the soul; how men are of an individuality all unthought of; and how mighty an agent, beyond all mights of education or training, is constitutional character. In Mr. Montagu's house he saw "the soil " in many a rich and fruitful variation, and came to know how, by the most diverse and different paths, the same end may be attained. If his natural impatience of everything contracted, mean, and narrow-minded gained force in this society, it is not a surprising result. But he had always been sufficiently ready to contemn and scorn commonplace boundaries. His friends in Bedford Square, and their friends, taught him to appreciate more thoroughly the unities and diversities of man.

Scarcely any record remains of the intercourse which existed between Irving and Coleridge, an intercourse which was begun, as has just been seen, by Mr. Montagu. It lasted for years, and was full of kindness on the part of the philosopher, and of reverential respect on that of Irving, who, following the natural instinct of his own ingenuous nature, changed in an instant, in such a presence, from the orator who, speaking in God's name, assumed a certain austere pomp of positionmore like an authoritative priest than a simple Presbyter-into the simple and candid listener, more ready to learn than he was to teach, and to consider the thoughts of another than to propound his own. Nothing, indeed, can be more remarkable, more unlike the opinion many people have formed of him, or more true to his real character, than the fact, very clearly revealed by all the dedicatory addresses to which we have referred, that in his own consciousness he was always learning; and not only so, but with the

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HIS INFLUENCE ON THE VIEWS OF IRVING.

utmost simplicity and frankness acknowledging what he had learned. If imagination had anything to do with this serious and sad history, it would not be difficult to picture those two figures, so wonderfully different, looking down from the soft Highgate slopes upon that uneasy world beneath, which, to one of them, was but a great field of study, proving, as never any collection of human creatures proved before, all the grievous but great conclusions of philosophy; while to the other, it raged with all the incessant conflict of a field of battle, dread agony of life and death, through which his own cry "to the rescue!" was continually ringing, and his own hand snatching forth from under trampling feet the wounded and the fallen. Here Irving changed the common superficial idea of the world's conversion that belief calmly held or earnestly insisted on in the face of acknowledged disappointment in many missionary efforts, and the slowness and lingering issues of even the most successful, which is common to most churches. "That error," as he himself says, "under which almost the whole of the Church is lying, that the present world is to be converted unto the Lord, and so slide by a natural inclination into the Church-the present reign of Satan hastening, of its own accord, into the millennial reign of Christ." For this doctrine he learned to substitute the idea of a dispensation drawing towards its close, and its natural consequence in a mind so full of love to God and man-of an altogether glorious and overwhelming revolution yet to come, in which all the dead society, churches, kingdoms, fashions of this world, galvanically kept in motion until the end, should be

finally burned up and destroyed. Whether this development of wistful and anxious faith, and the "deliverance" conveyed by it; or whether that more subtle view of the ancient and much-assailed Calvinistic doctrine of election, which sets forth God's message and messengers as specially addressed to "the worthy," and universally received by them wherever the message is heard was the substance of what the preacher learned from the poet-philosopher, there is no information. The prodigal thanks with which the teaching was received, given out of the fulness of a heart always ready to exaggerate the benefits conferred upon it, is almost the only distinct record of what passed between them.

Such was his society and occupations when he returned with the companion of his life from Scotland. He brought his wife into a house in which the tumult of London was perpetually heard; not into a quiet ecclesiastical society, like that which generally falls to the lot of the wives of Scotch ministers, but to a muchdisturbed dwelling-place, constantly assailed by visitors, and invaded by agitations of the world. Among all the other excitements of popularity, there came also the pleasant excitement of a new church about to be built, of size proportioned to the necessities of the case. The same crowds and commotion still surrounded the Caledonian chapel, but they became more bearable in the prospect of more roomy quarters. An unfailing succession of private as well as public calls upon the kindness, help, and hospitality of a man whom everybody believed in, and who proffered kindness to all, helped to increase the incessant motion and activity of that full and unresting life. Thus within eighteen months after

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A SIMPLE PRESBYTER.

his arrival in London had the Scotch preacher won the friendship of many, not specially open to members of his profession and church, and made himself a centre of personal beneficences not to be counted. If ever pride can be justified, Edward Irving might have been justified in a passing thrill of that exultation when he brought his wife from the quiet manse which all along had looked on and watched his career, not sure how far its daughter's future was safe in the hands of a man so often foiled, yet so unsubduable, to place her in a position and society which few clergymen of his church have ever attained, and indeed which few men in any church, however titled or dignified, could equal. The peculiarity of his position lay in the fact that this singular elevation belonged to himself, and not to his rank, which was not susceptible of change. That his influence was extended a thousand-fold, with little addition to his means, and none to his station, and that while he moved among men of the highest intellect and position, neither his transcendent popularity nor his acknowledged genius ever changed that primitive standing-ground of priest and pastor which he always held with primitive tenacity. The charm of that conjunction is one which the most worldly mind of man cannot refuse to appreciate; and perhaps it is only on the members of a church which owns no possibility of promotion, that such a delicate and visionary though real rank could by common verdict be bestowed.

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CHAPTER IX.

1824.

THE year 1824 began with no diminution of those incessant labours. It is wonderful how a man of so great a frame, and of out-of-door tendencies so strong and long cherished, should have been able to bear, as Irving did, confinement in one of the most town-like and closely-inhabited regions of London. In Pentonville, indeed, faint breaths of country air might at that period be supposed to breathe along the tidy, genteel streets; but in Bloomsbury, where many of Irving's friends resided, or in the dusty ranges of Holborn, where his church was, no such refreshment can have been practicable. Nor had the Presbyterian minister any relief from curates, or assistance of any kind. His entire pulpit services-and, according to his own confession, his sermons averaged an hour and a quarter in length his prayers, as much exercises of the intellect — as of the heart, came from his own lips and mind, unaided by the intervention of any other man; and besides his literary labours, and the incessant demands which his great reputation brought upon him, he had all the pastoral cares of his own large congregation to attend to, and was ready at the call of the sick, the friendless, and the stranger, whensoever they addressed him. That