ant as it seemed to me the reverse; but I leave censure to the
censorious. In his early youth, Sadi, the great Persian classic, tells
us, he was over much religious, and found fault with the company sleeping
while he sat in attendance on his father with the Koran in his lap, never
closing his eyes all night. "Oh, emanation of your father," replied the
old man, "you had better also have slept than that you should thus
calumniate the failings of mankind."

CHAPTER XII.
MEMORIES OF EXETER HALL.

As the season of the May Meetings draws near, one naturally thinks of
Exeter Hall and its interesting associations. When I first came to
London it had not long been open, and it was a wonder to the young man
from the country to see its capacious interior and its immense platform
crowded in every part. It had a much less gorgeous interior than now,
but its capacities for stowing away a large audience still remains the
same; and then, as now, it was available alike for Churchmen and
Dissenters to plead the claims of the great religious societies, but it
seems to me that the audiences were larger and more enthusiastic at that
early date, though I know not that the oratory was better. Bishops on
the platform were rare, and the principal performer in that line was
Bishop Stanley, of Norwich, a grotesque-looking little man, but not so
famous as his distinguished son, the Dean of Westminster. Leading
Evangelical ministers from the country--such as James, of Birmingham, who
had a very pathetic voice, and Hugh McNeile, of Liverpool, an Irishman,
with all an Irishman's exuberance of gesture and of language--were a
great feature. At times the crowds were so great that a meeting had to
be improvised in the Lower Hall, then a much darker hall than it is now,
but which, at any rate, answered its end for the time being. The
missionary meetings were the chief attraction. Proceedings commenced
early, and were protracted far into the afternoon; but the audience
remained to the last, the ladies knitting assiduously all the while the
report was being read, and only leaving off to listen when the speaking
began. Perhaps the most crowded meeting ever held there--at any rate, in
my time--was when Prince Albert took the chair to inaugurate Sir Fowell
Buxton's grand, but unfortunate, scheme for the opening up of the Congo.
He spoke in a low tone, and with a somewhat foreign accent. Bishop
Wilberforce's oratory on that occasion was overp