The Astronomicals had been reviewed, not quite favourably, by John Foster, whose acquaintance Chalmers made about this time. But, so far from showing any chagrin at the freedom of his comments, Chalmers at once took Foster to his heart; and there was no public writer of the day of whom he thought more highly, or whom he more warmly commended in after days to his students. Some of the Reviews treated the sermons severely; but from Christopher North, in _Blackwood_, they received hearty commendation. His popularity in Glasgow was almost surpassed by that which he found in London. In May 1817 he preached in Surrey Chapel for the London Missionary Society. His publisher, Mr. Smith, who accompanied him, wrote home, ’All my expectations were overwhelmed in the triumph. Nothing from the Tron pulpit ever excelled it, nor did he ever more arrest and wonder-work his audience. I had a full view of the whole place. The carrying forward of minds was never so visible to me; a constant assent of the head from the whole people accompanied all his paragraphs; and the breathlessness of expectation permitted not the beating of a heart to agitate the stillness.’ Preaching for the Hibernian Society, he had a beautiful passage on Irish character, which affected Mr. Canning to tears. ’The tartan,’ he said, ’beats us all.’ Mr. Wilberforce had brought Canning, along with Huskisson and Lord Binning to the chapel, where they found Lord Elgin, Lord Harrowby, and many others. In another chapel, on the same day, the crowd that had gathered in the street was so vast that even the preacher himself had great difficulty in getting admission. We know what a compliment it is, _laudari a laudatis_. It was about this time that he formed the acquaintance of the greatest pulpit orator of England, Robert Hall, who wrote thus to him, ’It would be difficult not to congratulate you on the unrivalled and unbounded popularity which attended you in the metropolis.... The attention which your sermons have excited is probably unequalled in modern literature.’