City lawyers
like the late Mr. Ashurst, and City magnates like the late Mr. Dillon,
were amongst the audience; when on a Sunday morning might be seen there
such men as Sir J. Bowring, or Macready, or Charles Dickens, and others
equally well known to fame. They left when Mr. Fox left. I believe Mr.
P. Taylor, M.P., still keeps up a connexion, more or less fitful and
uncertain, with the place. Sir Sydney Waterlow also still retains a
couple of sittings, but he is rarely there. Nevertheless, the
congregation has greatly increased; the chapel is quite three parts full.
Still they use the little book of hymns and anthems selected by Mr. Fox;
and the musical part of the service, always a great matter at South
Place, is as well conducted and as attractive as ever.

Mr. Conway is a very advanced thinker. The character of his preaching
and praying is purely theistic. He wars with dogmas in every form. It
may be a wing to-day, a fetter to-morrow. For him there are no sacred
books, or rather he places them all on an equality. For his motto he
goes to India, and quotes the Brahma Somaj. In this respect he is a true
follower of the late Mr. Fox, whose fascinating oratory owed very little
of its charm to that which orthodox Unitarians or orthodox Christians
hold highest and holiest; whose aim was more to pull down than to build
up, and who had a greater faculty for the exposition of Christian
fallacies than for the enunciating of truths and principles needful to
humanity in its hour of temptation, distress, danger, or death. Few have
his exquisite humour, his power of sarcasm, his acquaintance with modern
literature, his copious command of polished language, his expressive yet
calm delivery, his gentleness almost as touching as that of woman; but
that which was lacking in him often made men his inferiors in intellect,
his superiors in the art of arousing the spiritually dead, or in giving
to the moral wastes in our midst the vigour, the beauty, the fertility of
life.

THE SECULARISTS.

It is a sign of the times when Infidelity visits the workshop or the
factory, and challenges the admiration of the men in fustian--the men
whose hard labours and horny hands have helped to make England what it
is, and who in an increasing ratio are making their influence felt on the
Exchange where capital seeks investment, in the ancient halls where the
teachers of the next generation are training, in the study of the
political phil