Neat or a Spring set-to;--but to see a man who is able to
enter the ring with either of them, or brandish a quarter-staff with
Friar Tuck, or a broad-sword with Shaw the Lifeguards' man, stand up in
a strait-laced old-fashioned pulpit, and bandy dialectics with modern
philosophers or give a _cross-buttock_ to a cabinet minister, there is
something in a sight like this also, that is a cure for sore eyes. It
is as if Crib or Molyneux had turned Methodist parson, or as if
a Patagonian savage were to come forward as the patron-saint of
Evangelical religion. Again, the doctrine of eternal punishment was one
of the staple arguments with which, everlastingly drawled out, the old
school of Presbyterian divines used to keep their audiences awake, or
lull them to sleep; but to which people of taste and fashion paid
little attention, as inelegant and barbarous, till Mr. Irving, with his
cast-iron features and sledge-hammer blows, puffing like a grim Vulcan,
set to work to forge more classic thunderbolts, and kindle the expiring
flames anew with the very sweepings of sceptical and infidel
libraries, so as to excite a pleasing horror in the female part of his
congregation. In short, our popular declaimer has, contrary to the
Scripture-caution, put new wine into old bottles, or new cloth on old
garments. He has, with an unlimited and daring licence, mixed the
sacred and the profane together, the carnal and the spiritual man, the
petulance of the bar with the dogmatism of the pulpit, the theatrical
and theological, the modern and the obsolete;--what wonder that this
splendid piece of patchwork, splendid by contradiction and contrast,
has delighted some and confounded others? The more serious part of his
congregation indeed complain, though not bitterly, that their pastor
has converted their meeting-house into a play-house: but when a lady of
quality, introducing herself and her three daughters to the preacher,
assures him that they have been to all the most fashionable places of
resort, the opera, the theatre, assemblies, Miss Macauley's readings,
and Exeter-Change, and have been equally entertained no where else, we
apprehend that no remonstrances of a committee of ruling-elders will be
able to bring him to his senses again, or make him forego such sweet,
but ill-assorted praise. What we mean to insist upon is, that Mr. Irving
owes his triumphant success, not to any one quality for which he has
been extolled, but to a combination of q