Page:Transactions of the Provincial Medical and Surgical Association, volume 2.djvu/585

 his conduct, led him into no act of injustice, and left the sanctuary of his heart undefiled.

If my departed friend is conscious of these words, he knows that they are written with a sacred regard to that truth which he now beholds more nearly and clearly; and by one whose affection for his memory forbids the possibility of any intentional misrepresentation. I cannot refrain from quoting a passage here, which occurs in one of his numerous letters to me, and which, besides the lively account it contains of the preaching of a celebrated dissenter, is, in other respects, very characteristic of Dr. Darwall's epistolary style.─"Within the last two or three days, amidst several other books, I have had Sir Thomas Browne's works given me, containing, among other things, his Enquiry into Vulgar Errors, and Religio Medici. I do not wonder that the latter should have been very popular. There is an easiness of style about it, with such an extraordinary fertility of ideas, as perfectly astonishes me. The more I become acquainted with the authors of that day, the more do I feel my opinion of the men of the present age humbled. Why is it that whatever was done then so abounded in rich illustration, powerful statement, striking antithesis, exuberant power of language, to which we seem such utter strangers? Have we less industry or less genius; or are the minds of the highly-gifted amongst us turned into other sources; or is it that we have only a few, and those the very best writers of the age, who were popular in their own day. Be it as it may, the press labours, and the paper mills scarcely suffice to supply the daily and nightly scribblers, and yet not one, whom I know, can be compared to the giants that flourished in those days. After this, you will be hardly prepared for anything like praise of a cotemporary, and yet I shall be hardy enough to venture on it. On Sunday last (this was in September, 1824) I heard Robert Hall, of Leicester; and I really was astonished at the man. I do not know if you have heard him or not. If not, suppose to yourself a man of common appearance, and weak voice, and yet, merely by the powers of his mind, commanding the undivided attention of his congregation. Not to have heard such a man, is, in my feeling, a loss in the path of life. He is as superior to Irving as manly intellect to brute force; as the mind of the author, to the mountebank ism of the actor; as the lofty and towering oak, to the shadow that it casts upon the ground. I was disappointed in the commencement; but, in the course of his sermon, there were such bursts of real chaste eloquence, as have not fallen to my lot to hear. He preaches, you know, extempore; and yet he never was in want of a word. He began without hesitation, and he continued gathering vehemence and energy as he proceeded, till he was completely wrapt in his subject; yet never departed from even a logical arrangement."