tial fire; or you thought of Elijah praying in the cave in the intervals of the earthquake, and the fire and the still small voice. The solemnity of the tones convinced you that he was conscious of an unearthly presence, and speaking to it, not to you. The diction and imagery showed that his faculties were wrought up, to their highest pitch, and tasked to their noblest endeavour, in that "celestial colloquy sublime." And yet the elaborate intricacies and swelling pomp of his preaching were exchanged for deep simplicity. A profusion of Scripture was used; and never did inspired language better become lips than those of Irving. His public prayers told to those who could interpret their language of many a secret conference with Heaven-they pointed to wrestlings all unseen, and groanings all unheard they drew aside, involuntarily, the veil of his secret retirements, and let in a light into the sanctuary of the closet itself. Prayers more ele-, gant, and beautiful, and melting, have often been heard; prayers more urgent in their fervid importunity have been uttered once and again (such as those which were sometimes heard with deep awe to proceed from the chamber, where the perturbed spirit of Hall was conversing aloud with its Maker till the dawning of the day); but prayers more organ-like and Miltonic, never. The fastidious Canning, when told by Sir James Mackintosh, of Irving praying for a family of orphans as "cast upon the fatherhood of God," was compelled to start, and own the beauty of the expression.

Irving's works furnish no full criterion whereby to try his powers. They were written first of all amid innumerable avocations, and in the heated and intoxicating atmosphere of popularity, where a man can no more do justice to himself in composition, than were he writing amid the bustle and blaze of a ballroom. They are full, indeed, of beautiful things; the prefaces to "Horne on the Psalms," and to " Ben Ezra," are worthy of any pen that ever wrote the English language; and, even in his later works, there is a mournful and passionate poetry of earnestness which compensates their mystic bewilderment. But, when we compare them with the man from whom they proceeded, we are forced to exclaim, "What a falling off is here!" Was that intellect conferred, that brow expanded, and the cross lightning of that wild eye kindled, only for the sake of those books, bulky as many of them are, with their wide wastes of verbiage, repetition, mere sound and fury, here cloudy commonplace, and there the very deliration of genius? Are the shining points, ever and anon occurring, or even the fiery columns of splendour, sometimes. standing up suddenly, sufficient to relieve the surrounding wilderness? No; and so far is this from being derogatory to him, that it rather raises our estimate of the man. It is ever a compliment, when you turn from the works to the author, and say,

"This is not worthy of you; you could have done better." And it is no great soul which you can confine within the boards of any book, however big; even Shakspere stood above his works, and so, assuredly, did Irving. Written for the pulpit, yet necessarily deprived, in publication, of all those charms of voice and manner which secured their triumph there-dwarfed, besides, by the shadow of his own fame-how could his productions succeed? All of them, accordingly, after one or two convulsive flutters and splashes, sunk to the bottom. In an hour fatal for his reputation, he published the "Orations." The getting up of this book, the strangeness, if not affectation, of the title, the uncouthness of its diction, the sheer absurdity of some of its passages, gave it, notwithstanding the marks of power in every page, the air of a clever caricature, rather than a bona fide effusion of his mind. Then came, winging a yet wilder flight, "Babylon and Infidelity foredoomed of God," which showed that he was beginning to tamper with strong excitements, and to bewilder himself among the mountains of vision. About this time, he came down to his native land, which went forth as one man to meet, if not to welcome him— thousands and tens of thousands flocking to hear him in his own beloved Annandale, and Edinburgh rising at five in the morning to hear his expositions, then just mounting to predictions. Thence returning, he continued to pass from one new notion to another -to print his opinions while still crude in his mind to surround himself with indiscriminate admirers, and to hear, as though he heard them not, the remonstrances of his real and wise friends, one of the most eminent of whom told him that " he was enacting a poor pickle-herring farce, which might probably end in a tragedy." Meanwhile, his general popularity had waned. "London forgot this man, who, alas! could not in his turn forget." Ah! how changed from him who, from his pulpit, as from a throne, had launched his lightnings at feathered turbans and legislative brows! At length, separated from the church of his fathers, self-excluded, in a great measure, from the literary society he had so deeply relished, from their noctes cœnaeque Deum, worn out in body, exhausted in mind, sick, sick at heart, his fame set, his prospects clouded, his name a jest, clinging to his theories to the last, but to the last sincere as an angel, and simple as a child, what was left this good, great, misguided man, but to die? "God unloosed his weary star." God shut the frenzied eye of this eagle in mercy and for ever. He died; and every one, while deploring the fate of the man, felt that it was well; he died, and all who were convinced that the fine gold had become dim, were glad that the Maker had taken it to himself, as we trust, to exalt it to shine for ever in the New Jerusalem.

Of his private history and personal manners, we cannot speak particularly. He was born in Annan. He taught some time in

Kirkaldy, where he distinguished himself as a severe disciplinarian. He assisted Dr Chalmers in Glasgow, and was by him recommended to London. All that followed is well known. His manner in company was exceedingly commanding; his temper warm and irritable; his affections strong; his talk rich and powerful. His generosity has been questioned of late, in that series of papers published by De Quincey in "Tait." He instances his rough refusal of alms to a beggar; and we know, besides, that De Quincey turned round and asked, "Upon what principle, Mr Irving, do you refuse that beggar?" Now, Mr Irving had perhaps learned by experience, that street alms are in general worse than wasted; but, secondly, the principle on which he refused was probably that he had no money about him, for it is quite notorious that, at one time, his charities were so profuse and indiscriminate, that Mrs Irving regularly emptied his pockets ere going out, else their contents, pence or pounds, were sure to be expended ere he returned; and, thirdly, many people are so simple as to imagine, that there is as much generosity in paying an honest tradesman, as in relieving a dishonest and dissolute beggar.

We leave the subject with a mixture of feelings, but among them pitying love holds the principal place. We grant that his faults of taste were many, that some of his errors of opinion were glaring, that his career was brief and disastrous; but, throughout the whole, his heart continued to live: genius illumined his downfall, like lightning showing the leap of the cataract, which then "lay low, but mighty still." His purity of motive remained unimpeached, his sincerity unquestioned; and his piety deepened as his popularity declined.

No further seek his merits to disclose,

Nor draw his frailties from their dread abode;
There they alike in trembling hope repose-
The bosom of his Father and his God.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

AMONG the great unknowns or half-knowns of the day, there are few less generally appreciated than the author of "Gebir," the Imaginary Conversations," and the "Examination of Shakspere. We remember once asking at the keeper of a large public library, if he had any of Landor's works? The reply was— "None, except his Travels in Africa.' Has he written any more?" confounding him, proh pudor! with Clapperton's enter

prising body-man. It was in keeping with the story of a person in a commercial town, who, when some wight from Edinburgh was speaking of Coleridge and Shelley, asked eagerly-"What firm is that? I never heard of it before; does it drive a good business ?" And yet there are not many authors of the age about whom posterity will make more particular inquiries, than about this same recluse, saturnine, and high-minded Savage. His soul is deeply steeped in the proud element of the past. He is not only a man of profound and varied erudition, but he lives and has his being in the olden time. His style is dyed in antiquity; his genius wears upon its wings, like a rich sunset, the hues of all perished ages. He goes farther back than Scott, whose view was bounded by the tenth century, who never attempted to reproduce the classical periods, and whose sympathies were principally with the Gothic in the human soul. Landor, on the contrary, is a Greek, and yet holds of the romantic school too-loves equally the stately and buskined heroes of Athenian song, and the "serene creators of immortal things," who have written in the "shadow of Skiddaw, and by Grasmere springs." He is a solitary enthusiast sitting with half-shut eye in his still study, or under the groves of golden Italy, and, in quaint dialogue, or fine pantomine, conversing with the past. The "dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule our spirits from their urns," appear at his spell, and range themselves around him. Pericles, the Jupiter of Athens, stands with folded arms and collected might, as when he wont to "shake the arsenal and fulmine over Greece." Aspasia bends beside him her majestic form, and turns toward him her love-lit eyes. Alcibiades, a restless shade, wanders to and fro. Spenser stands up serene, pouring out melancholy and mellow accents, as erst on "Mulla's shore.' Shakspere's divine front— Milton's eyes, twinkling in vain to find the day—Cromwell's haggard countenance-Chatham's face inflamed, and tempestuous gesture-Fox's choking accents of fervour-Pitt's stately solemnity-Napoleon's eagle gaze-Southey's form, erect as his own holly tree-the large grey eyes of Porson are all reproduced as in a magic mirror, and the soul of the day-dreamer is glad. He speaks to them in their own language, for he has learned "the large utterance of those early gods," and, as a younger brother, do they admit him into their lofty circle. Landor is suited for a former age;-Greece in the days of its glory, or Rome when still a republic, or England when Elizabeth was on the throne, Burleigh in the council, Raleigh on the deck, Bacon on the woolsack, Shakspere on the stage-any of these ages would have been the element of his spirit. The dim light of imperfect civilisation, when rare but rude virtues, and stupendous intellects, towering at deep angles from the crowd, loomed most largely, would have been the light for him. Everything about him-his thought, his

style, his disinterested daring of tone and spirit, the air of eld which breathes around-reminds us of primitive ages, when the human heart, the human soul, the human size, were larger than now. How can such a man sympathise with the ongoings of an age like this? How turn from marking the fine parabola of the eagle's flight, to watch the bickering movements of a railway train? No wonder that, while love and admiration are freely accorded by him to the past, his abiding feeling for the present is disdain. Some such feeling does at times curl his lip, and ruffle the deep of his mind. You see it, they tell us, in his air and bearing. You see it in the impatient, large, fierce, and con temptuous character of his handwriting, as if it were beneath him to sign his name. You have it dashed in your face in those ebullitions of personal and political prejudice by which it pleases him to spoil the symmetry and mar the spirit of his best speculations, and to cause the very voices of the dead to ventriloquise the peculiar passions of his nature. You see it in the extreme fastidiousness of his taste, and the unmitigated harshness of the verdicts he passes on many of his contemporaries. Yet, even in this disdain there is something noble: it resembles what we could imagine the feeling of some superhuman potentate, cast down from his starry throne to a subordinate station on earth, or that of one of the great of antiquity fallen from his high estate and heroic age upon the evil days and evil tongues of a cold and late generation; or he may be compared to his own shell, which might be conceived to mingle contempt for the commonplace ornaments by which it is surrounded, with the joy wherewith

Pleased it remembers its august abodes,

And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.

These are the far-famed lines on a shell, which Wordsworth has imitated, and everybody praised, and which, if they will not immortalise the name of Landor, nor embalm the poem of "Gebir," 'where they occur, are assuredly immortalised and embalmed themselves. And never, in remotest time, shall any one who has once heard or read them, gaze into the white depth of the child of ocean, or apply to his ear its polished coolness, and hear, or seem to hear, the faint and far-off murmur of the main, without imagining that these are the words which the gentle oracle is uttering, and this the meaning of the spiritual and mysterious music. They are among those rare lines which, giving to a common thought or belief an expression poetic and ideally perfect, stamp themselves at once on the heart and memory of the world. Some writers, by one true and strong line, render oblivion impossible. Who does not bless the nameless warrior who has left the noble epitaph "Siste viator, heroem calcas," as his sole memorial; and with deeper gratitude the Eton boy, also nameless, who, when verses were prescribed on the miracle of turning water into