the preachers as indifferent as their auditory; and if we were to name the period when religion had most fallen into decay in the public mind, we should pronounce it the half century which preceded the reign of George the Third. On the subject of pulpit eloquence there are some remarks in one of the reviews of the late Sydney Smith, expressed with all the shrewdness, divested of the levity of that writer, who had keenly observed the popular sources of failure. "The great object of modern sermons is, to hazard nothing. Their characteristic is decent debility; which alike guards their authors from ludicrous errors, and precludes them from striking beauties. Yet it is curious to consider, how a body of men so well educated as the English clergy, can distinguish themselves so little in a species of composition, to which it is their peculiar duty, as well as their ordinary habit, to attend. To solve this difficulty, it should be remembered that the eloquence of the bar and of the senate force themselves into notice, power, and wealth." He then slightly guards against the conception, that eloquence should be the sole source of preferment; or even "a common cause of preferment." But he strongly, and with great appearance of truth, attributes the want of public effect to the want of those means by which that effect is secured in every other instance. "Pulpit discourses have insensibly dwindled from speaking into reading; a practice of itself sufficient to stifle every germ of eloquence. It is only by the fresh feelings of the heart that mankind can be very powerfully affected. What can be more unfortunate, than an orator delivering stale indignation, and fervour of a week old; turning over whole pages of violent passions, written out in German text; reading the tropes and metaphors into which he is hurried by the ardour of his mind; and so affected, at a preconcerted line and page, that he is unable to proceed any further?" This criticism was perfectly true of sermons forty years ago, when it was written. Times are changed since, and changed for the better. The pulpit is no longer ashamed of the doctrines of Christianity, as too harsh for the ears of a classic audience, or too familiar for the ears of the people. Still there are no rewards in the Church, for that great faculty, or rather that great combination of faculties, which commands all the honours of the senate and the bar. A clerical Demosthenes might find his triumph in the shillings of a charity sermon, but he must never hope for a Stall.