“Do you know that clergyman,” said Hamilton, “that is walking between two ladies on the opposite side of the room.” “Very well, he is one of our most popular preachers, a very different practitioner in his profession from Blunderbuss, and perfectly skilled in hitting the prevailing taste. The professional excellencies of our great theatrical performers are so extremely impressive, that bold adventurers in divinity, seeing the efficacy of tone and jesture in this stage, _have undertaken to dramatize the pulpit_; and this is one of the most successful actors. He has a fine voice, both as to tone and cadence, and thereby pleases such fashionables hearers as judge of sermons upon the principle of the Opera. He has graceful attitudes, and therefore is pleasing to church going connoiseurs in dancing: he has fine action, the see-saw of hands, with his right the touch of the heart, at once displaying his feeling and his diamond ring: he cries at the proper place, that is, where a gap in the sense requires such a suppliment. These movements are extremely delightful to such theatrical connoisseurs as regard, in the pulpit, stage-trick more than the real exhibition of nature, truth, and sense. He is besides famed for elocution, and delivers common place remark with such a degree of impressiveness, as to pass, with the bulk of his hearers, for the profoundest wisdom and most energetic eloquence. He thereby delights the many votaries of spouting and frequenters of debating societies. Such a delicacy is so very efficacious as, in a great degree, to supersede the necessity of genius, learning, and eloquence; even elegant composition is not requisite: indeed, how can one compose without materials: all that is requisite in the language, is the musical melody of the several periods, without any disposition, or connection, or adjustment of parts to the whole. There are other ingredients in his discourses that are extremely suitable to the prevailing taste, the whine of sentiment, and the vagaries of description, which are peculiarly pleasing to the novel-reading class of church-goers. You have the tender ties of affection, delicious endearments, sweet reciprocations of love, all as animated as in the tales of Derwent Priory, Sir Harry Clarendon, or any other effusion of the Gallimatia press. Besides his hair, so skilfully matted and baked, his white cambrick handkerchief, and his opera-glass, announcing a beau, naturally attract the regard of the belles. Your popular preachers are moreover men of stature, and the same figures that are in request in the pulpit, are chiefly sought to stand behind a carriage, and would also have been choice acquisitions to Serjeant Kite; and he that is born to be six feet high, is born to be a great man. With so many qualifications, you may depend on it, Mr. Gillyflower, the clerical harlequin before us, would outstrip, in favour, a Horseley, a Watson, a Blair.” “I can hardly think that,” said our hero. “Cannot