structors in the courts-a privilege still retained by their representatives, the Advocates' first clerks. This admirable system of tuition, (which might, I think, be restored with great advantage in our own days) having been dropped, the Faculty, to supply its place, obtained chairs in the University, for the instruction of youth in civil and municipal law. And, as these two chairs embrace the whole law, it would manifestly be an encroachment upon the rights of the Faculty to subdivide the study, and take out of the hands of their professor any part of the subject which is entrusted to him. If such a doctrine were admitted, the existing chair might be ruined, by turning over to new professors, first one brauch, and then another, until nothing of his subject might be left. Why not have a lecturer on teinds, on criminal law, on revenue law, on commercial law, on consistorial law, &c.? Somebody urged that this would be an advantage. No doubt each branch might be more fully taught, but how much would be left to the proper professor? I care not what the present Professor of Law thinks of it; I say that such an arrangement was never heard of. The tuition of the whole law is entrusted to one person. If he cannot comprize the whole subject in one course of lectures, let him give two, three, or four; and if he does not teach it sufficiently in detail, let other lecturers supply that in which he is deficient, but not as professors. There is no reason why the teacher of a branch of a science should be a professor. In the medical and philosophical sciences, there are innumerable independent and separate lecturers, who may teach the details, while the professors of those sciences give merely the grand and general outlines of the subject. Thus you have lectures on diseases of the eye, the ear, &c.-lectures on galvanism-electricity-dynamics, &c. ; but surely it would be absurd to erect new chairs in the Universities for such courses. There can then be no objection to the continuance of such a course of lectures as the present in the Signet Library. But I must see better grounds for placing it in the University; particularly, seeing (what however was studiously kept out of view by Mr Cranstounand Mr Bell,) that throughout the whole of the Universities of EUROPE, there is, whatever else there

may be, no example of a separate chair for that extremely subordinate branch of legal knowledge which goes by the name of Conveyancing. I say, therefore, before I agree with these people, I must see better grounds.

And truly some of the grounds stated by the commissioners are odd enough. One of the strongest depends upon the success the scheme has met with as it now exists." The Society have the satisfaction of stating, that, to an increasing concourse of students, of various descriptions, that gentleman (Mr Macvey Napier) has delivered several courses of lectures, in which he has shewn that his talents and acquirements have eminently qualified him for the situation in which they have had the good fortune to place him."It might be a curious subject of inquiry, whether this immense concourse of students was drawn together by the talents of the lecturer, and the utility of the course, or by a certain regulation which compels each candidate for admission to the Society of Writers to the Signet, to take out one or more tickets for the course. Be this as it may; if the course is so eminently useful, and so well attended, it does not clearly occur to me where the strong necessity exists for making a professorship of it, unless it be for the aggrandizement of the Society of Writers, to the Signet, which is, in truth, the object of the Tory friends of the measure, or for that of the present incumbent, which is the aim of the Whigs.

Mr Cranstoun told us that none but an experienced Writer to the Signet could teach this abstruse science, and that no one could acquire it without such tuition, unless he should get a glimpse of the new algebraical light to which he alluded. I have conversed with many Writers to the Signet upon the subject, and am inclined to agree with Mr Cranstoun, that a Writer to the Signet has the best means of teaching conveyancing. But I have met with none who ever derived benefit from attendance on public lectures on the subject;-it is at the desk that it must be learned, or nowhere. But if it is to be taught by a professor, I confess I do not see any good reason for excluding an Advocate from such a chair. I shall be told that his particular branch of business is incompatible with a thorough knowledge of deeds. But if constant practice in conveyancing is essen

tial to a thorough knowledge of the subject, I conceive a lawyer quite as adequate to teach it, as a writer not in constant practice. In fact, the last lecturer on conveyancing thought it added to his respectability to take the advocate's gown; and when he was unable to lecture, the Society of Writers to the Signet allowed another advocate to teach in his place; and it is believed better and more useful lectures never were delivered than on this occasion. But we may safely maintain, that an advocate in practice may teach conveyancing as well as a person who does not practise conveyancing at all; nay, the chief part of whose time is devoted, and usefully devoted, to the study of title pages rather than title deedsto the distribution of books in the library of the Society of Writers to the Signet to the collection and arrangement of materials for a supplement to a superannuated Encyclopædia-to criticism-to the discovery of new information as to the scope and tendency of Lord Bacon's Writings-a new tune on the Novum Organum-and other such employment.

And this leads me to my last and strongest ground of objection to this proposal, which, in spite of Mr Cranstoun, I will confess is political. I have as great a respect for Mr Cranstoun as any Whig at the bar, and a much greater respect for him than for any other Whig at the bar. But I was truly sorry to hear him making a harangue about the baseness of voting upon this measure from political motives. Did he not know that almost every one member of the Faculty who voted with him voted wholly and solely from political motives? Did he not know, that if a Tory gentleman had been lecturer on conveyancing, the whole measure would have been stigmatized as a dirty Tory job? Did he not know that one-half of the persons, who, along with him, appeared to be so earnest and anxious for the honour and glory of the Society of Writers to the Signet, have upon other occasions declaimed against the pushing and striding system of that body-have complained of the privilege granted to them by the Court of having seats in the Inner-House set apart for them, &c.? It is absurd to deny that this measure would have been scouted by the very men who supported it, if it had not been for the political object in

view. And it was a complete piece of humbug to pretend that politics were not to interfere in the question.

Had the question been brought forward in a fair, manly, and open way, the case would have been quite different. Had the proposal been, that, after the present incumbency, the course should be transferred to the University; or suppose Mr Napier had signified his resignation, in order that the question might be discussed without bias, I verily think it would not have been fair to have allowed politics to interfere, although, in this latter case, it is evident, from the high estimation in which we are told Mr Napier stands, that he would have been re-elected. Still, this course would have been so manly and honourable, that however much I dislike Mr Napier's politics, and however aware of the danger which I foresee from the projected monopoly of education by his party, I should have been much inclined to vote for his re-election. But as the matter stood, I saw no occasion, for one, to give the sanction of my approbation to the Whig Mr Napier being made a professor under the cover of two general propositions, declaring simply that conveyancing is a useful study, and ought to be taught by a professor rather than a lecturer. I confess I was somewhat surprised that no one gave this as the best and true reason for voting against Mr Cranstoun's proposition. It is, I think, a reason of which nobody needs to be ashamed. But I suppose they were all cowed by the thunders of declamation against politics, which was as politic a device as can well be conceived. However, notwithstanding the absence of a great number of those who expressed themselves against the measure, and the presence of every retainer of whiggery who could be laid hold of, a majority voted against Mr Cranstoun's motion.

This was communicated to the Writers by the Dean of Faculty, and a most extraordinary application followed. The Faculty were requested by the Writers to the Signet to send them an extract of the minutes of their meeting on the subject, together with any reasons of DISSENT which might be lodged against the resolution of the Faculty. The Faculty were told it would be rude and impolite to refuse this most unheardof request. The majority of a body

OUR first information of the existence of such a person as "the Reverend Edward Irving," was derived from certain columns devoted (last summer we think) by a morning paper to the account of a dinner given in his honour in London-himself in the chair. One of the company, the croupier, if we recollect rightly, was reported to have commenced a speech proposing Mr Irving's health, with lauding Mr Irving as a person "equally gigantic in intellect as in corporeal frame." From this we took it for granted, that Mr Irving was a tall man-and from the speech which he made in reply, we could not avoid the conclusion, that he himself was of the croupier's opinion as to the gigantic elevation of his own intellect. In other words, we were impressed by the whole of this newspaper report (which we of course considered as an advertisement,) with the belief, that some Scotch Presbyterian congregation in the city of London had got a new, a tall, and a conceited minister-that, as usual, a good dinner had been given on his inauguration-and that, as usual, the good dinner had been followed with many speeches, which could only appear tolerable to persons influenced by those feelings which we recently had occasion to enlarge a little upon, in treating of the Origin and Progress of the Gormandizing School of Eloquence.

We had quite forgotten all this, until our memory was refreshed by some of those notices wherewith the London newspapers have recently abounded. Mr Irving, it seems, has become a highly popular preacher in London. Canning and Brougham, Sidmouth and Mackintosh, and Michael Angelo Taylor, and Mr Heber, have all been to hear him. The Old Times calls him a quack and an ass-and the New Times says the Old Times is just as absurd in this as in calling (as it lately did) Sir Walter Scott a "Mountebank Minstrel,"-" a dull romancespinner," and we know not what be

The Oracles of God, four Orations.

sides. John Bull, however, takes for once the Old Times' side of the question, and reiterates the cry of "quackery" and "cant," adding, with much urbanity, the designation of "the new Dr Squintum," (this by the way in the very same paper where John very properly abuses Lord Byron for saying that the King weighs twenty stone,)-while, to complete the mystification, the Morning Chronicle steps forward to abuse John Bull, and to espouse the cause of Dr Stoddart, in direct opposition to that maintained in the spotless columns of " the Leading Journal of Europe."

The only fuct we came to the knowledge of from all these conflicting statements and authorities, was, that the Reverend Edward Irving has the misfortune to have some defect in his organs of vision—which really, in spite of our respect for Mr John Bull, we cannot consider as bearing very closely upon the question of this reverend gentleman's merits as a preacher of the Gospel. Even if we knew that John Bull was as heavy as Lambert, as lame as Vulcan, and as oblique in glance as Thersites himself all in one-we should not enjoy John Bull's wit a bit less than we have been used to do. Such satire as this does harm to nobody but the person who makes use of it. It is never even excusable, except when used in revenge of satire of the same species-and we certainly should be much surprised if we learned that Mr Irving, or any other preacher, had given John Bull any such provocation.

We say, that this of the squint was the only fact we had been able to gather from all this newspaper controversy. The opinions of the several controversialists we, of course, considered as tantamount to nothing; and we thought not much more highly of the information that such and such men of intellectual reputation had been detected amidst the crowd of Mr Irving's chapel upon such or such a Sunday. There is no kind of reputa

VOL. XIV.

T

tion which we are inclined to hold in more suspicion (not to say contempt) than that of a much-run-upon, highflying church-orator. Be extravagant -be loud-thunder boldly, and your business is half done. If to a brave, bellowing voice, and a furious gesture, you add some strange uncouthness of look, dialect, or accent-so much the better. But if to these things you add the noble audacity of out-of-the-way and unwonted allusions, political, literary, personal and vituperative, mantling over the spite of these with the thin veil of a sanctimonious sorrowfulness, why, who can doubt the result of such a congregation of allurements?

Whitfield, in the last age, carried everything before him by the mere fearless bawling of enthusiastic mediocrity, aided by the concomitants of a remarkable exterior, and a melodious and well-managed trumpet of a voice. We are entitled to speak in this way of Whitfield, considered merely in an intellectual point of view-because his Sermons, &c. are in print, and are, without exception, the poorest stuff-the most uniform unredeemed trash, that ever disgraced the English press. As for the intentions of the man, that is quite a different matter-we have no doubt that Whitfield was a vain, frothy, loose-tongued declaimer; and that, in spite of all this, he might be a very wellmeaning man ; and that, in spite of all his weaknesses, his ministrations might not fail to produce a certain proportion of good.

The great preacher of the present age, again, is (or rather, perhaps, we should say, was) Dr Chalmers.

Nobody now doubts that Dr Chalmers owed nine-tenths (to say the least of it) of the great effect he produced, to the mere animal vehemence and exterior uncouthness of his delivery. The Doctor was for a considerable time over-rated in a most extravagant manner and yet nobody can deny that he did deserve to be rated highly. The publication of his first Sermons reduced him at once to a comparatively moderate station-and he has ever since been declining; yet much remains. He is not-every one who has read his books, admits the great master of imagination, of reason, and of language, which he at first passed for. He has not much imagination at all-witness the laborious tinkering

of what are meant to be his finest descriptive essays. In reasoning, he is coarse, rather than dexterous, extremely narrow, and extremely vague at the same time. In language he is grossly inaccurate-bombastic and bald by turns, a barbarous innovator, a most vulgar artizan. Yet much remains-a certain manly vigour redeems more than half these faults-a direct, honest earnestness-a scorn of petty affectations— a pervading spirit of bold truth of sentiment-these are qualities which no one can deny to him. And then he made his own style-bad as it is in many respects, this style of preaching was his creation-a novelty, and his own. He stepped into a new walkhe wielded a new weapon-his errors were the errors of a man possessed, if not of genius, (in its true sense,) certainly of very strong and remarkable talents. And therefore he must not be altogether forgotten, at least in his own time.

What attraction the delivery of Mr Irving may possess, we have no means of guessing. From the fact of his being so much followed in London, we cannot doubt that it has at least the character of extraordinary earnestness and vehemence, which of itself is enough to make any preacher, to a certain extent, and for a time, excessively popular. But one thing we are altogether unable to account for, and this is, that, although Mr Irving seems never to have been out of Scotland until last year, we should never, by any accident, have heard his name mentioned in Scotland until after he had succeeded in making a noise in London. He was, it seems, assistant to Dr Chalmers at Glasgow for a considerable time, and yet, though till lately the name of Chalmers was never out of the mouths of the Glasgow people, we certainly never heard one of them even mention the name of his associate and colleague. Perhaps he is a Glasgow man, and failed there on the old principle of the prophet's being without renown in his own land. Perhaps his accent was too close an image of their own to be agreeable. Perhaps the far-sought charm of Dr Chalmers's High Fifeish barbarity was too powerful a rival for the native horrors of the Gallowgate. Of all this we know nothing. But Mr Irving has published a volume, and so put it in the power of us, and of every