e that made his
discourses peculiarly interesting and edifying.

I was also taken to hear a much more impressive preacher, Mr. Cesar
Malan, of Geneva, who addressed a small and select audience of very
distinguished persons, in a magnificent _salon_ in some great private
house, where every body sat on satin and gilded _fauteuils_ to receive
his admonitions, all which produced a great effect on my mind--not,
however, I think, altogether religious; but the sermon I heard, and the
striking aspect of the eloquent person who delivered it, left a strong
and long impression on my memory. It was the first fine preaching I ever
heard, and though I was undoubtedly too young to appreciate it duly, I
was, nevertheless, deeply affected by it, and it gave me my earliest
experience of that dangerous thing, emotional religion, or, to speak
more properly, religious excitement.

The Unitarians of the United States have in my time possessed a number
of preachers of most remarkable excellence; Dr. Channing, Dr. Dewey, Dr.
Bellows, my own venerable and dear pastor, Dr. Furness, Dr. Follen,
William and Henry Ware, being all men of extraordinary powers of
eloquence. At home I have heard Frederick Maurice and Dean Stanley, but
the most impressive preaching I ever heard in England was still from a
Unitarian pulpit; James Martineau, I think, surpassed all the very
remarkable men I have named in the wonderful beauty and power,
spirituality and solemnity, of his sacred teaching. Frederick Robertson,
to my infinite loss and sorrow, I never heard, having been deterred from
going to hear him by his reputation of a "fashionable preacher;" he,
better than any one, would have understood my repugnance to that species
of religious instructor.

Better, in my judgment, than these occasional appeals to our feelings
and imaginations under Mrs. Rowden's influence, was the constant _use_
of the Bible among us. I cannot call the reading and committing to
memory of the Scriptures, as we performed those duties, by the serious
name of study. But the Bible was learnt by heart in certain portions and
recited before breakfast every morning, and read aloud before bedtime
every evening by us; and though the practice may be open to some
objections, I think they hardly outweigh the benefit bestowed upon young
minds by early familiar acquaintance with the highest themes, the
holiest thoughts, and the noblest words the world possesses or ever will
possess. To me my intima