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CHAPTER X.

SELECT WRITERS OF THE EARLY PART OF THIS

CENTURY.

THEOLOGY.

Thomas Chalmers, D.D., LL.D., (1780-1847), is the most celebrated name among the preachers of the Church of Scotland. A native of Anstruther, in the county of Fife, he was sent at the age of twelve to the University of St Andrews, and was licensed to preach in 1799. In 1802 he was presented to the charge of Kilmany in Fife. During his college course, and the first six years of his ministry, he seems to have held no serious views in religion; in fact, he seems to have entered the Church in heartless scepticism, simply as a means of securing a livelihood. His favourite studies were scientific. In the interval between his obtaining licence and his coming of age, he studied chemistry, natural philosophy, and moral philosophy under the Edinburgh professors of the time. During the winter after his presentation to Kilmany, he taught the mathematical class in the University as assistant to a superannuated professor: during the following winter, having quarrelled with the University authorities, he set up opposition lectures in the town; and not satisfied with lecturing in the winter at St Andrews, he also lectured on chemistry to his parishioners at Kilmany during the summer. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Professorship of Mathematics at St Andrews, and subsequently for a similar post in the University of Edinburgh. He was lieutenant and chaplain to a regiment of Volunteers. He published a book on The Extent and Stability of the National Resources.' Altogether his life was at this time most laborious and eccentric. His composition of the article "Christianity" for the Edinburgh

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Encyclopædia' seems to have been a turning-point in his career. The death of a sister in 1808, and a lingering illness in the following year, are also mentioned as circumstances that helped to fix his thoughts more upon the peculiar work of the ministry. From about that time dates the beginning of his fame as a preacher. In 1815 he accepted a call to the Tron Church in Glasgow. During the eight years of his ministry there, he acquired as a preacher and a social reformer a wider reputation than had ever before attended the labours of a minister of the Church of Scotland. His Astronomical Discourses' raised universal admiration; and when he visited London, the leading wits of the day, and notably Canning and Wilberforce, "formed part of his congregation wherever he preached, and vied with one another in their anxiety to do him honour in society." His 'Commercial Discourses' also had an enormous circulation. As a social reformer he was known by his advocacy of Malthusianism, his extraordinary energy in organising the voluntary contributions for the relief of the poor, and his personal efforts to "excavate the practical heathenism of our large cities." In 1823 he was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy in St Andrews; in 1827 declined an offer of a chair of Moral Philosophy in University College, London; and in 1828 accepted a Divinity Professorship in Edinburgh. The first extra official work of his professorial life was a continuation of papers on the 'Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns,' begun before he left Glasgow: this was soon followed in the same direction by a course of lectures on Political Economy, which, when published in 1832, were highly praised by the authorities in that subject. He also published his lectures on Natural Theology and on Christian Evidences, and wrote the Bridgewater Treatise on "the adaptation of the world to the mental constitution of man." In addition

to his professorial and literary labours, he played a prominent part in the Courts of the Church: he was particularly distinguished by his schemes for Church extension, and by the lead that he took in the controversies terminating in the Disruption. He was chosen by acclamation Moderator of the first Free Church Assembly, and spent his latter years as Principal of the Free Church College in Edinburgh. He had no small influence in raising and establishing what is known as the Sustentation Fund. His collected works fill thirty-four duodecimo volumes.

We have mentioned his extraordinary fame as a preacher. His appearance is described as being by no means prepossessing; he had a hard voice and a broad pronunciation; his gestures were uncouth; and, unlike Robert Hall, he brought a written sermon to the pulpit, and confined his eyes to the manuscript. The charm seems to have lain in his fervid nervous energy. The hearers were laid hold of by his extraordinary concentrated em

phasis and graphic expression, and brought almost mesmerically under his influence. As an author, he is distinguished more for his statement of the views of others than for the excogitation of anything profoundly original. It may with confidence be pronounced that he had a greater genius for exposition than any other Scotchman of this century except Carlyle. We cannot read a page of Chalmers without feeling ourselves in the hand of a master of luminous and varied exposition. Himself possessing the clearest grasp of his subject, he fully comprehended and kept steadily in view the difficulties of the reader: he sought to unfold his matter in the most luminous sequence, and to make sure that one point was thoroughly expounded before he proIceeded to the next. He insisted upon being vividly understood. His habit of persistent repetition, of turning over each proposition and presenting it in many different shapes, is the most remarkable feature in his style. Robert Hall is reported to have dwelt upon this in conversation: "He often reiterates the same thing ten or twelve times in the course of a few pages. Even Burke himself had not so much of that peculiarity. His mind resembles a kaleidoscope. Every turn presents the object in a new and beautiful form; but the object presented is still the same. He may be said to indulge in this repetition to a faulty excess. His mind seems to move on hinges, not on wheels. There is incessant motion, but no progress. When he was at Leicester, he preached a most admirable sermon, on the necessity of immediate repentance; but there were only two ideas in it, and on these his mind revolved as on a pivot.' Whether Chalmers carries repetition to excess is matter of opinion: in a popular expositor excessive repetition is an error upon the right side. It is incorrect to say that there is no progress in his expositions; there is progress, but it is slow and thorough.

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HISTORY.

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In 1817-18 was published the 'History of British India,' by James Mill (1773-1836), celebrated afterwards as a writer on psychology, ethics, and sociology. "An ampler title to distinction in history and philosophy," writes the late Mr Grote, can seldom be produced than that which Mr James Mill left behind him. We know no work which surpasses his History of British India' in the main excellences attainable by historical writers: industrious accumulation, continued for many years, of original authorities-careful and conscientious criticism of their statements, and

1 It is rather a remarkable fact that both these men in their younger days were distinguished as mathematicians. Such combinations of high scientific with the highest literary aptitude are rare.

a large command of psychological analysis, enabling the author to interpret phenomena of society, both extremely complicated and far removed from his own personal experience." Born in Kincardineshire, not far from the birthplace of Thomas Reid, Mill was educated after a fashion and with a purpose very common in Scotland he was sent to the school of his native parish, LogiePert; to the grammar-school of the nearest town, Montrose; and to the University of Edinburgh; and he was destined to the ministry of the Kirk. But after receiving licence as a preacher, he relinquished his intended profession, and took, about the beginning of this century, a step that Jeffrey about the same time had thoughts of taking-went to London, and settled there as, to use Jeffrey's expression, a literary "grub." He became editor of the Literary Journal,' a short-lived adventure, and wrote for the Eclectic Review,' the 'Edinburgh Review,' and other periodicals. He made the acquaintance of Jeremy Bentham, and for a number of years he and his family lived during the summer in Bentham's country-house. His 'History of British India' was commenced in 1806. In 1819, the year after the publication of this work, he was offered the high post of AssistantExaminer of Correspondence in the India House, in which he was ultimately chief Examiner, an office nearly equivalent to the Under-Secretaryship of State for Indian Affairs. Shortly after his appointment to the India House he contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica' the articles on Government, Jurisprudence, Liberty of the Press, Prison Discipline, Colonies, Law of Nations, and Education. He was one of the principal contributors to the 'Westminster Review,' which was founded in 1823. His chief works on more abstruse subjects are- Elements of Political Economy,' 1821-22; Analysis of the Human Mind,' 1829; and 'Fragments on Mackintosh,' 1835. - Mill was endowed with eminent powers of expression and illustration. Bentham judged rightly in helping him on as a promising expositor of utilitarian principles. His strength, however, lay more in the logical, scientific faculty men were drawn to his books more by the severe and penetrating rationality of the matter than by the attractions of the style. The severity of his style was probably deepened by a lurking cynicism that on several occasions made itself disagreeably conspicuous: a man of clear insight and intense reserved disposition, he had something like a passionate hatred of superficial knowledge and gushing sentimentality, and he opposed the philosophy of Sir James Mackintosh and the amiable Hindu extravagance of Sir William Jones with too much asperity, and in the case of Jones with some disadvantage to the truth. His style possesses very little figurative ornament; it aims at brief and clear expression as the main chance;

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and its principal charms are the severe charms of sententious incisiveness and occasional strokes of epigrammatic point. His 'Encyclopædia' essays have always been exceedingly popular among hard-headed people: they have none of the softer graces of style, but they are almost unrivalled as efforts at the concise application of general principles to practical life; and, in addition to their "pithy" character, their constant endeavour to give the pith of the matter in the briefest possible statement, they contain sharp stimulating touches of epigram and of cynical paradox. Macaulay's criticism that "his arguments are stated with the utmost affectation of precision, his divisions are awfully formal, and his style is generally as dry as that of Euclid's elements," is, like too many of Macaulay's criticisms, an extreme caricature. The main defect in these essays is pointed out by the author's son, Mr John Stuart Mill, in the chapter on the "Geometrical method of reasoning in Politics" (Logic, ii. 471). The History of British India' is a perspicuous, well-arranged narrative, written without much pretence to fine composition. As in his essays, the style is enlivened chiefly by epigrammatic turns, succinct maxims, and sharp cynical criticisms. The value of the work consists mainly in its clear analysis of institutions, and its reviews of legal and political transactions by the light of general principles. Concerning Mill's other principal works we quote the opinion of Mr Grote: Mr James Mill's Elements of Political Economy' were, at the time when they appeared, the most logical and condensed exposition of the entire science then existing. Lastly, his latest avowed production, the Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind,' is a model of perspicuous exposition of complex states of consciousness, carried farther than by any other author before him."

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Henry Hallam (1777-1859) is the author of three celebrated historical works. The son of a dignitary of the English Church, he received his education at Eton and Oxford, and afterwards studied law in the Inner Temple; but possessing some private fortune, and holding besides a Goverment sinecure, he was independent of professional emolument, and devoted himself to literature. He attached himself to the Whig party, wrote for the Edinburgh Review,' took an active part in the Anti slavery

1 Its value was much increased some twenty years ago by the annotations of Mr Wilson, Boden Professor of Sanscrit in Oxford, who followed Mill step by step over the field with a superior knowledge of Hindu literature. It appears that Mill, while his work is fully entitled to the praise of extensive research, was somewhat prejudiced against the Hindus by his antipathy to what he considered the overestimate of them formed by Sir William Jones. Mr Wilson not only corrects Mill's errors in matters of fact, but pursues him throughout with a sharp criticism of his conclusions regarding men and measures; and while he cannot be said to show the same superiority in judgment that he shows in scholarship, the caustic criticising of the critic forms an interesting by-play in the perusal of the book. Mr Wilson also continues the history up to his own time.

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