After allowing, that many humble but sincere preachers of the gospel of Christ may be as accepted of God, and be made as useful to their fellow-men as the most prodigally endowed, yet the possession of great and well-directed talents must not be underrated. Different soils require different culture, and that which is inoperative on one man may be beneficial to another, and it is hardly possible for any one to form a due estimate of the elevation of which pulpit oratory is susceptible who never heard Robert Hall. This character of his preaching refers more particularly to the period when his talents were in their most vigorous exercise; a little before the time when he published his celebrated sermon on "Infidelity." This sermon I was so happy as to hear delivered, and have no hesitation in expressing an opinion that the oral was not only very different from the printed discourse, but greatly its superior. In the one case he expressed the sentiments of a mind fully charged with matter the most invigorating, and solemnly important; but, discarding notes, (which he once told me always "hampered him") it was not in his power to display the same language, or to record the same evanescent trains of thought; so that in preparing a sermon for the press, no other than a general resemblance could be preserved. In trusting alone to his recollection, when the stimulus was withdrawn of a crowded and most attentive auditory, the ardent feeling; the thought that "burned," was liable, in some measure, to become deteriorated by the substitution of cool philosophical arrangement and accuracy for the spontaneous effusions of his overflowing heart; so that what was gained by one course was more than lost by the other. During Mr. Hall's last visit to Bristol, (prior to his final settlement there) I conducted him to view the beautiful scenery in the neighbourhood, and no one could be more alive to the picturesque than Mr. H. On former occasions, when beholding the expanse of water before him, he has said, with a pensive ejaculation, "We have no water in Cambridgeshire;" and subsequently, in noticing the spreading foliage of Lord de Clifford's park, he has observed with the same mournful accent; "Ah, sir, we have no such trees as these in Leicestershire." And when at this time he arrived at a point which presented the grandest assemblage of beauty, he paused in silence to gaze on the rocks of St. Vincent, and the Avon, and the dense woods, and the distant Severn, and the dim blue mountains of Wales, when with that devotional spirit which accorded with the general current of his feelings, in an ecstacy he exclaimed; "Oh, if these outskirts of the Almighty's dominion can, with one glance, so oppress the heart with gladness, what will be the disclosures of eternity, when the full revelation shall be made of the things not seen, and the river of the city of God!"