and to set themselves up as orators and flower-mongers to attract the gaping gaze of a rabble of Sunday loungers, they must not feel mortified if their performances undergo the same kind of criticism, and produce no more than the same effect as the performances of singers, dancers, fiddlers, conjurors, or any others who exhibit themselves for the amusement of the public. By more frequent attendance the old gentleman grew less fastidious, and he fancied that he could discern, amidst all the flowery and pretty eloquence of the popular preacher, some symptoms of strong good sense; and he more than suspected that the style was assumed for the sake of rendering that tolerable which otherwise would not be attended to. Pleased with his imagined discovery, he was desirous of being acquainted with Mr. Henderson, and very readily acceded to Lady Woodstock's request to meet him at her house. Judging from his own impression of Mr. Henderson's strength of mind and fulness of information, he thought it not unlikely that he should find in him a fit and proper person to induce Signora Rivolta to look more favorably on the English religion. But the old gentleman was not aware that it is possible for a man to be a popular preacher, and to utter very elegant harangues, and even to display in his composition a sound judgment as well as an elegant taste, but at the same time to be grievously unfurnished with stores of literature, and altogether unexercised in the harsher struggles and conflicts of polemic disputation. This he found to be the case with Mr. Henderson. The worthy preacher was a man of good sense, graceful and agreeable manners, fluent in conversation, well acquainted with all the popular and fashionable topics of conversation, and quite as well satisfied as Mr. Martindale himself of the folly and vanity of the passions and pursuits of the day. One of the two thought that he could not do better than set himself cynically against the world--the other humored its follies; the one did no good by his cynical humor--the other did a little by his management and direction of the prevalent follies. Mr. Henderson, we are inclined to think, judged the wisest of the two. It is not in the power of a weak hand to stop a headstrong horse; but less power than is required to stop the animal, may direct its course. Thus thought the popular preacher. He was as aware as Mr. Martindale that fashion was folly where folly was fashion. He knew that the springs and motives of action must be of a mingled nature: he knew that action was different from contemplation. The latter was pure virtue and reason; the former mingled with passion and folly. From vanity the preacher often extorted liberality. From the pride, the superstition, the caprice, the indulgence of the rich, he was frequently able to extract clothing and food, and medicine for the poor. Well and wisely did he think that if all the benevolence that sprung from mixed motives