prescribed. The didactic style was the given form for orthodox sermons, and enthusiasm was left to the Dissenters. Before I speak of puritanical eloquence, I must say a few words on Bishop Taylor.

Those who are acquainted with the vast and irregular genius, the noble conception, and the style, by turns sublime and fantastic, which distinguish the compositions of Taylor, will the more readily understand certain literary opinions adopted by the lake school of poets. Milton's prose, which was long neglected, at length suddenly shared the admiration which his sublime poetry universally excites. It is so difficult to separate Milton's opinions from his eloquence, that the lake school, which adopts the ministerial side in politics, has some difficulty in reconciling its admiration of the apostle of regicide with its worship of the prelate who shared the exile of the monarchy.

Coleridge observes, that Milton and Taylor were all their lives in direct opposition to each other, though, in the course of their controversies, they never once mentioned one another by name. Milton commenced his career, by attacking the liturgy and the principles of the English church, and Taylor commenced by defending them. Milton gradually became an austere republican, or rather the advocate of that moral and religious aristocracy, which was in his time called republicanism. Taylor, persuaded that the majority of mankind were unfit for power, became more and

more attached to the prerogatives of royalty. Milton, divesting himself of all respect for the fathers and the councils, looked with contempt on every form of ecclesiastical government, and was guided solely by the light of his own understanding, Taylor, conscious of the insufficiency of the scripture, unaided by tradition and lawful interpretation, approached more nearly to catholicism than any minister of the English church, though Coleridge will not admit this to have been the fact.

THE foundation of the powerful, two-fold sect of Wesley and Whitfield, the Luther and Calvin of the Methodists, must not be attributed to the influence of their eloquence alone. It is curious to trace, in the history of methodism, the details of an absolute ecclesiastical government, quite as surprising as that of the Jesuits at Paraguay, while it was of course much more difficult to be established in Europe, than among savages. Southey's life of Wesley gives an able and interesting account of the doctrines and institutions of

his sect, which, in less than a century, has been propagated through a large portion of the popula tion of England, North America, the South Sea Islands, &c. forming every where a distinct set of men, with a hierarchy, a religious creed, manners, and literature, peculiar to themselves, and regarding the members of every other sect as profane, or, at least, as but half-christians. The evidently encreasing depravity of society, particularly among the lower classes, called for a reform, and if the methodists may be said to have multi- plied the masks of hypocrisy, they must, at the same time, be allowed to have been the means of rescuing numbers from the continually extending influence of demoralization. The new hierarchy of the methodists, and their mode of preaching, multiply the links of connection between pastors and their flocks, and are a sort of indirect return to the police of the catholic church. The itinerant preachers of the methodists, their conferences, their right of censure, their confession, and their veneration for the saints of their sect, all bear a strange affinity to catholicism.

In spite of Hogarth's caricatures, and Johnstone's satires,* Wesley and Whitfield are no longer viewed as burlesque preachers, in the history of the variations of protestantism. Whitfield himself informs us, with the bitterest regret, that he was an actor in his youth; he even performed in comedy, with a degree of talent which was

* See the life of Johnstone, by Sir Walter Scott.

afterwards not without its advantage to him in the pulpit. In addition to graceful action, he possessed a regular set of features, and a voice at once powerful and melodious. Southey mentions, that one of his ignorant auditors once characterised his eloquence in an odd, though expressive manner, by saying that Whitfield preached like a lion. This strange comparison very well expressed the impassioned vehemence of his oratory, which seized upon the minds of his congregation, and made them tremble like Felix before the apostle.

Whitfield and Wesley preached in the open air, for the chapels were found to be too small to contain the multitudes who flocked to hear them. Franklin, whose authority is unquestionable, calculated geometrically the extent of Whitfield's sonorous voice, and proved that it was sufficiently powerful to be heard by a congregation of twenty thousand people. The Roman amphitheatres would scarcely have held such an assembly. The preacher himself describes the sensations he experienced, on beholding the crowds who assembled to hear him, and who were composed, for the most part, of the colliers from Kingswood, near Bristol. He observes, that he was powerfully affected by their profound silence, and the tears which bathed their blackened countenances.

Whitfield, however, possessed neither the talents, the knowledge, nor the ambitious fervour of Wesley. His sermons are distinguished by no very striking feature. Wesley's eloquence violently agitated those who heard him; he threat

ened and terrified his auditors, and occasionally threw some of them into fits. There was something singular in his whole appearance; while Whitfield, on the contrary, preserved the usual dress of English clergymen. The wandering life of Wesley is a romance of itself. He had a strong taste for fine landscape scenery, and the spots which he selected for the delivery of his sermons, were often remarkable for a degree of beauty and grandeur, which served to heighten the illusions of his prophetic elocution. In his journal, he himself describes very poetically the effect of the hills and woods, luxuriant vales, and barren, rocky coasts, which alternately formed his temple, or, as Southey says, his theatre.

The energetic language in which he occasionally appealed to his audience, while it was addressed to all his hearers collectively, seemed to apply individually to each. Those to whom Massillon addressed his famous apostrophe, in his sermon on the few elect, must have returned home overcome with pious sorrow: but it would appear, that Wesley's auditors, instead of returning to their homes, abandoned their relatives and friends, to follow him. I can very well conceive, that his forcible eloquence must have operated with a sort of magnetic power.

The miracles of methodism have, no doubt, awakened the vigilance of the clergy of the church of England; but neither the established church, nor any of the dissenting sects, have hitherto produced such powerful preachers as Wesley and