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sive or elevated imagination. This is precisely the case with the author whose works we are considering. Genius in him shines paramount to every other quality of his mind. In every page of the volume, which has suggested these observations, there is something bold, original, and striking; and yet there is every now and then some peculiarity of expression that offends a cultivated taste, or some wildness of sentiment that excites astonishment and wonder rather than sympathy.

The author of these discourses is so well known to our readers in this part of the island, that it would be quite superfluous on their account to say any thing of his private history, but for the sake of our readers in the south, we suspect it may be necessary to tell, in a single sentence, who Dr Chalmers is, and how he has attained that uncommon celebrity he now enjoys among us.

Till within these few years, Dr Chalmers was scarcely known beyond the circle of his personal friends. He obtained, at an early period, a living in an obscure part of the country; and being naturally of an inquisitive and active disposition, he devoted himself, in the leisure of his professional engagements, to an ardent prosecution of scientific knowledge. Accident, according to report, led him, some few years ago, to examine with more than ordinary attention the foundations of the Christian faith; and as the result of his investigations was a deep impression of the strength of the evidence by which it is supported, he now brought to the illustration and defence of religion a double portion of the enthusiasm he had already devoted to science. Hitherto he had been attached to that party in our church which aspires to the title of moderate or liberal—he now connected himself with those who wish to be thought more strict and apostolic. His reputation as a preacher, as might have been expected from the warmth and fervour of his eloquence, began now rapidly to extend itself; and the whole country was soon filled with the fame of his eloquence and his merits. The reputation he had thus acquired was not diminished but enhanced, by his occasional appearances in the congregations of this metropolis. His speeches last year in the General Assembly of the Scottish Church, and his sermons before the Lord High Commissioner and for the sons of the clergy, made known his merits to most of the eminent men in this part of the kingdom, and will be long remembered in this quarter as the most brilliant display of eloquence and of genius which we have ever had the good fortune to witness.

Such is our author's brief and simple story, previous to the publication of the present volume. We must not induce our readers, however, to believe that the public were as yet all agreed in their opinion of Dr Chalmers' merits. His former publications had been distinguished rather by a fertility of imagination than by a deliberate and cool judgment. He had been accustomed, it was said, to take up an opinion as it were by accident, and to defend it with enthusiastic ingenuity and energy, though at the same time he was overlooking something so obvious and palpable, that the most simple novice might detect the fallacy of his argument. He had written on the national resources, and had attributed every thing to agriculture, demonstrating our perfect independence of the luxuries of trade and commerce. He had published a treatise on the Evidences of Christianity, and had denied that the internal evidence was of any importance. Some detached sermons which he had given to the public had been deformed by an austerity at which the polite world revolted; and it was thought that the new work which was announced would be found obnoxious to the same censures. With respect to this work, now that it has been published, we conceive that there can be but one opinion—that it is a piece of splendid and powerful eloquence, injured indeed by many peculiarities of expression, by provincial idioms and colloquial barbarisms, but, at the same time, more free from the author's peculiar blemishes than any of his former productions, and forming, notwithstanding its many faults, a work likely to excite almost universal admiration. That it would be improved, we think, every one will likewise allow, were there less sameness of sentiment and of expression—were there fewer words of the author's own invention—were the purity of the English language, in short, as much attended to as its power and energy. If the author would only cultivate his taste as much as his imagination, he