CHAPTER VIII

1823.

The Orations.-Irving's much Experience in Preaching.-Addresses himself to Educated Men.-Argument for Judgment to come.-Assailed by Critics. —Mock Trial.-Indictment before the Court of Common Sense.-Acquittal.-Description of the Church and Preacher.-Influence of his Personal Appearance.-Inconveniences of Popularity.-Success of the Book.-A rural Sunday.-His Marriage.His Wife.-The bridal Holiday.-Reappearance in St. John's.-Return to London.-Preface to the Third Edition of the Orations.-His Dedications and Prefaces generally.-Mr. Basil Montagu.-Irving's grateful Acknowledgments.-His early Dangers in Society.-Bedford Square.-Coleridge.-His Influence on the Views of Irving.-Social Charities.-A simple Presbyter. THE second year of Irving's residence in London was one of the deepest importance both to himself personally and to his reputation. It opened with the publication of his first book, the Orations and the Argument for Judgment to come, both of which had been partly preached in the form of sermons, and were now in an altered shape presented, not to any special religious body, but to the world which had gathered together to hear them, and to those who lead the crowd, the higher intellects and imaginations, whom neither religious books nor discourses usually address. In this volume it is perceptible that the preacher's mind had swelled and risen with the increase of his audience. Something more, it was apparent, was required of him than merely congregational ministrations; and he rises at the call to address those classes of men who are never to be found in numbers in any congregation, but who did drift into his audience in unprecedented crowds. In the preface to this publication he explains his own object with noble gravity, claiming for himself, with the most entire justice, though in such a way as naturally to call'forth against him the jealous criticism of all self-satisfied preachers, a certain originality in the treatment of his subject, and desiring to be heard not in the ear of the Church only, but openly, before the greater tribunal of the world. At the height of his early triumph, looking back, he traces, through years of silence, his own steady protest against the ordinary strain of pulpit teaching; and with a startling earnestness-which that long conviction, for which already he had suffered both hardship and injustice, explains and justifies better than any thing else can do-declares his knowledge of the great religious difficulty of the time. "It hath appeared to the author of this book," he says, going at once to the heart of the subject, and with characteristic frankness putting that first which was like to be taken most exception to, " from more than ten years' meditation upon the subject, that the chief obstacle to the progress of divine truth over the minds of men is the want of its being sufficiently presented to,them. In this Christian country there are perhaps nine tenths of every class who know nothing at all about the application and advantages of the single truths of revelation, or of revelation taken as a whole; and what they do not know they can not be expected to reverence or obey. This ignorance, in both the higher and the lower orders, of religion as a discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart, is not so much due to the want of inquisitiveness on their part as to the want of a sedulous and skillful ministry on the part of those to whom it is intrusted." It can not be surprising that such a beginning aroused at once all the antagonism with which innovations are generally regarded, and provoked those accusations of self-importance, self-exaltation, and vanity which still are current among those who know nothing of the person they stigmatize. But not to say that he proves his case, which most unprejudiced readers will allow, nor that the grievance has gone on since his days, growing more and more intolerable, and calling forth many reproofs less serious but more bitter than Irving's, none who have accompanied us so far in this history, and perceived the exercises of patience which the preacher himself had to undergo, and the warm and strong conviction arising out of them which for years had hindered his own advancement, will be surprised at the plain speaking with which he heralds his own first performance. To get at the true way of addressing men, he himself had been for years a wearied listener and discouraged essayist at speech. At last he had found the secret; and the whole world round him had owned with an instantaneous thrill the power that was in it. With this triumphant vindication of his own doubts and dissatisfaction to confirm him in his views, it was impossible for such a man to be silent on the general question. At this dazzling moment he had access to the highest intelligences in the country-the teachers, the governors, the authorities of the land, had sought him out in that wilderness of mediocre London, which had not even the antiquity of the city, nor any recommendation whatever, but was lost in the smoke, the dust, the ignoble din and bustle. And why was such an audience unusual? How was it that they were not oftener attracted, seized upon, made to hear God's Word and will, if need were, in spite of themselves? Thinking it over, he comes to the, conclusion, not that his own genius was the cause, but that his brethren had not found the true method, had not learned the most effective way of: discharging their duty.`"They prepare for teaching gipsies, for teaching bargemen, for teaching miners, by apprehending their way of conceiving and estimating truth; and why not prepare," he asks, with eloquent wonder, and a truth which nobody can dispute, "for teaching imaginative men, and political men, and legal men, and scientific men, who bear the world in hand?" This preparation, judging from what he saw around him every day, Irving was well justified in believing he himself had attained; and he did not hesitate, while throwing himself boldly forth upon the world in a book-a farther and swifter messenger than any voice- to declare it plainly, the highest reason and excuse for the publication, in which he now, with all the fervor and eloquence of a personal communication, addressed all who had ears to hear. The preface to the Orations, which form the first part of the volume, is so characteristic and noble an expression of friendship, that it would be inexcusable to omit it. "To the Rev. THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D., Minister of St. John's Church, Glasgow: "' MY1 I-INORED FRIEND,-I thank God, who directed you to hear one of my discourses, when I had made up my mind to leave my native land for solitary travel in foreign parts. That dispensation brought me acquainted with your good and tender-hearted nature, whose splendid accomplishments I knew already; and you now live in the memory of my heart more than in my admiration. While I labored as your assistant, my labors were never weary; they were never enough to express my thankfulness to God for having associated me with such a man, and my affection to the man with whom I was associated. I now labor in another field, among a people whom I love, and over whom God hath, by signs unequivocal, already blessed my ministry. You go to labor likewise in another vineyard, where may the Lord bless your retired meditations as he hath blessed your active operations. And may he likewise watch over the flock of our mutual solicitude, now about to fall into other hands. The Lord be with you and your household, and render unto you manifold for the blessings you have rendered unto me. I could say much about these Orations which I dedicate to you, but I will not mingle with any literary or theological discussion this pure tribute of affection and gratitude which I render to you before the world, as I have already done into your private ear. I am, my honored friend, yours in the bonds of the Gospel, EDWARD IRVING.' Caledonian Church, Hatton Garden, July, 1823." The Argument for Judgment to come, a longer and more elaborate work, which occupies the larger half of the same volume, seems to have been specially suggested to the mind of the writer by the two Visions of Judgment of Southey and Byron. The profane flattery of the one, most humiliating tribute to both giver and receiver which the office of laureate has, in recent ages at;least, extorted from any poet, and the disgusting parody of the other, excited in Irving all the indignation and repugnance which was natural to a right-thinking and pious mind. His feeling on the subject seems warmer than those miserable productions were worthy of exciting; but it is natural that a contemporary should regard such degradations of literature with a livelier indignation than it is possible to feel when natural oblivion has mercifully swallowed them up. The Argument was dedicated, like the Orations, to one of his earlier friends, the Rev. Robert (afterward well known as Dr.) Gordon of Edinburgh; this highest mark of regard or gratitude, which it is in an author's power to bestow, being in both cases characteristically conferred on men who could in no way advance or aid him in his career, but whom he distinguished from pure gratitude and friendship only. Inscribed with these names, he sent his first venture into the yet untried world of literature, exposing himself freely, with all his undeniable peculiarities both of mind and diction, to a flood of critics, probably never, before or since, so universally excited about any volume of religious addresses which ever came from the press. The consequence was an onslaught so universal, exciting, and animated, that the satire of the day-the age of pamphlets being then in full existence-took hold of the matter, and has preserved, in a curious and amusing form, the comments and ferment of the time. The Trial of the Rev. Edward Irving, M.A., a Cento of Criticism, had reached the fifth edition, now-before us, in the same year, 1823, which was half over before Irving's book was published. It is the report of a prosecution carried on before the Court of Common Sense, by Jacob Oldstyle, Clerk, against the new preacher, at the trial of which all the editors of the leading papers are examined, cross-examined, and covered with comic confusion. The state of popular interest and excitement suggested by the very possibility of such a production, and the fact of its having run through at least five editions, is of itself almost unbelievable, considering the short period of Irving's stay in London, and his character as a preacher of an obscure, and, so far as the ordinary knowledge of the London public was concerned, almost foreign church. Such a jeu d'esprit is a more powerful witness of the general commotion than any graver testimony. The common public, it appears, were sufficiently interested to enjoy the mock trial, and the discomfiture of able editors consequent upon that examination, and knew the whole matter so thoroughly, that they could appreciate the fun of the travestie. The editor of the Times being called, and having in the course of his examination given the court the benefit of hearing his own article on the subject, gives also the following account of the aspect of affairs at the Caledonian chapel: " Did you find that your exposure of the defendant's pretensions had the effect of putting an end to the public delusion?" ~" Quite the reverse. The crowds which thronged to the Caledonian chapel instantly doubled. The scene which Cross Street, Hatton Garden, presented on the following Sunday beggared all description. It was quite a Vanity Fair. Not one half of the assembled multitude could force their way into the sanctum sanctorum. Even we ourselves were shut out among the vulgar herd. For the entertainment of the excluded, however, there was Mr. Basil Montagu preaching peace and resignation from a window; and the once celebrated Romeo Coates acting the part of trumpeter from the steps of the church, extolling Mr. Irving as the prodigy of prodigies, and abusing the Times for declaring that Mr. Irving was not the god of their idolatry." The other witnesses called give corroborative testimony. An1 overwhelming popularity, which is not to be explained by common rules, is the one thing granted alike by opponents and supporters; and all the weapons of wit are brought forth against a preacher who indeed had offered battle. Nor were the newspapers the only critics; every periodical work of the day seems to have occupied itself, more or less, with the extraordinary preacher; most of them in the tone, not of literary commentators, but of personal enemies or adherents. The Westminster and Quarterly Reviews brought up the rear; the former (in its first number) referring its readers "for the faults of Mr. Irving to the thousand and one publications in which they have been zealously and carefully set forth," and complaining that it is "compelled to fall on Mr. Irving when every critical tooth in the nation has been fleshed upon him already," None of these criticisms were entirely favorable; almost all fell heavily upon the phraseology, the grammar, and taste of the orator; and few omitted to notice the imagined "arrogance" of his pretensions. But from the solemn deliverance of the Quarterlies, down to the song of Doctor Squintum, with which the truculent gossip of John Bull edified his readers, every body was eager to record their several opinions on a topic so interesting. Such matters were certainly discussed in those days with a degree of personality unknown to our politer fashion of attack; but we can not remember to have seen orheard of any thing like this odd turmoil of universal curiosity and excitement. The counts of the indictment laid against the culprit before the Court of Common Sense will give some idea of the character of the assaults made upon him. They were as follows: First. For being ugly. Second. For being a Merry-Andrew. Third. For being a common quack. Fourth. For being a common brawler. -Fifth. For being a common swearer. Sixth. For being of very common understanding. And, Seventh. For following divisive courses, subversive of the discipline of the order to which he belongs, and contrary to the principles of Christian fellowship and charity. It will gratify our readers to know that Irving was not found guilty of ugliness, nor of any of the charges brought against him, except the last; and that one of his principal assailants, the Times itself, the Thunderer of the day, was convicted by his own confession of having condemned Sir Walter Scott as " a writer of no imagination," and Lord Byron as " destitute of all poetical talent." Among all his smaller critics, the one personal peculiarity which impaired the effect of Irving's otherwise fine features and magnificent presence seems to have always come conveniently to hand to prove his mountebankism and want of genius. When his eloquence could not be decried, his divided sight was always open to criticism; and when all harder accusations were expended, his squint made a climax which delighted his assailants. Cockney wit, not much qualified for criticising any thing which had to do with the Oracles of God, sang, not with ill nature, but merely as a relief to the feelings which were incapable of more logical expression, the lively lay of Doctor ASquintum, which indeed was a harmless effusion of wit, and: injured nobody. It was not only, however; in the legitimate review that this singular book was assailed or recommended. It produced a little attendant literature of its own in the shape of pamphlets, one of which we have already mentioned and quoted from. Another, entitled An Examination and Defense of the VWritings and Preaching of the Rev. Edward Irving, A.M., gives the following picture of the man and his church: "His mere appearanee is such as to excite a high opinion of his intellectual powers. He is, indeed, one of whom the casual observer would say, as he passed him in the street,'There goes an extraordinary man!' He is in height not less than six feet, and is proportionably strongly built. His every feature seems to be impressed with the characters of unconquerable courage and overpowering intellect. HIe has a head cast in the best Scottish mould, and ornamented with a profusion of long black. curly hair. His forehead is broad, deep, ahd expansive. His thick, black, projecting eyebrows overhang a very dark, small, and rather deep-set penetrating eye. He has the nose of his nation" (whatever that may happen to be, the essayist does not inform us); " his mouth is beautifully formed, and exceedingly expressive of eloquence. In a word, his countenance is exceedingly picturesque.... Having cleared the way, let us request such of our readers as have not attended the Caledonian church to repair, at a quarter past ten o'clock on a Sunday morning, to Cross Street, Hatton Garden, the door of the church of which, if he be a humble pedestrian, he will find it difficult to reach, and when he gets to it he can not enter without a ticket. If he occupies a carriage, he takes his turn behind other carriages, and is subject to the same routine. Having surmounted these difficulties, should his ticket be num-: bered he enters the pew so numbered; if not, he waits till after the prayer, or possibly all the time, which is, however, unavoidable. All this adjusted, exactly at eleven o'clock he beholds a tall man, apparently aged about thirty-seven or thirty-eight, with rather handsome but certainly striking features, mount the pulpit stairs. The service commences with a psalm, which he reads; and then a prayer follows in a deep, touching voice. His prayer is impressive and eloquent. The reading of a portion of Scripture follows, in advertence to which we will only say that he can read. We haste to the oration, for there the peculiar powers of the preacher are called into play. Having pronounced his text, he commences his subject in a low but very audible voice. The character of his style will immediately catch the ear of all. Until warmed by his subject, we shall only be struck with a full and scriptural phraseology, in which much modern elision is rejected, some additional conjunction introduced, and the auxiliary verbs kept in most active service. As he goes on, his countenance, which is surrounded by a dark apostolic head of hair waving toward his shoulders, becomes strongly expressive and lighted up, and his gesture marked and vehement." It is characteristic that nobody attempts to discuss Irving, even in such matters as his books or his sermons, without prefatory personal sketches like the above. Even now, when he has been dead for more than a quarter of a century, his most casual hearer of old times acknowledges the unity'of the man by eagerly interpolating personal description into every discussion concerning the great preacher. His person, his aspect, his height, and presence have all a share in his eloquence. There is no dividing him into sections, or making an abstract creature of this living man. And it should be remembered that the audience admitted after so elaborate a fashion were not the common rabble who surround and follow a popular preacher. His critics made it a strong point against the bold and unhesitating orator that it was not the poor, but the intelligent, the learned, and the intellectual whom he announced himself intent upon addressing. Virtuous Theodore Hook and other edifying evangelists declared the entry to the Caledonian chapel to be closed to " the pious poor"-a class not much accustomed to such advocates of their claims. " His chapel is every Sunday a gallery of beauty and fashion," says. another of his assailants; and persons more important than the fair and fashionable sought the same obscure place of worship. The effect of such incessant crowding, however agreeable at once to the Christian zeal and national pride of the congregation, was no small trial,of their patience and good temper. A year later, when about to lay the foundation of their new church, Irving comments feelingly upon all the inconvenience and discomfort of popularity. " It is not a small matter," he says in one of his sermons, " whether we shall in our new quarters be pressed on by every hinderance to rest and devotion, or shall be delivered into the enjoyment of Sabbath quiet and church tranquillity. We can now look forward to the comfort and quiet which other congregations enjoy, to that simple condition of things which the simplicity of our Church requireth. We have had a most difficult and tedious way to make, through every misrepresentation of vanity and ambition; we have stood in eminent peril from the visits of rank and dignity which have been paid to us. There was much good to be expected from it; therefore we paid willingly the price, being desirous that they who heard the truth but seldom should hear it when they were disposed. But these, you know, are bad conditions to our being cemented together as a Church; they withdraw us from ourselves to those conspicuous people by whom we were visited; from which I have not ceased to warn: you, and against which I have not ceased to be upon my own guard." In spite of the universal assaults made against the book, the Orations and Argument ran into a third edition in little more than as many months; and remain, now that all their critics are forgotten, among the most notable examples of religious eloquence. But it is not our business to criticise these works, which have been long before the public, and can be still judged on their separate merits. Their author, meanwhile, was approaching a crisis in his life still more important than the publication of his first book. Longer than the patriarch he had waited for his Rachel; and now an engagement, which had lasted, I believe, eleven years and had survived long separation, and many changes, both of circumstances and sentiment, was at length to be fulfilled. In the end of September, 1823, Irving left London, and traveled by several successive stages to Kirkcaldy, where his bride awaited him. He dates the following letter, pleasantly suggestive of the condition of his mind in these new prospects, from Bolton Abbey. It is addressed to William Hamilton: " MY DEAR AND VALUABLE FRIEND,-I write you thus early by my brother merely to inform you of my health and happiness, for as yet I have had no time to do any thing but walk abroad among the most beautiful and sequestered scenes with which I am surrounded, and which never fail to produce upon my spirit the most pleasing and profitable effects. When I shall have rested I will write you and my other personal friends at length, and let you know all my plans and purposes during my absence.... I shall not write you till I get at my journey's end, and have, perhaps,-completed its chief object. But, late though it is, I can not help telling you how happy I am, and how tranquil and holy a Sabbath I spent yesterday, and how every day I engross into my mind new thoughts, and ruminate upon new designs connected with the ministry of Christ in that great city where I labor. The Lord strengthen me, and raise up others more holy and more devoted for His holy service. I foresee infinite battles and contentions, not with the persons of men, but with their opinions. My rock of defense is my people. They are also my rock of refuge and consolation. We have joined hands together, and I feel that we will make common cause. I hope the Lord will be pleased to give me their souls and their fervent prayers, and then, indeed, we shall be mighty against all opposition. "Will you be so good as to give my brother an order upon my account for whatever cash he may need to enter himself to the hospitals with, or, if it is more orderly, to give it him yourself, and consider this as your voucher should any thing happen to me before we meet? I should be happy to hear from you that all things are going on well. Yours most affectionately, EDWARD IRVING. "29th September, 1823." After this he passed on his way by his father's house in Annan; and the Sunday before his marriage, being now no longer a private man, with his time at his own disposal, went to Haddington to preach among his early friends. There, where he had made his youthful beginning in life, and where, when a probationer, he had preached with the ordinary result of half-contemptuous toleration, his coming now stirred all the little town into excitement. The boys who had been his pupils were now men, proud to recall themselves to his notice; and with a warmer thrill of local pride, in recollection of his temporary connection with their burgh, the people of lHaddington welcomed the man whom great London had discovered to be the greatest orator of his day. Wherever he went, indeed, he was hailed with that true Scottish -approbation and delight which always hails the return of a man who has done his duty by Scotland, and made himself famousa satisfaction no way lessened by the recollection that Scotland herself had not been the first to discover his great qualities. "Irving is in Scotland," writes Dr. Gordon from Edinburgh to Irving's friend, Mr. Story. "I have seen him twice for a little. The same noble fellow-and, in spite of all his alleyed egotism, a man of great simplicity and straightforwardness. He is to bemarried to-day, I believe, to Miss Martin, of Kirkcaldy." This was on the 13th of October. The long-engaged couple were married in that Manse of Kirkcaldy which had witnessed so many youthful chapters in Irving's life, and which was yet more to be associated with his deepest and most; tender feelings. They were married by the grandfather of the bride, a venerable old manbrother, as I believe has been already mentioned, of the celebrated Scotch painter, David Martin, whom the imagination of Scotland fondly holds as a second Reynolds, and in his own person a man much venerated, the father of the clergy in his locality-in the presence of a body of kindred worthy of a family in which three generations flourished together. I will not linger upon any description of Irving's wife. The character of a woman who has never voluntarily brought herself before sacred to her children and her friends. She stood by her husband bravely through every after vicissitude of his life; was so thorough a companion to him that he confided to her, in detail, all the thoughts which occupied him, as will be seen in after letters; received his entire trust and confidence, piously laid him in his grave, brought up his children, and lived for half of her life a widow indeed, in the exercise of all womanly and Christian virtues. If her admiration for his genius, and the shortsightedness of love, led her rather'to seek the society of those who held him in a kind of idolatry than of friends more likely to exert upon him the beneficial influence of equals, and so contributed to the clouding of his genius, it is the only blame that has been ever attached to her. She came of a family who were all distinguished by active talent and considerable character; and with all the unnoted valor of a true woman, held on her way through the manifold agonies-in her case most sharp and often repeatedof life. After this event a period of wandering followed, to refresh the fatigue of the preacher, after his first year-long conflict with that life of London which, sooner or later, kills almost all its combatants. The bridal pair appear in glimpses over the summer country. One evening, sitting at the window of his quiet manse, at the mouth of one of the loveliest and softest lochs of Clyde, the minister of Rosneath saw a vast figure approaching through the twilight, carrying-an adjunct which seems to have secured immediate recognition-a portmanteau on its Herculean shoulder. It was Irving, followed by his amused and admiring wife, who had come down from Glasgow by one of the Clyde steamers, and had walkedwith his burden from the other side of the little peninsula. "And do you mean to say that you have carried that all the way?" cried the astonished host, as he hastened to welcome his unexpected visitors. "And I would like to know," answered the bridegroom, with all the gleeful consciousness of strength, stretching out the mighty arms which he had just relieved, "' which of your caitiffs could have carried it better!" A little later the pair are at Annan, awakening in the hearts of young nephews and nieces there their earliest recollections of pleasure and jubilee. Irving was not preaching, so far as there is any record; he was idling and enjoying himself; and, with him, these words meant making others enjoy-themselves, and leaving echoes of holiday every where. So late as the beginning of November he was still in Scotland-in Glasgow —where Dr. Chalmers, at the height of his splendid social experiments, and in full possession of his unrivaled influence, a kind of prince-bishop in that great and difficult town, had felt his strength fail, and-yielding to a natural distaste for the atmosphere in which, not following his own inclinations, except in the fashion of his work, he had labored for years-had resigned his great position for the modest tranquillity of a professor's chair in St. Andrew's, and was just taking leave of the people over whom he had held so wonderful a sway. There Irving went to listen to the last sermon of his master in the ministry. The situation is a remarkable one. IHe was again to take part in the services in that place where he had filled, loyally, yet with many commotions and wistful dissatisfaction in his mind, a secondary place so short a'time before. A world of difference lay in the year of time which had passed since then. Chalmers himself had not turned the head of any community, as his former assistant had turned the multitudinous heads of London. The man who had gone away from them, forlorn' and brave, upon an expedition more like that of a forlorn hope than an enterprise justified by ordinary wisdom, had come back with all the laurels of sudden fame, a conqueror and hero. Yet here again he stood, so entirely in his old place that one can suppose the brilliant interval must have looked like a dream to Irving as he gazed upon the crowd of familiar faces, and saw himself lost and forgotten, as of old, in the absorbing interest with which every body turned to the great leader under whom they had lived and labored. Had he been the egotist he was called, or had he come in any vainglorious hope of confounding those who did not discover his greatness, he would have chosen another moment to visit Glasgow. But he came in the simplicity of his heart to stand by his friend at a solemn moment, as his friend had stood by him-to hear the last sermon, and offer the last good wishes. This momentary conjunction of these two remarkable men makes a picture pleasant to dwell on. Both had now separated their names from that busy place; the elder and greater to retire into the noiseless seclusion, or rather into the little social "circles"' and coteries of a limited society, and the class-rooms of a science that was not even theological; the younger, the secondary and overlooked, to a position much more in the eye of the world, more dazzling, giddy, and glorious than the pulpit of St. John's, even while Chalmers occupied it, could ever have been. At this last farewell moment they stood as if that year, so wonderful to one of them, had never been; and Irving, like a true man, stepped back out of his elevation, and took loyally his old secondary place.'" When Dr. Chalmers left the pulpit, after preaching his farewell sermon," says Dr. Hanna, his biographer, " it was entered by the Rev. Edward Irving, who invited the vast congregation to accompany him, as with solemn pomp and impressive unction he poured out a prayer for that honored minister of God who had just retired from among them." This momentary appearance in that familiar pulpit, not to display the eloquence which had made him famous since he last stood in it, but simply to crown with prayers and blessings the farewell of his friend, is the most graceful and touching conclusion which could have been given to Irving's connection with Glasgow; or at least-since after events have linked his memory forever with that of this great and wealthy townwith the congregation of St. John's. The newly-married pair traveled to London by the paternal house in Annan. Accompanied by some of their relations from thence, they posted to Carlisle, the modern conveniences of travel being then undreamt of. When they were about to cross the Sark, the little stream which at that point divides Scotland from England, Irving, with a pleasant bridegroom fancy, made his young wife alight and walk over the bridge into the new country which henceforward was to be her home. So this idyllic journey comes to an end. After the bridge of Sark and its moorland landscape, we see no more of the travelers till they reappear in the bustle of London, where idylls have no existence. His marriage leisure had probably been prolonged in consequence of his health having suffered a little from the great labors and excitement of the past year. Just before starting for Scotland, he had written to this purport to his friend David Hope, who had consulted him what memorial should be raised to their old schoolmaster, Adam Hope, the master of Annan Academy. He writes: "I have been unwell, and living in the country, and not able to attend to your request; but I propose that we should erect a monument, when I will myself compose elegies in the various tongues our dear and venerable preceptor taught, all which I shall concoct with you when I come to Scotland. Tell Graham, and all my friends," he adds, " if they knew what a battle I am fighting for the cause, and what a single-handed contest I have to maintain, they would forgive my apparent neglect. Every day is to me a day of severe occupation-I have no idleness. All my leisure is refreshment for new labor. Yet am I happy, and now, thank God, well; and this moment I snatch in the midst of study." His marriage and its attendant travels happily interrupted this over-occupation, and he seems to have returned to London with new fire, ready to re-enter the lists, and show no mercy upon the assailants who had now made him for several months a mark for all their arrows. He took his bride to the home which had been for some time prepared for her, and which, for the information of the curious, was No. 7 in Myddelton Terrace, Pentonville. His first occupation-or at least one of the first things which occupied him after his return-must have been the third edition of his Orations and Argument, with the characteristic preface which he prefixed to it. The critics who assailed him must have been pretty well aware beforehand, from all he had said and written, that Irving was not a man to be overawed by any strictures that could be made upon him. When, in the heat and haste of the moment, one edition pursuing another through the press, and one blow after another ringing on his shield, the orator seized his flaming pen and wrote defiance to all his opponents, it is not difficult to imagine the kind of production which must have flashed from that pen of Irving. Allowing that an author's reply to criticism is always a mistaken and imprudent proceeding, and that Irving's contempt and defiance are not written in perfect taste (angry as the expression would have made him) or charity, yet we should have been sorry not to have had the daring onslaught upon these troublesome skirmishers of literature, from whose stings, alas! neither greatness nor smallness can defend the unfortunate wayfarer; and the dignified vindication of his own style and diction, which is as noble and modest a profession of literary allegiance as can be found any where. "I have been accused of affecting the antiquated manner of ages and times now forgotten," he says in his defense. "The writers of those times are too much forgotten, I lament, and their style of writing hath fallen out of use; but the time is fast approaching when this stigma shall be wiped away from our prose, as it is fast departing from our poetry. I fear not to confess that Hooke, and Taylor, and Baxter in Theology; Bacon, and Newton, and Locke in Philosophy, have been my companions, as Shakspeare, and Spenser, and Milton have been in poetry. I can not learn to think as they have done, which is the gift of God; but I can teach myself to think as disinterestedly, and to express as honestly, what I think and feel; which I have, in the strength of God, endeavored to do." What he said of his critics is naturally much less dignified; but in spite of a few epithets, which were much more current in those days than now, the whole of this preface, much unlike ordinary prefaces, which authors go on writing with an amazing innocent faith in the attention of the public, and which few people ever dream of looking at, is one of the most eloquent and characteristic portions of the volume. Indeed, I know scarcely any volume of Irving's works of which this might not be said. In his dedications and prefaces, he carries on a kind of rapid autobiography, and takes his reader into his heart and confidence, in those singular addresses, in a manner, so far as I am aware, quite unprecedented in literature. He was now fully launched upon the exciting and rapid course of London life —a life which permits little leisure and less tranquillity to those embarked upon it. One of his earliest acquaintances was Mr. Basil Montagu-the gentleman described by the Times as "preaching peace and resignation from a window" to the disappointed multitude who could find no entrance into the Caledonian church. In Mr. Montagu's hospitable house Irving found the kindest reception and the most congenial society; and even more than these, found consolation and guidance, when first excited and then disgusted, according to a very natural and oftrepeated process, with the blandishments of society, and the coldness of those religious circles which admit nobody who does not come with certificates of theological soundness and propriety in his hand. In dedicating a volume of sermons to Mr. Montagu and his wife some years after, he thus describes his state and circumstances in his first encounter with that wonderful Circe, from whose fascinations few men escape unharmed: "When the Lord, to serve his own ends, advanced me, from the knowledge of my own flock and the private walks of pastoral duty, to become a preacher of righteousness to this great city, and I may say kingdom-to the princes, and the nobles, and the counselors of this great empire, whom He brought to hear me-I became also an object of attack to the malice and artifice of Satan, being tempted on the one hand to murmur because of the distance at which I was held from the affections of my evangelical brethren, whom I had never persecuted like Saul of Tarsus, but too much loved, even to idolatry; and, on the other hand, being tempted to go forth, in the earnest simplicity of my heart, into those high and noble circles of society which were then open to me, and which must either have ingulfed me by their enormous attractions, or else repelled my simple affections, shattered and befooled, to become the mockery and contempt of every envious and disappointed railer. At such a perilous moment the Lord in you found for me a Mentor both to soothe my heart, vexed with cold and uncharitable suspicions, and to preserve my feet from the snares that were around my path..... And seeing it hath pleased God to make your acquaintance first, and then your unwearied and disinterested kindness, and now, I trust, your true friendship, most helpful to my weakness, as well in leading me to observe more diligently the forms and aspects of human life, and to comprehend more widely the ways of God's providence with men, as in sustaining me with your good counsel and sweet fellowship against the cold dislike and uncharitable suspicion of the religious, and preserving me from the snares of the irreligious world, I do feel it incumbent upon me as a duty to God, and pleasant to me as a testimony of gratitude and love to you, to prefix your honored names to this Discourse, which chiefly concerneth the intermediate question of the soil on which the seed of truth is sown, wherein I feel that your intercourse has been especially profitable to my mind; for while I must ever confess myself to be more beholden to our sage friend, Mr. Coleridge (whose acquaintance and friendship I owe likewise to you), than to all men besides, for the knowledge of the truth itself as it is in Jesus, I freely confess myself to be much your debtor for the knowledge of those forms of the natural mind and of the actual existing world with which the minister of truth hath in the first instance to do, and into the soil of which the seed of truth is to be cast. Your much acquaintance, worthy sir, and your much conversation of the sages of other days, and especially the fathers of the English Church and literature, and your endeavors to hold them up unto all whom you honor with your confidence; your exquisite feeling, dear and honored madam, of whatever is just and beautiful, whether in the idea or in the truth of things, and your faithfulness in holding it up to the view of your friends, together with the delicate skill and consummate grace with which you express it in words and embody it in acts-these things, my dear and honored friends, working insensibly during several years' continuance of a very intimate friendship and very confidential interchange of thought and feeling, have, I perceive, produced in me many of those views of men and things which are expressed in the following Discourse, concerning that question of the several soils into which the seed of truth.is cast-a question which I confess that I had very much in time past overlooked." I make this long and interesting extract out of its chronological place as the best means I have of showing at once the temper of Irving's mind and the circumstances in which he stood at his outset in London: on one side, religious people, shy of him at first, as of a man who used a freedom in speech and in thought unknown to ordinary preachers or' authors of published sermons, and afterward affronted and angry at his bold, simple-minded declaration that they had lost or forgotten the way to proclaim the truth they held, and, on the other, society of a more dazzling kind, and with profounder attractions than any he had yet met with-society such that men of genius continually lose their head, and sometimes break their heart in seeking it. The position in which he thus found himself was, indeed, enough to confuse a man always eager for love and friendship, and ready to trust all the world. Irving, fresh from the simpler circumstances of life in Scotland, charmed with that subtle atmosphere of refinement and high breeding which seems at the first breath to the uninstructed genius the very embodiment of his dreams, stood upon that dangerous point between, repelled from one side, attracted to the other, understanding neither thoroughly-wavering and doubtful at the edge of the precipice. That he had a friend qual-ified to point out to him the danger on both sides, and that he was wise enough to accept that teaching, was a matter for which he might well be grateful. Mr. Montagu drew him to his own house, brought him into a circle above fashion, yet without its dangerous seductions, introduced him to Coleridge and many other notable men. And Irving, brought into the warm and affectionate intercourse of such a household, and assisted, moreover, by that glamour which always remained in his own eyes and elevated every thing he saw, learned to gain that acquaintance with men-men of the highest type-men of a class with which hitherto he had been unfamiliar, in which the hereditary culture of generations had culminated, and which, full of thought and ripened knowledge, was not to be moved by generalities —which he could not have learned either in his secondary rank of scholarship in Edinburgh, nor among the merchants of Glasgow. He saw, but in the best and most advantageous way, what every thoughtful mind which lives long enough is brought to see something of -how deeply nature has to do with all the revolutions of the soul; how men are of an individuality all unthought of; and how mighty an agent, beyond all mights of education or training, is constitutional character. In Mr. Montagu's house he saw "the soil" in many a rich and fruitful variation, and came to know how, by the most diverse and different paths, the same end may be attained. If his natural impatience of every thing contracted, mean, and narrow-minded gained force in this society, it is not a Surprising result. But he had always been sufficiently ready to contemn and scorn commonplace boundaries. His friends in Bedford Square, and their friends, taught him to appreciate more thoroughly the unities and diversities of man.

Scarcely any record remains of the intercourse which existed between Irving and Coleridge, an intercourse which was begun, as has just been seen, by Mr. Montagu. It lasted for years, and was full of kindness on the part of the philosopher, and reverential respect on that of Irving, who, following the natural instinct of his own ingenuous nature, changed in an instant, in such a presence, from the orator who, speaking in God's name, assumed a certain austere pomp of position-more like an authoritative priest than a simple presbyter-into the simple and candid listener, more ready to learn than he was to teach, and to consider the thoughts of another than to propound his own. Nothing, indeed, can be more remarkable, more unlike the opinion many people have formed of him, or more true to his real character, than the fact, very clearly revealed by all the dedicatory addresses to which we have referred, that in his own consciousness he was always learning; and not only so, but with the utmost simplicity and frankness acknowledging what he had learned. If imagination had any thing to do with this serious and sad history, it would not be difficult to picture those two figures, so wonderfully different, looking down from the soft Highgate slopes upon that uneasy world beneath, which, to one of them, was but a great field of study, proving, as never any collection of human creatures proved before, all the grievous but great conclusions of philosophy, while to the other it raged with all the incessant conflict of a field of battle, dread agony of life and death, through which his own cry "to the rescue!" was continually ringing, and his own hand snatching forth from under trampling feet the wounded and the fallen. Here Irving changed the common superficial idea of the world's conversion-that belief calmly held or earnestly insisted on in the face of acknowledged disappointment in many missionary efforts, and the slowness and lingering issues of even the most successful, which is common to most churches-" That error," as he himself says," under which almost the whole of the Church is lying, that the present world is to be converted unto the Lord, and so slide by a natural inclination into the Church-the present reign of Satan hastening, of its own accord, into the millennial reign of Christ." For this doctrine he learned to substitute the idea of a dispensation drawing toward its close, and-its natural consequence in a mind so full of love to God and man-of an altogether glorious and overwhelming revolution yet to come, in which all the dead society, churches, kingdoms, fashions of this world, galvanically kept in motion until the end, should be finally burned up and destroyed. Whether this development of wistful and anxious faith, and the." deliverance" conveyed by it, or whether that more subtle view of the ancient and much-assailed Calvinistic doctrine of election, which sets forth God's message and messengers as specially addressed to "the worthy," and universally received by them wherever the message is heard, was the substance of what the preacher learned from the poet-philosopher, there is no information. The prodigal thanks with which the teaching was received, given out of the fullness of a heart always ready to exaggerate the benefits conferred upon it, is almost the only distinct record of what passed between them. Such was his society and occupations when he returned with the companion of his life from Scotland. He brought his wife into a house in which the tumult of London was perpetually heard; not into a quiet ecclesiastical society, like that which generally falls to the lot of the wives of Scotch ministers, but to a much - disturbed dwelling - place, constantly assailed by visitors, and invaded by agitations of the world. Among all the other excitements of popularity, there came also the pleasant excitement of a new church about to be built, of size proportioned to the necessities of the case. The same crowds and commotion still surrounded the Caledonian chapel, but they became more bearable in the prospect of more roomy quarters. An unfailing succession of private as well as public calls upon. the kindness, help, and hospitality of a man whom every body believed in, and who proffered kindness to all, helped to increase the incessant motion and activity of that full and unresisting life. Thus, within eighteen months after his arrival in London, had the Scotch preacher won the friendship of many, not specially open to members of his profession and church, and made himself a centre of personal beneficences not to be counted. If ever pride can be justified, Edward Irving might have been justified in a passing thrill of that exultation when he brought his wife from the quiet manse which all along had looked on and watched his career, not sure how far its daughter's future was safe in the hands of a man so often foiled, yet so unsubduable, to place her in a position and society which few clergymen of his church have'ever attained, and, indeed, which few men in any church, however titled or dignified, could equal. The peculiarity of his position lay in the fact that this singular elevation belonged to himself and not to his rank, which was not susceptible of change; that his influence was extended a thousand-fold, with little addition to his means and none to his station, and that, while he moved among men of the highest intellect and position, neither his transcendent popularity nor his acknowledged genius ever changed that primitive standing-ground of priest and pastor which he always held with primitive tenacity. The charm of that conjunction is one which the most worldly mind of man can not refuse to appreciate; and perhaps it is only on the members of a church which owns no possibility of promotion that such a delicate and

visionary, though real rank, could by common verdict be bestowed.