in most Episcopal
libraries--not venturing to let their people know of the existence of
such "helps," much less that they are in the habit of cutting out their
sermons by such patterns. Moreover, as for the preaching of other men's
sermons outright, the Americans are such a reading people, that the
detection of borrowed "thunder," is almost certain to follow its use.
An instance in point was then fresh in the public mind, in which one of
the most eloquent and popular pulpit orators in the land, had been
arraigned before an ecclesiastical tribunal, on the charge of
appropriating _ad libitum_ to his own use and the behoof of his
congregation the works of Barrow and Jeremy Taylor, Flavel and
Massillon, Toplady and Tillotson. True, the depredator was endowed with
powers of eloquence worthy of the great masters whose sermons he had
the good taste to prefer to his own--delivering their breathing
thoughts and burning words, with a deep-toned solemnity, and a splendor
of elocution, which thrilled the bosoms, and alternately charmed the
minds, and melted the hearts, of his devotional hearers. But the
disguise of manner was not sufficient. There were those of his
congregation who had read and remembered the works with which he was
making so free; and although they were by no means the losers by the
substitution of the kindling periods of the sound old divines for his
own, yet the late Rev. Mr. Hooper soon found himself under the
discipline of his clerical superiors. Shut out, therefore, from the
pulpit, my friend Wheelwright had turned his attention to medicine, as
being in his apprehension the next easiest of the learned professions;
and now that he had relinquished the healing art, because he possessed
neither the industry nor the capacity for acquiring it, some other
method of earning a subsistence seemed to be necessary. Should it be
the law? His resolution would have deserted him at the thought of
mastering even the elementary treatises of Blackstone, and the sight of
an ordinary law library would have appalled him. But employment he must
have. He had cultivated a taste for style, and ease, and luxury, which
it would require no inconsiderable means to indulge. He desired to cut
a figure in the world, and to make money that he might do so; and he
was anxious withal to select that occupation with which he might
personally be the least occupied--in which he might indulge his
inactive propensities with the least corporeal exerti