is very learned in the questions he has studied, and very
good--beloved of all, and highly esteemed--but merely bookish ... and
among the unfittest of all the company for any action." In this respect
Dr. Owen was a great contrast to his studious contemporary; for he was
as eminent for business talent as most ministers are conspicuous for the
want of it. It was on this account that he was selected for the task of
reorganizing the universities of Dublin and Oxford; and the success with
which he fulfilled his commission, whilst it justified his patron's
sagacity, showed that he was sufficiently master of himself to become
the master of other minds. Of all his brethren few were so "fit for
action." To the same cause to which he owed this practical ascendency,
we are disposed to ascribe his popularity as a preacher; for we agree
with Dr. Thompson, (Life of Owen, p. cvi.,) in thinking that Owen's
power in the pulpit must have been greater than is usually surmised by
his modern readers. Those who knew him describe him as a singularly
fluent and persuasive speaker; and they also represent his social
intercourse as peculiarly vivacious and cheerful. From all which our
inference is, that Owen was one of those happy people who, whether for
business or study, whether for conversation or public speaking, can
concentrate all their faculties on the immediate occasion, and who do
justice to themselves and the world, by doing justice to each matter as
it successively comes to their hand.

A well-informed and earnest speaker will always be popular, if he be
tolerably fluent, and if he "shew himself friendly;" but no reputation
and no talent will secure an audience to the automaton who is
unconscious of his hearers, or to the misanthrope, who despises or
dislikes them. And if, as Anthony a Wood informs us, "the persuasion of
his oratory could move and wind the affections of his admiring auditory
almost as he pleased," we can well believe that he possessed the "proper
and comely personage, the graceful behavior in the pulpit, the eloquent
elocution, and the winning and insinuating deportment," which this
reluctant witness ascribes to him. With such advantages, we can
understand how, dissolved into a stream of continuous discourse, the
doctrines which we only know in their crystallized form of heads and
particulars, became a gladsome river; and how the man who spoke them
with sparkling eye and shining face was not shunned as a buckram pedan