Of this class, undoubtedly, Edward Miall, the editor of the ‘Nonconformist,’ is one of the latest. Originally a student at Wymondley College, then ‘settled,’ as the phrase is, at Ware, then the pastor of a respectable congregation at Leicester, he was M.P. for John Bright’s own borough of Rochdale, and is, as the _Times_ confesses, a distinguished Nonconformist. I imagine few of my readers require a description of his thin and wiry frame. As a platform speaker, or as a mere orator, Miall is not very effective; he delights his admirers, but he does not do more. In the pulpit, few men are more fitted to shine. Men enter a place of worship under different feelings to those with which they run to Exeter Hall or the London Tavern. In the one case you are in something of a reverential mood, and you are not disappointed by the want of physical power. With eternity for his theme, the preacher soon causes you to forget a feeble voice or a bodily presence not adapted for effect. The sermonising tone is in keeping with the pulpit, and if every word seem to have an air of preparation, and to tell of labour, you think that it is only after mature preparation a man should speak of religious truth to his fellow-men. Calm self-possession is essential to the sanctuary, and there you miss not the _abandon_ which elicits the cheers of an excited audience. In the pulpit, Miall could always command attention. His manner, if somewhat artificial and prim, evinced the possession of a mind earnest and decided. His language was nervous; his views were broad and catholic. You felt that the man before you was no reproducer of other men’s thoughts, no worn-out echo, no empty sound; that the Christianity he preached he had found to be good for the intellect and soul of man; that it was the foundation of all his knowledge; that on that, as a great fact, he had rested all the hopes and aspirations of his life. Seemingly void of all animalism—a rock with a gleam of sunlight on it—an incarnate idea—a voice crying in the wilderness—a reed, but not shaken with the wind—Edward Miall is an admirable illustration of what a man with a principle may do. It was a bold step for him to give up the pulpit and to start a newspaper; it was a still bolder thing to circulate that newspaper in the Dissenting world, with unmistakable quotations from Shakspeare staring you flat in the face, and to accustom that world, used to a very watery style of composition, to language remarkable for its elegance and power.