It was in Glasgow that he was baptized, and became a
member of the church. That he should turn preacher was natural.
Accustomed to address public audiences, there was no necessity why he
should give up the practice, and there were many reasons why he should
not. Accordingly, every Sunday almost he is engaged in preaching, and
occasionally takes lecturing engagements in the country. He is also
Professor of Elocution at the Baptist College, Stepney--a teacher of
deportment--a clerical Turvey-drop to the pious youth of that respectable
institution. This is all very well. If art is of use--if it can make
the eloquent more eloquent, and the dull less so--its aid should surely
be invoked by the Christian Church.

I would only add, that Mr. Knowles is an Irishman,--that he was born in
1784,--and that his plays, especially the Hunchback, still retain
possession of the stage.

THE HON. AND REV. BAPTIST NOEL.

Next in estimation in this great democratic country to a real live lord
is a real live lord's relative. If you can't shake hands with a real
peer, it is something to shake hands with his brother. It is impossible
to get people to believe that human nature is everywhere the same; that
God has made of one blood peers and people, black and white. In this
unsettled age, perhaps, faith in the peerage is as abiding a conviction
as any whatever. Nor is it limited to what is called the world. The
Church participates deeply in the folly; no piety is so acceptable, has
so genuine an odour, as piety in high life; no homage is considered so
graceful to the Lord as the religion of a lord. A lord at a Bible
meeting--a lord stammering a few unconnected common-places about
Missionary Societies or the conversion of the Jews--a lord writing a book
on the Millennium, throws the religious world into a state of heavenly
rapture.

This, I take it, is the origin of the success of the Hon. and Rev.
Baptist Noel as a preacher in this great metropolis. If Baptist Noel is
not a lord himself, he is of lordly origin. His mother was a peeress in
her own right, and, as a tenth son, he must have a little blue blood in
his veins. His sister is, or was, a lady in waiting to the Queen. His
brother is an earl. He himself, at one time, was one of the royal
chaplains. He is redolent, then, of high life: what a delightful thought
for the London shopkeepers and tradesmen, who were wont to resort to St.
John's Chapel, Bedford Row! I real