the last dozen years of his life, he abandoned, confining himself specially to one subject at a time. His field of subjects embraced a great variety. but the principal portion was allotted to ratiocinative works. Jonathan Edwards never ceased to interest him. Reading Chillingworth's" Religion of Protestants was "just like reading a novel." In political economy he was a great admirer of Bentham, both in regard to theory and matter; and declared that if he were compelled to legislate to the world upon uninspired principles," he should take Bentham and go from state to state with as firm a step as if he walked upon a pavement of adamant." Arnold learnt German to read Niebuhr; and Hall, notwithstanding his apathy to poetry, studied Italian to read Dante. Probably his achievement was not very complete, for he confesses that he cannot say with Milton, Now my task is smoothly done, but still his progress in the language 66 of St. Stephen's. He had seen so far as to apprehend the momentous truth, hidden from many wise, that to act for the benefit of man is to act religiously. His patriotism was nourished by his religion; and so also was his enthusiastic love of liberty, for he deemed liberty essential to human progress in intelligence and piety. England he loved for the same reason, for England was-then more than it even is now-the asylum into which liberty had fled for her life. His country was to him not simply the soil which had fostered his youth and sustained his manhood-it was, in respect to the war waged between liberty and despotism, the very "Thermopylæ of the universe." Listen to a few of the sentences he uttered when Napoleon threatened the invasion of England. To form an adequate idea of the duties of this crisis, it will be necessary to raise your minds to a level with your station, to extend your views to a distant futurity, and to consequences the most certain, though most remote. By a series of criminal enterprises, by the successes of guilty ambition, the liberties of Europe have been gradually exOf one feature of Mr. Hall's character tinguished: the subjugation of Holland, as a minister of religion, we must not Switzerland, and the free towns of Gerbe oblivious-we mean his wise and an- many, has completed that catastrophe; xious care for the secular interests of and we are the only people in the eastern society. Though he was not a politi-hemisphere who are in possession of cal dissenter," as the phrase was in those equal laws and a free constitution. days contemptuously used, he still was, Freedom, driven from every spot on the and that most emphatically, a religious Continent, has sought for an asylum politician. He had strength and clear- in a country which she always chose ness of vision sufficient to discern the for her favourite abode; but she is purinterdependence of the secular and the sued even here, and threatened with spiritual in the affairs of men, and destruction. The inundation of lawless courage enough to set at nought the power, after covering the whole earth, ignorant murmurs of some about his threatens to follow us here; and we are over-stepping the proper line of minis- most exactly, most critically placed, in terial duty. The French revolution set the only aperture where it can be suchis whole being on fire. The subse- cessfully repelled, in the Thermopylæ quent progress of a wild democratic of the universe. As far as the interests spirit, never contemplated by the better of freedom are concerned, the most men of the revolution, again awakened important by far of sublunary interests, his most watchful and anxious concern. you, my countrymen, stand in the ca On both occasions, as we have seen, he pacity of the federal representatives preached to his people, and addressed of the human race; for with you it is the world through the press. His sym- to determine (under God) in what conpathies and survey of things were wide dition the latest posterity shall be born; as the poles, and yet so minute and per- their fortunes are entrusted to your vading as to be cognisant of the every- care, and on your conduct at this moday difficulties and perils of the poorest ment depends the colour and complexion in the land. He was as cosmopolitan of their destiny. If liberty, after being as the veriest visionary, and yet as extinguished on the Continent, is suffered patriotic as Cincinnatus, and as local to expire here, whence is it ever to emerge and practical as any drudging member in the midst of that thick night that will invest it? It remains with you then to decide whether that freedom, at whose voice the kingdoms of Europe awoke from the sleep of ages, to run a career of virtuous emulation in every thing great and good; the freedom which dispelled the mists of superstition and invited the nations to behold their God, whose magic touch kindled the rays of genius, the enthusiasm of poetry, and the flame of eloquence; the freedom which poured into our lap opulence and arts, and embellished life with innumerable institutions and improvements, till it became a theatre of wonders; it is for you to decide whether this freedom shall yet survive, or be covered with a funeral pall, and wrapt in eternal gloom. It is not necessary to await your determination. In the solicitude you feel to approve yourselves worthy of such a trust, every thought of what is afflicting in warfare, every apprehension of danger must vanish, and you are impatient to mingle in the battle of the civilized world. ." Works, vol. i. pp. 189-191. 66 In the society of his friends Mr. Hall was particularly frank and communicative. The impression was at once given that he was an honest and guileless man. In the company of cultivated females he delighted. Visiting the people of his charge, he would frequently, when he knew they expected him at a given hour, step in an hour earlier in order to have a chat and gambol with the children. His power of conversation was almost equal to that of Coleridge, while he was less obtrusive and dogmatic than that man of mystic wisdom. Foster said, Hall commands words like an emperor, Coleridge like a magician," -alluding to the habit the latter frequently indulged in, of passing the bounds of the readily intelligible. In another place he calls Coleridge "the prince of magicians, whose mind, too, is clearly more original and illimitable than Hall's. Coleridge is, indeed, sometimes less perspicuous and impressive by the distance at which his mental operations are carried on. Hall works his enginery close by you, so as to endanger your being caught and torn by the wheels, just as one has felt sometimes when environed by the noise and gigantic movements of a great mill." Although free from dogmatism, Mr. Hall was always decided and unequivocal in rendering an opinion. His 66 66 -'s com 66 criticisms on persons, and, as we have already seen, on authors, were often caustic and unsparing—he did nothing by halves. "Speaking of Mr. position, Yes, it is very eloquent but equally cold; it is the beauty of frost.' Poor Mr. (a nervously modest man) "seems to beg pardon of all flesh for being in the world." Poor man" (speaking of Bishop Watson), "I pity him! he married public virtue in his early days, but seemed for ever afterwards to be quarreling with his wife." Pray, sir, did you ever know any man who had that singular faculty of repetition possessed by Dr. -—?”, (Dr. Chalmers, we presume). "Why, sir, he often reiterates the same thing ten or twelve times in the course of a few pages. Even Burke himself had not so much of that peculiarity. His mind resembles that optical instrument lately invented; what do you call it?"" "You mean, I presume, the kaleidoscope." Yes, sir, it is just as if thrown into a kaleidoscope. Every turn presents the object in a new and beautiful form; but the object presented is still the same. His mind seems to move on hinges, not on wheels. There is incessant motion but no progress. When he was at Leicester he preached a most admirable sermon, but there were only two ideas in it, and on these his mind revolved as on a pivot." 66 Notwithstanding this outspoken boldness in rendering an opinion on men and things, Hall was eminently benevolent and genial in his intercourse. He spread a sunshine of delight around him wherever he moved. He was a true friend of man, and as such was recognised by the common instinct of all who approached him. True and ever earnest, he was no jester, no flatterer, no actor of parts what he said he meant, and went straight on, as his clear intellect, regal judgment, and impulsive generous heart indicated, with few enquiries, if any, as to how men would think or speak. Not only was his soul instinct with goodness, but this goodness too ever emanated in beautiful forms. The imagination which garnished the colossal thoughts he uttered from the pulpit, as gold and silver clouds drape the Alpine peaks at sunset, descended also to give lovely hues to the flowerets of his quaintest and most incidental observations. Indeed the sphere in which his mind habitually moved, the classic purity of his associations, imparted somewhat of the air of greatness and beauty to everything he did or said. As vulgar minds bemire whatever they meddle with, so Robert Hall imparted grandeur and grace-he added terribleness to the whirlwind, or delicacy and purity to the lily, by a descriptive touch. And though he was no great lover of poetry, he was a real poet -a poet not in the hammering out of metrical couplets and the laborious bundling together of similes, but in his love of man and of nature- -in his absorbing sense of beauty-in his playful fancy and his soaring imagination-in his penetrating insight-in his habitual converse with the marvellous, super-earthly, and divine-as well as in an unparalleled combination of grandeur and delicacy, strength and pathos in all his performances. No greater qualification can a preacher have than the power to make the spiritual and everlasting tangible to men. Mere power of reasoning cannot accomplish this. Man's nature, which is compound, demands a compound appeal: it has two senses of vision, and must have a varied light in which to perceive. Hall could make reason bow when he reasoned, and could make the soul wake up in wonder and instinctive interest, as he stood on the borders of the spiritual, and thence spoke in marvellous strains of things he himself had handled and felt; could carry up aloft, and take down to the depths his hearers, and call forth tones from the chords of their nature such as were proper to their higher being. Is not this a sign of a great preacher? To have power with the soul-not with the mere understanding, not with the mere blindfolded emotions, but with the whole man, so as at once to make him conscious of his dignity and his duty, his present and his future, and make him impressible by the thought of the grand realities, and the illimitable possibilities of his mysterious existence; to make him stand awe-struck before the majesty of Deity, bowing and melting in the presence of his love; and to feel that earth is great only comparatively, and the present significant chiefly from its bearing upon its indissoluble union with the great Tocome! This Robert Hall effected, perhaps beyond any other preacher of his own day. The best library edition of Robert Hall's works is published in six vols. royal 8vo., London. There is also a smaller edition, more recently issued. Both by Mr. Bohn. T. N. BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON. 66 HAYDON has left ample memorials of himself. His journals fill seven and twenty folio volumes; and his autobiography is completed for the first thirty-four years of his life. His actions and sufferings are fully recorded-his intentions and feelings-what he thought of himself and what he thought of the world. If contemporaries have been unjust, posterity can judge. Every man," says he, "who has suffered for a principle and would lose his life for its success--who in his early days has been oppressed without ever giving the slightest grounds for oppression, and persecuted to ruin because his oppression was unmerited-who has incurred the hatred of his enemies exactly in proportion as they became convinced they were wrong-every man who, like me, has eaten the bitter crust of poverty, and endured the penalties of vice and wickedness, where he merited the rewards of virtue and industry-should write his own life." Autobiographies have at least this advantage-whatever motives actuate the penman, whatever colouring he may give to facts, they cannot but be characteristic. If full of self-laudation, or written in artful duplicity, in envy, in anger, these faults are easily discoveráble-and so are excellencies-by light from other sources. No man could long deceive a people by his writings respecting himself; and the very attempt with its accessories would soon be regarded as significant of character. BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON was born at Plymouth, January 24th, 1786. His of his touches, his observant pupils would rub out or disfigure what he had done, to his great perplexity and their infinite amusement. On one occasion Benjamin's mate was despatched with orders to cut off the skirt of an old coat to clean the palette with; but, whether he deemed it a joke or made a mistake, the skirt of the best Sunday coat was sacrificed. The next Sunday the doctor sallied forth as usual in his great coat, but on removing it in the vestry to put on the surplice, what his horror when the clerk exclaimed in surprise, “Sir, sir, somebody has cut off the skirt of your coat!” father was a bookseller in the town, a lineal descendant of one of the oldest families in Devon, which had been ruined and dispersed by a chancery suit. Like his ideal partner in misfortune. Jarndyce of Bleak House, he seems to have been peculiarly concerned about the changes of the wind; and west, south. north, or east, whatever the quarter, it was recorded in his journal, where the most important and trivial notes were alike in general concluded by a “wind W.N.W.," or some similar inscription. Young Benjamin was a self-willed and passionate child; but the charms that in after-life soothed many a troubled moment, were not without power over The head man in the binding-office of the scarce-fledged nursling. One day, his father was a Neapolitan, who used to when he was raving in ungovernable talk to him of the wonders of Italy, of rage, his mother entered the room with Raphael and the Vatican, and who, a book of engravings in her hand: it baring his muscular arm, would say— was a last resource and proved effectual, “Don't draw de landscape; draw de for the "pretty pictures" silenced him, feegoore, master Benjamin." Most of and he became so interested as to be the half-holidays were spent with him, unwilling to part with them for the rest when he went through a catechism of of the day. When six years old, he some hundreds of questions. By and began to go daily to school. This was by master Benjamin did begin to draw a period of great excitement through-"de feegoore," to read anatomical books, out the nation and the world. All eyes to meditate in the fields, to discover were directed to France, and the fearful that he had an intellectual head, and tragedy acting there thrilled the age to fancy himself a genius and an histowith anxious interest. The king was rical painter; and then with true schoolbeheaded, and strange discussions and boy fickleness, he threw aside his brushes prophesyings were heard on every hand. for the cricket bat, or in riding, or swimEven the innocence of childhood was ming, or some less creditable sport, affected. French prisoners crowded gaily passed the days away. At length Plymouth, and guillotines made by them the measles came; and in this extremity of their meat bones were sold at the the neglected drawing-book was welprisons, and became the favourite play-comed as a friend that had been wronged, thing of the day. It was Benjamin's and with a secret resolution of future delight to draw this instrument of terror, constancy. In the summer of that year with Louis taking leave of the people in he drew from nature for the first time his shirt-sleeves, which he copied from and from that date every leisure hour a print. The pencil, indeed, had become was spent in devotion to the art. Time his constant companion, and he even rolled on rapidly enough; and, now ventured to wield it in infantine carica- watching the evolutions of volunteer ture. corps that were swarming around, now sketching with Dr. Bidlake in some sequestered vale, Benjamin had nothing of which to complain. His habits, however, were lax, and it was evident that the discipline of a boarding-school would prove a proper corrective. He was accordingly sent to Plympton Grammar School, where Sir Joshua had been brought up; and here, instead of murdering Homer and Virgil, he was compelled to do homage to Phædrus for a while, an humiliation unwelcome but profitable, for Virgil and Homer came again in their turn, and for the He was now sent to the grammar school, then under the guardianship of the Rev. Dr. Bidlake, a man of versatile taste, of talent a patron-in-general, kind-hearted yet eccentric, fond of country excursions, a mimic painter, a musician, a poet, but fond of the rhyming dictionary and accustomed to scan with his fingers. Observing Haydon's love of art, he invited him with a school-fellow to attend him in his painting-room; but, alas for the old gentleman! this was a fine opportunity for boyish mischievousness. As he turned round and walked to a distance to study the effect last six months he was head boy of the great one without seeing, I shall be the establishment. As he was designed first." Health returned, and nothing for the counting-house, he was forbidden to learn drawing; but his allowance of money was spent in caricatures which he copied; and such was his skill that in play-hours the boys were found round him, sketching as he directed. One time they saw a bunt on the hills, and when they came home, his admirers and pupils furnishing him with burnt sticks, he drew it all round the hall so well, that it was permitted to remain for some weeks. daunted, Benjamin formed a plan of procedure. Searching for books on art, he met with "Reynolds' Discourses;' and reading one, was so aroused by the stress it laid on honest industry, and the conviction it expressed that all men were equal, and that application made the difference, that he eagerly bore them home as a prize, and read them all before breakfast the next morning. His destiny seemed fixed; he left his chamber and came down to table with Reynolds under his arm; at once declared his intentions, and with resistless energy demolished every objection. His mo passion, and the house in an uproar. "Everybody," says he, "that called during the day was had up to bait me; but I attacked them so fiercely that they were glad to leave me to my own reflections. In the evening I told my mother my resolution calmly, and left her." He now hunted Plymouth for anatomical works, and seeing " Albinus" among the books in the catalogue of a sale, determined to go and bid for it, and as the price was beyond his reach, then to appeal to his father's mercy. It was knocked down to him for £2 10s. He went home, induced his mother to intercede for him; and at last had the happiness of hurrying off the book to his solitude, of gazing upon the plates as his own, of copying them out, and by such means acquainting himself thoroughly with the muscles of the body. His energy was indefatigable; and the thought of London as the scene of honour and independence urged him unceasingly onward over every obstacle. My father," he wrote, From Plympton he was sent to Exeter, to be perfected in merchants' accounts; but there he did little, save take a few lessons in crayon-drawing from his masther burst into tears, his father was in a ter's son, and distinguish himself by doing everything and anything rather than his duty. At the end of six months he returned to Plymouth, and was apprenticed to his father for seven years; and here began "that ceaseless opposition which he encountered through life." He would be a painter; the certain independence that the business eventually offered, was unworthy of regard beside the object of his ambition. Repugnance to work daily increased; the ledger and the counter, and the shop and the customer, and the town and the people, were all hated. He rose early and sat up late; he ridiculed the prints in the window; insulted purchasers; strolled by the sea, whose heaving waves and boundless freedom were in harmony with the struggles and aspirations of his own breast. His fond father pointed out to him his prospects, and the absurdity of letting so fine a property go to ruin, for he had no younger brother. "Who has put this stuff in your head?" "Nobody: I always have had it." "You will live to repent." Never, my dear father; I would rather die in the trial." Friends were called in, aunts and uncles consulted, but still his language was the same. At this crisis he was taken ill, and in a short time was suffering from chronic inflammation of the eyes. For six weeks he was blind; at last he fancied he saw something glittering, put out his hand and struck it against a silver spoon. That was a day of joy; he had another attack, but his sight recovered, though never perfectly. "What folly! How can you think of being a painter? Why, you can't see," was said. "I can see enough," was the reply; "and see or not see, a painter I'll be; and if I am a 66 had routed me from the shop, because I was in the way with my drawings; I had been driven from the sitting-room, because the cloth had to be laid; scolded from the landing-place because the stairs must be swept; driven to my attic, which now became too small; and at last I took refuge in my bed-room. One morning as I lay awake, very early, the door slowly opened, and in crept my dear mother with a look of sleepless anxiety." She sat down on his bedside, took his hand, and affectionately expostulated with him. "I was deeply affected; but checking my tears, I told her, in a voice struggling to be calm, that it was of no use to attempt to dis |