more unfortunate, than an
orator delivering stale indignation, and fervour of a week old;
turning over whole pages of violent passions, written out in German
text; reading the tropes and metaphors into which he is hurried by the
ardour of his mind; and so affected, at a preconcerted line and page,
that he is unable to proceed any further?"

This criticism was perfectly true of sermons forty years ago, when it
was written. Times are changed since, and changed for the better. The
pulpit is no longer ashamed of the doctrines of Christianity, as too
harsh for the ears of a classic audience, or too familiar for the ears
of the people. Still there are no rewards in the Church, for that
great faculty, or rather that great combination of faculties, which
commands all the honours of the senate and the bar. A clerical
Demosthenes might find his triumph in the shillings of a charity
sermon, but he must never hope for a Stall.

We now revert to the curious, inquisitive, and gossiping historian of
the time. Walpole, fond of French manners, delighting in the easy
sarcasm, and almost saucy levity, of French "Memoirs," and adopting,
in all its extent, the confession, (then so fashionable on the
Continent,) that the perfection of writing was to be formed in their
lively _persiflage_, evidently modelled his "History" on the style of
the Sevignes and St Simons. But he was altogether their superior. If
he had been a chamberlain in the court of Louis XV., he might have
been as frivolously witty, and as laughingly sarcastic, as any
Frenchman who ever sat at the feet of a court mistress, or whoever
looked for fame among the sallies of a _petit souper_. But England was
an atmosphere which compelled him to a manlier course. The storms of
party were not to be stemmed by a wing of gossamer. The writer had
bold facts, strong principles, and the struggles of powerful minds to
deal with, and their study gave him a strength not his own.

Walpole was fond of having a hero. In private life, George Selwyn was
his Admirable Crichton; in public, Charles Townshend. Charles was
unquestionably a man of wit. Yet his wit rather consisted in dexterity
of language than in brilliancy of conception. He was also eloquent in
Parliament; though his charm evidently consisted more in happiness of
phrase, than in richness, variety, or vigour, of thought. On the
whole, he seems to have been made to amuse rather than to impress, and
to give a high conception of his ge