g from this remarkable
man before having seen him more thoroughly.

* * * * *

'Mr. WHIPPLE addressed the meeting at length. His presence is
not imposing, though his face is intellectual. It is difficult
to look at him, for you cannot be taken prisoner by his
eye, while, _en revanche_, he can look at you as long as he
pleases; and, as usual, with one who can get the better of his
auditors, he does not call out the best in them. His gestures
are remarkably fine, free, graceful, and expressive. He has
no natural advantages of voice,--for it is without compass,
depth, sweetness,--and has none of the winning tones which
reach the inmost soul, and none of the tones of passionate
energy, which raise you out of your own world into the
speaker's. But his modulation is smooth, measured, dignified,
though occasionally injured by too elaborate a swell, and his
enunciation is admirable.

'His theme was one which has been so thoroughly discussed
that novelty was not to be looked for; but his method and
arrangement were excellent, though parts were too much
expanded, and the whole might well have been condensed. There
were many felicitous popular hits. The humorous touches were
skilful, and the illustrations on a broad scale good, though
in single images he failed. Altogether, there was a pervading
air of ease and mastery, which showed him fit to be a leader
of the flock. Though not a man of the Webster class, he is
among the first of the second class of men who apply their
powers to practical purposes,--and that is saying much.'

* * * * *

'I went to hear JOSEPH JOHN GURNEY, one of the most
distinguished and influential, it is said, of the English
Quakers. He is a thick-set, beetle-browed man, with a
well-to-do-in-the-world air of pious stolidity. I was
grievously disappointed; for Quakerism has at times looked
lovely to me, and I had expected at least a spiritual
exposition of its doctrines from the brother of Mrs. Fry. But
his manner was as wooden as his matter, and had no merit but
that of distinct elocution. His sermon was a tissue of texts,
illy selected, and worse patched together, in proof of the
assertion that a belief in the Trinity is the one thing
needful, and that reason, unless manacled by a creed, is