This is great writing; and great, because in harmony with the best utterances of Nature.

But there are two writers to whom we will especially direct the attention,-Foster and Macaulay. The fame of Foster has ever been with a select few; the fame of Macaulay has ever been world-wide. Yet, perhaps, of all the English Essayists, Foster is the greatest: his thoughts are great, indeed; and the expression is bowed to the thought. Macaulay's words glitter like polished lances through sunny forests. Foster's roll heavily like a vast fleet covered sea. Foster is a master in the empire of Thought; Macaulay in the empire of Style. Taste approves both, but more the exuberant conceptions of the one, and the graphic language of the other. We read, easily enough, that one was a hermit, bound to books, and to the still life of the study; the one a man of the world, a man of books, but a man of study too. The one slothful, mechanical in his method of writing, losing himself in dreams; the other quick, lively, losing himself, if at all, in dreams, yet not those above the world, but of the world, in the real old day. Macaulay indulges in no psycological speculations, Foster abounds in them; Macaulay notes the outer life of things and men, Foster th inner life. Note the following passage from Foster, on a man's writing memoirs of himself:

"Each mind has an interior apartment of its

own, which none but itself and the Divinity can enter. In this secluded place the passions mingle and fluctuate in unknown agitations. Here all the fantastic and all the magic shapes of the imagination have a haunt, where they can neither be invaded nor descried. Here the surrounding human beings, while quite insensible of it, are made the subjects of deliberate thought, and many of the designs respecting them revolved in silence. Here projects, convictions, vows, are confusedly scattered, and the records of past life are laid. Here in solitary state sits Conscience, surrounded by her own thunders, which sometimes sleep and sometimes roar, while the world does not know. The secrets of this apartment, could they have been but very partially brought forth, might have been fatal to that eulogy and splendour with which many a piece of biography has been exhibited by a partial and ignorant friend."

Or to cite another celebrated passage from the same Essay:

"The wonder then turns upon the great process by which a man could grow to the immense intelligence which can know that there is no God.— What age and what lights are requisite for this attainment? This intelligence involves the very attributes of Divinity while a God is denied. For unless this man is omnipresent, unless he is at this moment in every point of the universe, he cannot

K

know but that there may be, in some place, manifestations of a Deity, by which even he would be overpowered. If he does not know absolutely every agent in the universe, the one that he does not know may be God. If he is not himself the chief agent in the universe, and does not know what is so, that which is so may be God. If he is not in absolute possession of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, the one which he wants may be, that there is a God. If he cannot with certainty assign a cause for all that he perceives to exist, that cause may be God. If he does not know every thing that has been done in the immeasurable ages that are past, some things may have been done by a God. Thus, unless he knows all things, that is, precludes all other Divine existence by being Divine himself, he cannot know that the Being whose existence he rejects does not exist."

These are specimens of the weighty magnificence of Foster's style, and the mind has attained to some considerable degree of vigour and taste, which prefers this solemn richness to the more garish glare of more popular writers. Foster lived so completely amidst his own volitions, that it is not wonderful that he did not emulate the pictorial style of writing, but he has left us some specimens of his power: the "Reflections in a Library," and Meditations in a Cathedral," which show to us

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how graphic that pen might have been, had not its motion been impeded by the heavy masses of thought which sought utterance through it. Let the reader note the difference in point of style between the two following extracts. "The character of the Puritans," by Macaulay, stands perhaps altogether unrivalled in its way amongst the brightest things in English composition. Notice the sharpness and sententiousness of its sentences compared with Foster's in the following citation. Clever, brilliant, easy; thought has never been here a painful or profound exertion. The artistic style shines with epigram and point. Foster is the reverse of all this. His sentences, it must be admitted, are heavy, and sometimes they seem to ache with the pain of utterance. His style, although evidently so laboured, is utterly devoid of art, humour, wit, and all the light things flowing from these are entirely unknown to him. following extract is

The

MEDITATIONS IN A CATHEDRAL.

"One of the most striking situations for a religious and reflective Protestant is, that of passing some solitary hour in the lofty vault, among the superb arches and columns of any one of the most splendid of these edifices remaining at this day in our own country. If he has sensibility and taste,

the magnificence, the graceful union of so many diverse inventions of art, the whole mighty creation of genius that quitted the world without leaving even a name, will come with magical impression on his mind, while it is contemplatively darkening into the awe of antiquity. But he will be recalled, -the sculptures, the inscriptions, the sanctuaries enclosed off for the especial benefit, after death, of persons who had very different concerns, during life, from that of the care of their salvation, and various other insignia of the original character of the place will help to recal him to the thought, that these proud piles were in fact raised to celebrate the conquest, and prolong the dominion, of the power of darkness over the souls of the people. They were as triumphal arches erected in memorial of the extermination of that truth which was given to be the life of men.

As he looks round, and looks upward, on the prodigy of design, and skill, and perseverance, and tributary wealth, he may imagine to himself the multitudes that, during successive ages, frequented this fane in the assured belief, that the idle ceremonies and impious superstitions which they there performed or witnessed, were a service acceptable to Heaven, and to be repaid in blessings to the offerers. He may say to himself, 'Here, on this very floor, under that elevated and decorated vault, in a "dim religious light" like this, but with the