and benefit unmixed with injury, will be the result. He will refine and strengthen by his masculine and chastened beauty. He will hurt no one by constraining to a ludicrous and degrading imitation.

It was our intention, in this review, to have presented analyses of some of the more celebrated productions of Mr. Hall, accompanied with extracts as specimens of his style. But it would be inexcusable to occupy space in addition, for the accomplishment of this design. We can only allude to a few of the more prominent productions of his pen; and even this allusion is hardly necessary, for who is not familiar with the writings of Robert Hall?

His first public efforts were in the cause of civil liberty. His treatise on "Christianity consistent with a love of Freedom," published in 1791, and his "Apology for the Freedom of the Press," published in 1793, are masterly pieces, though written when he was on the green side of thirty. His mind was powerfully excited, for all the elements of society were agitated, and all the intensity of human passion was awakened. The occurrence of the French revolution had given an impulse to public feeling and inquiry, which threatened to bear

down and sweep away in its progress all, in government, that had been regarded as prescriptive and immovable. In the very eloquent and stirring language of one of these pamphlets,

"The empire of darkness and of despotism has been smitten with a stroke which has sounded through the universe. When we see whole kingdoms, after reposing for centuries on the lap of their rulers, start from their slumber, the dignity of man rising up from depression, and tyrants trembling on their thrones, who can remain entirely indifferent, or fail to turn his eye towards a theatre so august and extraordinary! These are a kind of throes and struggles of nature to which it would be a sullenness to refuse our sympathy. Old foundations are breaking up; new edifices are rearing. Institutions which have been long held in veneration as the most sublime refinements of human wisdom and policy, which age hath cemented and confirmed, which power hath supported, which eloquence hath conspired to embellish and opulence to enrich, are falling fast into decay. New prospects are opening on every side, of such amazing variety and extent as to stretch further than the eye of the most enlightened observer can reach."

Both these treatises contain specimens of great eloquence and power. A person who detested the principles advanced in the Apology, said of it, however, "If a book must be praised at all events for being well written, this ought to be praised." It met an unprecedented popularity from the advocates of political reform, and was noticed and felt by all, and undoubtedly has contributed very considerably to that prevalence of liberal principles in government, which occurred soon after the decease of the lamented author. There were some things, however, about each of these treatises which, at a subsequent period, he deeply regretted. It has been said that he changed his political principles in the latter part of his life. This he himself denied solemnly and entirely. He declared that "the effect of increasing years was to augment, if possible, his attachment to the principles of civil and religious liberty," which he had so effectively advocated. But though Hall continued to adhere to the principles maintained in his political works, he disapproved of much of the spirit he had manifested in defending them. His "Christianity consistent with a love of Freedom," for instance, was written in a tempest of feeling, and in some parts with an acerbity of temper, and a keenness and profusion of invective and satire, which his maturer judgment

so decisively condemned, that he obstinately prohibited its republication; with how little success, however, may be learned from the fact, that copies were long after found, with a title page, dated 1791, and with a water mark on the paper, giving the date of 1818. Hall at this time had wholly withdrawn from all political discussion, and no solicitation could induce him again to enlist. Not unlikely he thought, as did a distinguished clergyman of our own country, who once put out his bark perilously on this "stormy element," when asked by a friend the reason of his subsequent retirement and quietness, said in reply, "Politics is like the variolous contagion, no man catches it a second time."

Perhaps none of Hall's productions acquired for him a more extensive and deserved celebrity, than his sermon on "Modern Infidelity considered with respect to its Influence on Society." It was directed against the vaunted and ferocious atheism of France, which first desolated all that was fair at home, and then rushing forth with unbridled impetuosity into other countries, threatened for a time the subversion of the entire social fabric of the world. This effort of Hall, with God's blessing, was a blow which in England stunned, if it did not prostrate the monster. The sermon is a fine specimen of keen analysis, delicate discrimination, deep and incontrovertible philosophy, and pure religion, all impregnated with the noblest feeling, and poured forth in the melody and splendor of an inimitable eloquence. He shows with a sunbeam's clearness, that "atheism subverts the whole foundation and destroys the very substance of morals," that "it is a soil prolific in great crimes, and barren of great and sublime virtues," and that it "tends directly to the destruction of moral taste."-For instance, how the single conception of Deity which the atheist blots out, is adapted to refine and expand and exalt the soul. "It has this peculiar property," says our author, "that, as it admits of no substitute, so it is capable of continual growth and enlargement. God himself is immutable; but our conception of his character is continually receiving fresh accessions-is continually growing more extended and refulgent, by having transferred to it new elements of beauty and goodness; by attracting to itself as a centre whatever bears the impress of dignity, order or happiness. It borrows splendor from all that is fair, subordinates to itself all that is great, and sits enthroned on

the riches of the universe." But atheism obliterates every worthy sentiment, and nourishes in the heart, and raises to a malignant control, ungovernable ferocity and unbridled licentiousness. Perhaps I exaggerate the merits of this performance, but I am constrained to class it among the brightest monuments of human genius. The sudden demise of the princess Charlotte, in 1817, called forth manifold tributes of clerical eulogy and condolence. It was an event which moved simultaneously and powerfully the sympathies of a whole empire. "The sight of such elaborate preparations for happiness rendered abortive, of a majestic fabric so proudly seated, and exquisitely adorned, in a moment overturned, disturbed the imagination like a convulsion of nature, and diffused a feeling of insecurity and terror, as though nothing remained on which we could repose with confidence." Of the numerous and eloquent discourses on that melancholy occasion, that of Hall from which we just quoted, assumed and held an undisputed pre-eminence of merit. One of his largest and most elaborate works is his treatise on "Terms of Communion." To say nothing of the argumentative ability, it is adorned with frequent touches of his exquisite taste and gorgeous imagination. As a specimen of beauty and skill in sketching character, we will present the contrast our author drew between Fletcher of Madeley, and David Brainerd of our own country.

"The Life of Fletcher, of Madeley, affords in some respects a parallel, in others a contrast, to that of Brainerd and it is curious to observe how the influence of natural temperament varies the exhibition of the same principles. With a considerable difference in their religious views, the same zeal, the same spirituality of mind, the same contempt of the world, is conspicuous in the character of each. But the lively imagination, the sanguine complexion of Fletcher permits him to triumph and exult in the consolatory truths and prospects of religion. He is a seraph who burns with the ardors of divine love; and spurning the fetters of mortality, he almost habitually seems to have anticipated the rapture of the beatific vision. Brainerd, oppressed with a constitutional melancholy, is chiefly occupied with the thoughts of his pollutions and defects in the eyes of Infinite Purity. His is a mourning and conflicting piety, imbued with the spirit of self-abasement, breathing itself forth in 'groanings which cannot be uttered; always dissatisfied with itself, always toiling in pursuit of a purity and perfection unattainable by mortals. The mind of Fletcher was habitually brightened with gratitude and

joy for what he had attained; Brainerd was actuated with a restless solicitude for further acquisitions. If Fletcher soared to all the heights, it may be affirmed with equal truth that Brainerd sounded all the depths of Christian piety; and while the former was regaling himself with fruit from the tree of life, the latter, on the waves of an impetuous sea, was doing business in the mighty waters.'"

We love to contemplate Hall as a scholar, a philosopher, an eloquent speaker, and an accomplished writer; but with far greater pleasure do we contemplate him as a meek and devoted follower of Jesus Christ. Herein lie his true dignity and greatness. Here rests the certain perpetuity of his fame. "The righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance." How admirable the spectacle, of a mind rich, powerful, like Hall's, subdued and moulded by the spirit, and consecrated to the interests, of Christianity. It is sometimes said, and said to depreciate and degrade, that the gospel gathers its adherents from the ranks of weak, flexible, undisciplined spirits. And so it is to a considerable extent. "Not many

mighty, not many noble." God has chosen the poor of this world, poor in lowliness and scantiness of mind; but they have an eternity to grow in, and God will educate them; his kingdom will be the school, his attributes and works the expanding themes of their study, and immensity the compass of their range. Who knows, but hereafter, by a single bound, they will transcend immeasurably all that the man of proud and profane cultivation ever has reached in this world, or ever will in that which is to come. By this peculiarity of selection, God evidently intends to lay low and grievously humiliate the vaunting loftiness of man, and make him at last to understand that he is very little before the infinitude of his Creator.

The gospel is a reversing scheme. "The first shall be last." Casting down the high, lifting up the low. Hell will mournfully abound in talent. It is painful to see how the great minds of the world treat the gospel of Christ-passing by it with cold neglect, as though it were a shallow and vulgar thing. It is a wonder, that in the exercise of their profoundness and sagacity, they do not more frequently find out, that the gospel is a rich store-house of wisdom and of moral beauty and grandeur, striking in its facts, luminous in its instruction, perfect in its philosophy, moving in its eloquence. It is a wonder that the mere practical power of the