though he never cavilled at the distinctions of life in others, he never attached to them the least value for himself. Indeed, Howe's was one of the most majestic natures that ever dignified this mortal soil with its footsteps; and, in his great soul, there appears not to have been a spot, to which any of the little vanities of life could cling.

In common with all the truly great, Howe and Taylor were men of high courage and indomitable spirit; but, in this quality also, there was a marked difference between them. Taylor's courage was of a more active and animal turn, Howe's altogether moral and passive. Taylor's was seen in the readiness with which he drew his sword, and rushed into the field of battle; Howe's, in the invincible patience with which he endured the wrongs and insults of enemies, or in the fearless intrepidity with which he rebuked the errors of his most powerful friends. Taylor, with all his courage in the field, suffered the barbarities and profligacy of his party, both before and after the Restoration, to pass without censure; and it is a humiliating sight to see a man of his 'nerve,' to borrow an expression from Mr. Willmott, crawling like a parasite, in an attitude of the most abject and profane flattery to the feet of a tyrant, by whom all respect for the decencies of life, and for the honour of his country, seemed equally forgotten. But neither the defeets of Cromwell, nor the follies of his court, could escape the censures of Howe; and it is a truly sublime spectacle to see, in union with so much gentleness and humility, a moral heroism that could awe the mightiest spirit on earth into silence, and compel the iron soul of Cromwell to bow. But it was so; the hero of Worcester was vanquished by the hero of the cross-all honour to them both!

We never read the Liberty of Prophesying,' especially the 'Dedication,' without feelings of intense admiration and delight. Here we see that Taylor, however warped by party influence, was endued naturally with a noble soul, with enlarged views, catholic feelings, a generous and sympathising heart. Yet he allowed these high tendencies to be so entirely overpowered by his false notions of loyalty, his personal ambition, and the prejudices of education and party feeling, that he struggled, to the last gasp, for one of the most merciless tyrannies in church and state that ever cursed the earth; leaving nothing untried to quench the sparks of our civil and religious freedom in the blood of its defenders. Heber, though evidently ashamed of what he defends, has done his best to shield the conduct of Taylor in Ireland, and before the Houses of Parliament, from the just animadversions of Orme. But with what consistency, to say nothing of Christian duty, could the man who had

written the 'Liberty of Prophesying,' hold office, for a single day, under such a government as that of Charles the Second, with its 'Five Mile Acts,' and Acts of Uniformity! Where, especially, was his consistency in flattering that government, in becoming in fact its hireling, to silence those ministers, who, he had contended, ought not to be silenced; or in attempting to poison the Irish legislature with the execrable trash which he uttered in his sermon to the two Houses of Parliament! In that sermon he tells them that dissenters were diseased children, 'whose disorders were to be cured, if possible, by emollients, if not, by the lancet; ' that Charles the Second was the best king in the world,' and 'since God has blessed us,' he adds, with so good, so just, so religious, and so wise a prince, let the sentence of his laws be our last resort, and no question be permitted after his judgment and legal determination: for wisdom saith, by me princes rule, by me they decree justice :' and therefore the spirit of the king is a divine eminency, and is as the Spirit of the most High God.' Taylor, in the fullness of his power, seems to have lost his intellect and piety, through the virulence of priestly pride and insolence.

Happily there is nothing like this, to check our admiration, in the life or writings of Howe. His, on the contrary, was a spirit essentially catholic in its feelings and views, genial and diffusive as the very sunshine of heaven; a fountain of holy love into which, neither education nor party strife, neither injuries received nor power enjoyed, had been permitted to infuse a particle of bitterness. Full of candour and meekness, we find him making every allowance for those who were enemies to all liberty but their own; aiding them when in distress, and putting the most charitable construction upon their abuses of power. Not the most chilling circumstances could freeze the sympathies of his heart; still it gushes forth in a charity as fervent, as the warm springs which force their way, through the frosts and snows of an Iceland soil. Even in old age his charity still shines and glows, like a window in the setting sun covered with stars of gold; throwing back on every thing without the beams of that heavenly love, which shines at the same time so brightly and warmly within, to illuminate all the chambers of the soul. If he resisted the measures of James the Second on behalf of the Papists, it was only because he knew it to be the determination of that deceitful monarch, as Sir James Macintosh among others has clearly shown, to establish a system that would have deluged the country in blood, and extinguished all the charities of life.

As to the intellectual merits of two such men as Howe and

Taylor, to form a complete estimate would require a genius of similar dimensions with their own. But there are points of contrast or resemblance which, even here, lie open to the most common observer. In each we see a mind of immense calibre and range. The extent of Taylor's memory is perfectly astounding; the variety and number of his allusions, in the way of imagery and quotation, all but infinite. With the exception of physical science his memory seemed to range, as with an eagle's eye, over the whole field of human knowledge; and with a vision as quick, clear, and minute, as it was far-seeing and comprehensive. His memory, however, either through defect of judgment or the ease with which it could retain every thing, was too omnivorous to be select and, with a little modification, we may apply to him what Milton said of the fathers. 'Whatsoever time, or the heedless hand of blind chance, hath drawn down from of old in her huge drag net, whether fish or seaweed, whether shells or shrubs, unpicked, and unchosen '-such is his learning.

In Howe's writings, there is enough to shew that his reading had been equally and, upon some subjects such as mental and moral philosophy and physical science, more than equally extensive but his memory, though one of prodigious power, does not appear to have been equally prompt or capacious, or so redundantly stored. But, if the stores, which he had gathered either from books or the scenes around him, were less ample or immediately at command, they were more valuable and select. In amassing literary treasure, Taylor, in his credulity, appears to have laid up gold and copper, base coin and genuine, diamonds and broken glass, with equal avidity; while Howe's high taste and philosophical discernment allowed him to receive nothing but genuine silver, or the purest gold. Howe's memory therefore, though less capacious, less gushingly full, is nevertheless a vast reservoir, that has been fed from purer streams, and is not encumbered with reptiles and weeds.

In some of his treatises Taylor has displayed a prodigious amount of thought, and, in logical clearness, closeness, and subtlety, he is not inferior to Howe: but in grandeur, depth, originality, loftiness, sublimity, and philosophical power, Howe stands unrivalled and alone. Taylor rarely ventures into a field of thought unoccupied by other men; and, though full of original fancies, there is little of what is original in the substance of his thoughts; but Howe's imperial intellect reigns over regions exclusively its own. The commonest snbjects in his hand, by the unusual light which he throws upon them, or the unexpected relations in which they are viewed, are rendered strikingly new: while from the boldness of his generalisations, as well

as the breadth and suggestiveness of his strokes, his representations derive a truthfulness and power, which no elaborate minuteness can supply. With whatever aptness or beauty Taylor quotes or even discusses a passage of scripture, he rarely shews us anything in it which we did not see before. But a passage, discussed or merely alluded to by Howe, often bursts like a new revelation on the soul; unfolding a world of important meaning, before unthought of or unknown.

Guided by that Spirit which searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God, he dives downward into the profound, fetching, out of the very depths of revelation, pearls of great price. At the same time, there is such an ethereal loftiness and massive grandeur in his conceptions, such a solemn and subduing earnestness as well as fitness and sublimity in his appeals, as leave him without a superior or even an equal amongst our theological writers. He appears, on principle*, to have been opposed to an artificial style of composition: but what reader, of taste or sensibility, is there, who is not lost in the solemn grandeur, the hallowed feeling, the sublime philosophy and power, of the following description of a soul in ruins; which, though well-known, we cannot forbear to quote.

The stately ruins are visible to every eye that bear in their front (yet extant) this doleful inscription,-HERE GOD ONCE DWELT. Enough appears of the admirable frame and structure of the soul of man, to show that the Divine presence did sometime reside in it; more than enough of vicious deformity, to proclaim he is now retired and gone. The lamps are extinct, the altar overturned; the light and love are now vanished, which did the one shine with so heavenly brightness, the other burn with so pious fervour; the golden candlestick is displaced and thrown away as a useless thing, to make room for the throne of the prince of darkness; the sacred incense, which sent rolling up in clouds its rich perfumes, is exchanged for a poisonous, hellish vapour, and here is, instead of a sweet savour, a stench.' . . . What have not the enemies done wickedly in the sanctuary!' How have 'they broken down the carved work thereof,' and that, too, with axes and hammers,' the noise whereof was not to be heard in building, much less in the demolishing this sacred frame! Look upon the fragments of that curious sculpture which once adorned the palace of that great king; the relics of common notions; the lively prints of undefaced truth; the fair ideas of things; the yet legible precepts that relate to practice. Behold! with what accuracy the broken pieces show these to have been engraven by the finger of God; and how they now lie torn and scattered, one in this dark corner, another in that, buried in heaps of dirt and rubbish. . . . You come, amidst all this confusion, as into the ruined palace of some great prince, in which you see here the fragments of a noble pillar, there the shattered pieces of some curious imagery, and all lying neglected and

• See Delighting in God,' vol. ii. p. 570.

useless among heaps of dirt. . . . So that, should there be any pretence to the Divine presence, it might be said, 'If God be here, why is it thus ?' The faded glory, the darkness, the disorder, the impurity, the decayed state, in all respects, of the temple, too plainly show the Great Inhabitant is gone!'-Living Temple, vol. i. pp. 225, 226.

In some of Taylor's principal works, an English landscape of great breadth and beauty is spread out before us, richly dimpled and undulating, every where, with a profusion of blossom and more valuable produce; not however without poppies, thistles, and darnel, mingled with the corn. But, in the 'Living Temple,' or any of the greater works of Howe, we have a region of cragbuilt mountains, whose roots shoot downward to the centre of the earth, their summits upwards above the clouds: while, round their base, huge masses of rock, tumbling in disorder, or even crumbling to pieces, shew, in the very waste of intellect, the stupendous resources of the mind which threw them off. Here we behold the inexhaustible quarries from which Paley, in his Natural Theology, and other writers have drawn not only their thoughts but their illustrations. Here, in deep glens, we wander through regions of thought, but rarely trodden by the foot of man; or mount some ethereal top, that commands, at a single view, the earth and sky. Here, in torrent or waterfall, we see the first gush of many a pure mountainstream, which, through the contributions of subsequent minds, has swelled and widened to a mighty river : while occasionally we stand thrilled into astonishment, at those strokes of holy indignation, which dart in thunderbolts on the enemies of truth, or at the vast accumulations of argument, hurled down, like an avalanche, to crush and bury them for ever. Nor must we forget those fruitful regions of devout and tranquil contemplation, so frequently interposed; nor those bright spots of alpine flowers, which, though wildly scattered as by the hand of chance, appear dyed in the very hue of heaven.

In mere fancy, however, Taylor, if not more original, is certainly more varied and affluent : but, in sublimity of conception, in the higher imagination, or that inventive power which throws open, at a glance, a whole region of thought to the view, he is decidedly inferior. Nor is there always in his figures, beautiful and brilliant as many of them are, that fitness, subordination, or good taste which are generally to be seen in those of Howe. It is remarkable too that Taylor, though he often sports with his own bright fancies, in all the eagerness of a child blowing glass or bubbles for amusement, never seems inclined for sport with anything besides. Some of his quaint phrases, idle allusions, and old wives' fables,' are irresistibly droll; but much of the drollery arises from the devout seriousness and undoubting