The more we read foreign orators, the more we perceive the pre-eminence of the French preachers.* The Spaniards and Germans are yet in the rudi

* To show how exactly pulpit eloquence will reflect the character and accommodate itself to the wants of the age, it may be useful to notice for a moment the different styles which have prevailed in the English pulpit since the Reformation. At first there was needed a "rough wedge to cleave the stubborn block of popery ;" and honest old Latimer came forth, plain and blunt, but yet vigorous, most striking, and bold sometimes even to sublimity. Then comes a time in which more learning and scholastic subtlety are necessary; and we have, besides Hooker's, the learned, but quaint, cumbrous, and elaborate sermons of Andrews, Donne, Owen, and Baxter. A little later, the times called not only for learning and copiousness, but also for fervour and pathos; and Taylor, with his inexhaustible erudition and exuberant fancy sometimes running riot, and Hall, with his tenderness and vivacity frequently degenerating into conceits, arose to supply the demand. Then, again, the Restoration disposed men to substitute elaborate dissertations for appeals to passion and imagination; and Barrow was raised up, who seemed to exhaust every subject which he touched. At a later period, when the public taste had become more fastidious, and called for more brevity and condensation, we meet with Sherlock, Atterbury, and Smallridge; and so on, through the period of cold and merely ethical preaching, till we are brought back to the more earnest, vigorous, and impassioned style of our own day. It is not to be denied, however, that a great genius will now and then rise who creates a new style of his own.-Am. Ed.

ments of Christian eloquence. Father Seignery has been for some time extolled as the Bourdaloue of Italy. He hath been translated. His most zealous partisans have given him up. How, indeed, can we admire ridiculous passages and popular fables, which we should scarcely tolerate in instructions to country villagers?

SECTION XLIX.

OF M. THOMAS, AND THE REVOLUTION WHICH HE EFFECTED IN THE STYLE OF RHETORICAL COMPOSITION.

NOTWITHSTANDING the superiority of the models which the age of Louis XIV. hath furnished, as well as the distinguished talents of many writers who devoted themselves to the ministry of the Gospel, eloquence seemed to be buried in the tomb with Massillon.

Most of the preachers who succeeded him were desirous of opening to themselves a new road, where they had at first brilliant success, for which they have since severely suffered. They invented an affected and effeminate jargon, and by dint of labour they rendered themselves unintelligible. Ah! wherefore did they wish to banish simplicity? Was it because they were ignorant that one of the secrets of rhetorical composition consists in making use of those lively, natural, and varied modes of expression which are adopted in conversation, in addition to

such a selection of words as may be always excellent without ever being far-fetched ?*

A want of genius, however, is not what we can charge upon these corrupters of Christian eloquence, unless we should be of opinion that, owing to their deficiency in this respect, they discovered too strong an affectation of it. They wrote without animation or fire; they confounded the gift of persuasion with the art of dazzling; and, after having perverted the taste of the public, they have succeeded in exciting an admiration of their faults.

* The rhetoricians here spoken of wrote with the most tedious prolixity, and were equally strangers to precision of thought and of diction. We perceive in their discourses pompous expressions, vulgar ideas, and that affectation of wit which is incompatible with eloquence.

"Words are like leaves; and where they most abound,
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,
Its gaudy colours spreads on ev'ry place;
The face of Nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without distinction gay :
But true expression, like th' unchanging sun,
Clears and improves whate'er it shines upon;
It gilds all objects, but it alters none.
Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent as more suitable;
A vile conceit in pompous words express'd,
Is like a clown in regal purple dress'd :
For diff'rent styles with diff' rent subjects sort,
As sev'ral garbs with country, town, and court.”
POPE'S Essay on Criticista v 312.

Eloquence, become a stranger to the works of learned men, was still cultivated by a small number of real orators, whom popular opinion placed far below all those fashionable declaimers. But in the history of the arts there are remarkable epochs, when a superior writer recalls the public attention towards those methods which have been abandoned, and draws along with him a number, who follow him in the course in which he himself has excelled.

Such is the glory which M. Thomas hath had among us. He contributed to the fortunate revolution which has renewed the taste in oratory for panegyrics: in these he hath displayed as much eloquence as Fontenelle had discovered of penetration.* He inspired the most lively enthusiasm for great men. He improved the mind by the excellence of his sentiments. He directed his discourses to a useful object. He in a particular manner promoted the utility of his writings, by collecting them together, and enriching them with his "Essay on Panegyrics." The works of the eulogist of Marcus Aurelius ought to be ever dear to us by so interesting and unusual a conjunction of erudition, genius, and virtue.

* FONTENELLE was a celebrated French author, and pronounced by Voltaire the most universal genius of the age of Louis XIV. He wrote on a variety of subjects, particularly a number of panegyrics on the deceased members of the Academy of Sciences, to which he had been appointed perpetual secretary.-See New and General Bi ographical Dictionary.

SECTION L.

OF THE USE OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.

THE style that M. Thomas cultivated possesses much of that manner so well adapted to the pulpit, by the elevation of the ideas, and the moral strain which is generally to be found in it. Do we wish to see the example of this writer become serviceable to preachers? Let us recollect that in the corruption of eloquence the language of religion was forgotten; and that, in order to impart to our ministry its former lustre, we must at once become orators, and Christian orators,

It is by incessantly reading the Holy Scriptures that we learn to speak that spiritual language which diffuses through a sermon representations alternately affecting, majestic, or terrible.

Let us never consider it as a painful restraint that we are happily bound to incorporate the sacred writings into our compositions. The Bible is for the style of preachers, that which mythology is for the elocution of poets. In the sacred volumes there are to be found thoughts so sublime, expressions so energetic, descriptions so eloquent, allegories so well chosen, sentences so profound, ejaculations so pathetic, sentiments so tender, that we should adopt them from taste if we were so unhappy as not to search after them from a principle of zeal and piety.*

* "Without doubt a preacher ought to affect people by strong, and sometimes even by terrible images; but it is