ctly behind
Irving's chair. She was well dressed, spoke sitting, under great
apparent excitement, and screamed on till from exhaustion, as it
seemed, her voice gradually died away, and all was still. Then
Spencer Perceval, in slow and solemn tones, resumed, not where he
had left off, but with an exhortation to hear the voice of the
Lord which had just been uttered to the congregation, and after a
few more sentences he sat down. Two more men followed him, and
then Irving preached. His subject was 'God's love,' upon which he
poured forth a mystical incomprehensible rhapsody, with
extraordinary vehemence of manner and power of lungs. There was
nothing like eloquence in his sermon, no musical periods to
captivate the ear, no striking illustrations to charm the
imagination; but there is undoubtedly something in his commanding
figure and strange, wild countenance, his vehemence, and above all
the astonishing power of his voice, its compass, intonation, and
variety, which arrests attention, and gives the notion of a great
orator. I daresay he can speak well, but to waste real eloquence
on such an auditory would be like throwing pearls to swine. 'The
bawl of Bellas' is better adapted for their ears than quiet sense
in simpler sounds, and the principle 'omne ignotum pro magnifico,'
can scarcely find a happier illustration than amongst a
congregation whose admiration is probably in an inverse ratio to
their comprehension.

December 6th, 1833 {p.042}

The Vice-Chancellor, Parke, Bosanquet, and Erskine met yesterday
to consider a judgment, and took three hours to manage it;
business does not go on so quickly with many Judges as with one,
whether it be more satisfactory or not. The Chancellor, the last
time we met, announced to the Bar (very oddly) that for the
future their Lordships would give judgment in turn. (He had
himself delivered the only judgment that had been given.) The
Vice-Chancellor, who I thought was his friend, laughed at this
yesterday with me, and said that he wanted to throw off from
himself as much as he could. I asked him (he had said something,
I forget what, about the Chancery Bill) what would be left for
the Chancellor to do when that Bill was passed. He said,
'Nothing, that he meant to be Prime Minister and Chancellor, and
that it was what he had been driving at all along, that the Bill
for regulating the Privy Council was only a part of his own plan,
and that all his schemes tended to that end.' Sett