In these discourses he says: "The carpenter is the actual model; for like him the discourser cuts and fits his timber according to rules the grounds of which it concerns not him to understand, with little labor beyond that of hacking and hewing--materials being ever ready at his hand: for the world is full of books as the forest is of trees and the market of lumber. And this is done to instruct us; to build us up inwardly; to administer food to our intellect; to nourish our souls; to kindle the imagination and awaken to energetic action the living but slumbering world within. But, alas! this inner world cannot be kindled like a smouldering fire, by a basket of chips and a puff of wind! This inner world is a world of spirits, which feed on thoughts full of truth and living energy. And thought alone can kindle thought: and truth alone can waken truth: not veracity, not fact, but truth vital, 'Truth that wakes To perish never.' This is the bread for which the soul is pining, and such are the husks with which its calls are answered." There is in this statement of the predominant character of our popular lectures much that is true, as we could easily show by a definite examination of the most popular discourses to which our audiences listen. Every one can see that their aim is, not to announce great truths, which are essential to the well-being of society, and the instruction of the soul, but so to shape their sentences, so to point their paragraphs, and to give such a turn to their expressions, as to tickle most effectually the fancy of those who hear them, and to call down that round of applause which tells them they have made a _hit_. Now just so far as this is the case, popular lecturing not only seeks to supply the place of the theatre, but actually becomes theatrical; and lacking the essential worth and dignity of the drama, assumes its tricks and shallow vanities. Nevertheless, the author whom we have quoted sees in this fashion signs of promise, for it signifies the existence and the struggling toward the light, of the absolute want of the soul--which will soon rectify the public taste, and teach men that pleasure lies only in the life-giving and the true.