in every sentence, with scarcely a shade of additional meaning. The whole paragraph, in musical phrase, is a series of variations. This peculiarity in his style gave truth and point to the comparisons made by Robert Hall, likening his style to a kaleidoscope, which presented at every turn the same elements, only in different lights; and to a door on its hinges, in which there was motion, but no progression.

But, in spite of these defects, there is an undoubted charm about his style which we would not deny or depreciate. This charm consists, mainly, in a certain stateliness and gorgeousness that it possesses, combined with an occasional quaintness and alliteration, that make his sentences at times ring like cymbals. His thoughts are rarely clothed in the simple costume of common life, but come forth in the robe and buskin of the boards, with the mien and tread of royalty. Hence the most ordinary conceptions have a loom of magnificence by the refracting power of his style, and seem dilated to a magnitude, and robed with a splendour, that belong only to the drapery in which they appear, or the medium through which they are seen. We will not call his style theatrical; for this term would suggest ideas of hollowness and show which did not belong to his mind. He was eminently an earnest, sincere man; and we find as little affectation of greatness, or mere acting the great man, in his writings, as we do in any writer of eminence in modern times. He is as simple and unconscious as a child. But yet his style is peculiarly scenic. It is picturesque rather than statuesque, owing its power rather to the gorgeousness of its colouring than to the delicacy of its finish. In this respect he stands midway between Edward Irving and Henry Melville, (if he was not in some respects their model, especially of the latter,) having some essential points of resemblance to both, and yet without the wild Pythonic furor of the first, or the consummate histrionic art of the second.

We cannot, in the room that is left us, attempt even a summary, much less a critique, on the voluminous writings of Dr. Chalmers. When the eight volumes of Posthumous Works are published, they will amount to thirty-three volumes duodecimo, embracing treatises on Natural Theology, Evidences of Christianity, Didactic Theology, Ethics, Political and Ecclesiastical Economics, Expositions of Scripture, Sermons, Prefaces, Tracts, Essays, &c., &c., covering a vast extent of topics, and illustrating the rare versatility of powers and attainments by which his mind was distinguished.

The work by which his reputation was first widely established, and which we may select as furnishing a fair illustration of his peculiar powers, is his Astronomical Discourses. Few persons will

forget the intense delight with which they first read these remarkable productions; and from this feeling we can understand the enthusiasm with which they were greeted on their original publication. This burst of admiration was owing, in part, to the novel nature of the subject discussed, and the vagueness of the popular conceptions on the subject of astronomy. It was the opening up of a gold region unknown before; a region whose glittering sands were stars, and whose limits "the flaming bounds of space," the boundless sweep of the universe. The very facts of astronomy were but imperfectly known by the great mass of readers; and even when known, there was an uneasy suspicion that there was some undefined danger to be apprehended to the ancient, popular faith, from the startling developments of this wonderful science. On the part of the skeptic there was an undisguised sneer at the old Ptolemean theory of religion, that made the earth the centre of God's government, and all other orders to revolve in their spheres of existence around it. On the part of the believing there was a disposition at least to make a truce with this daring and eagle-eyed discoverer, if not to indulge an absolute and jealous hostility. How profound, then, was the amazement and delight of the Christian world, when the blazing scroll of the heavens was unrolled to them, all glittering with the most magnificent revelations; and yet all tending to confirm the revelation made in the written word! How deep the thrill of surprise when it was found that its mighty constellations included a cross! The very infidelity of the age was thunderstruck with this splendid coup-de-main, and forgot the bitterness of defeat in the prowess of the victor, and the splendour of the triumph.

But when the magnificent pageant has passed by, and we begin calmly to examine the train of argument pursued, our first enthusiasm will begin to subside. We do not regard it as any objection to these Discourses, that the train of thought, and the principal arguments adduced, had been first struck out by Andrew Fuller, in his Answer to Paine. Fuller's sketch is but a single chapter in his larger work, and possesses but the single merit of clear, cold logic. Chalmers seized the bare conceptions thus furnished, and clothed them with the starry splendour of a mind imbued at once with an intense love of science, and a profound reverence for religion; and, flinging over all the purple light of his gorgeous imagination, he became to Fuller, in the apologetic aspect, what La Place was to Newton in the scientific department of this magnificent field of knowledge. But yet we very much question whether the rigid logic of the argument did not suffer in the translation.

The infidel objection was, that the immense magnitude of the creation, as developed by modern astronomy, reduced the earth to so insignificant a relative position, that it seemed as preposterous to hold it, with Christianity, to be the centre of God's moral universe, as it had been, with ancient science, to believe that it was the centre of God's material universe; and that if the falsity of the latter assumption was demonstrated, it drew after it, by necessary inference, the falsity of the former.

How does Chalmers meet this objection? After a splendid sketch of modern astronomy, he descants on the modesty of true science, a point which the objector will not dispute. He then enlarges on the extent of the divine condescension, as revealed in the discoveries of the microscope. To this the obvious reply of the objector would be, that it was not the extent or minuteness of the condescension alleged by Christianity to which he objected, but to the mode in which it was said to be exerted, and the amazing disproportion between the provisions and the objects provided for; as if it were asserted, not only that God had clothed the animalcule with the most gorgeous vesture, and robed it in a mail of purple and gold, but had created an ocean, or a continent, for the sole and only purpose of its residence. He then dwells on the knowledge of man's moral history, and the sympathy felt for him in the distant places of creation, and the contest for an ascendency over man among the higher orders of intelligence. The evident reply to this would be, that the only proof of these points was to be drawn from the very records under discussion; and to assume their truth by thus arguing on assumptions which they alone furnished, was a sort of petitio principi. The Bible is the only foundation upon which these positions rest; to repose the truth of the Bible, therefore, on these positions, was to reverse the natural order, and to begin to build the house at the roof instead of the foundation. The last discourse is on the slender influence of mere taste and sensibility in the matter of religion; a point that of course does not bear directly on the question in discussion. Such is a brief analysis of the argument of these memorable and magnificent Discourses.

To us the ground taken by Fuller seems much more unanswerable. Planting himself on the native dignity of the human soul, he argues that to save a soul is a mightier work than to create a world; and that regarding the superiority of spiritual to material greatness, the work of redeeming a world of immortal souls, perhaps the only world that had apostatized, swelled into a grandeur that threw all material splendour into the shade; and that to object to the smallness of the field on which it is alleged this mighty work was per

formed, were as absurd as to object to the greatness, or doubt the achievement, of the victories of Marathon or Waterloo, because they were fought on but a few acres of ground instead of measureless square leagues. He then adduces the considerations so splendidly unfolded by Chalmers, to show that the probable exterior relations of redemption fully harmonized with all the discoveries of astronomical science. Had the course of argument thus sketched out by Fuller been more closely followed by Chalmers, we think the power of the Discourses would have been greatly augmented, whilst their splendour would not have been diminished. Their grand defect, beyond the splendida vitia of their style, is the want of logical method and compactness in unfolding the argument,—a want which will be readily seen by comparing them with such works as Hall's Sermon on Modern Infidelity, or Campbell's Answer to Hume on Miracles.

As an expositor of Scripture, we cannot assign Chalmers a high rank. His Lectures on Romans, and still more fully his Posthumous Works, prove that his excursions into this vast field were but short and narrow in their range. He exhibits, it is true, the same grasp of mind here that he does elsewhere; but he has evidently not even attempted to master the stupendous materials accumulated by modern exegesis. He could, however, well afford to leave to other minds the mastery of those laborious details. The eagle eye of such a mind was perhaps not constructed to the focus necessary for tracing etymological

roots.

We cannot enter on his character as a theologian, for this would lead us greatly beyond our limits; and the complete elements of a proper decision are wanting until the appearance of his Institutes of Theology, in the forthcoming series of Posthumous Works.

Our judgment of Dr. Chalmers may then be briefly summed up. Without being either a great logician, a great rhetorician, or a great scholar, he was a great orator and a great man. Whilst his writings, voluminous and effective though they have been, will do less to mould the important opinions of his generation than those of obscurer men, his life will leave as broad and enduring an impress on the history of the Church and world as that of any writer of his age. Whilst his style is on all hands acknowledged to be seriously defective, it has left its mark on the religious literature of Scotland, with a distinctness that cannot be overlooked. Without perceiving or even desiring the inevitable results of his efforts, he has achieved a noble victory for the liberties of Christ's Church, and struck some of the heaviest blows in that work that must be completed by such men as Baptist Noel and Mr. Dodson. He has shown in his own person the

possibility of uniting the keenest relish for science, and high attainments in some of its departments, with the humblest and purest evangelical piety. As a man he has reminded us of the beautiful prophecy,

"The child shall die an hundred years old." He had all the unconscious simplicity, the sweetness, the filial trust, the loving and joyous spirit of the little child, combined with the rarest attributes of intellect and the ripest fruits of experience. Coleridge has somewhere defined genius to be the susceptibilities and feelings of childhood, carried forward in their vivid freshness to manhood. We know of no more accurate definition of the character of Dr. Chalmers. He grew old in his body, but never in his soul; the snows of age were sprinkled on his brow, but never on his heart; and even when his sun hung low and cold in the distant west, it flung over the whole field of vision the brilliant glow of hope and trust, that brightened the scenes of life's earliest morning. His was a broad and genial nature, that touched in its ample extent the remotest opposites, and shared the enthusiastic love of natures so hostile in their antagonism, that they seemed to know nothing in common but their common affection for him. The cynical Carlyle, the fastidious Jeffrey, the thoughtful Taylor, the skeptic, the scholar, and the philosopher, all mingled their tears with the narrowest textuary of the straitest sect, and the humblest and lowliest of the toiling thousands of Scotland, in weeping over the loss of one who loved and enlightened them all. The Church of the living God has a glorious heritage of noble names, but she has few over which she can hang with a deeper throb of mingled admiration and love, than the memory of the brilliant, the lofty, and the child-hearted Chalmers.

ART-VI. THE PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY OF LANGUAGE.

THIRD PAPER.

IN our former articles on this subject, the Etymological Method (as we entitled it) was judged, chiefly by its fruits, and condemned. A critical examination of its method of procedure would, perhaps, aggravate the condemnation. But we are now, we suppose, authorized to lay the Grammatical form out of the question, and to turn our attention entirely to the science, so called, of Comparative Philology. And the first question is, Does Comparative Philology conform strictly, as is pretended, to the science of Comparative Anatomy,