ts of
organization whatever, immediately above this, in the forehead, there is
an arch of imagination, carrying out the summit boldly and roundly, in
a style to which the heads of very few poets present any thing
comparable, while over this again there is a grand apex of high and
solemn veneration and love, such as might have graced the bust of Plato
himself, and such as in living men I had never beheld equaled in any but
the majestic head of Canova. The whole is edged with a few crisp dark
locks, which stand forth boldly, and afford a fine relief to the
death-like paleness of those massive temples.... Of all human
compositions there is none surely which loses so much as a sermon does
when it is made to address itself to the eye of a solitary student in
his closet and not to the thrilling ears of a mighty mingled
congregation, through the very voice which nature has enriched with
notes more expressive than words can ever be of the meanings and
feelings of its author. Neither, perhaps, did the world ever possess any
orator whose minutest peculiarities of gesture and voice have more power
in increasing the effect of what he says--whose delivery, in other
words, is the first, and the second, and the third excellence of his
oratory--more truly than is that of Dr. Chalmers. And yet were the
spirit of the man less gifted than it is, there is no question these,
his lesser peculiarities, would never have been numbered among his
points of excellence. His voice is neither strong nor melodious, his
gestures are neither easy nor graceful; but, on the contrary, extremely
rude and awkward; his pronunciation is not only broadly national, but
broadly provincial, distorting almost every word he utters into some
barbarous novelty, which, had his hearer leisure to think of such
things, might be productive of an effect at once ludicrous and offensive
in a singular degree. But, of a truth, these are things which no
listener can attend to while this great preacher stands before him armed
with all the weapons of the most commanding eloquence, and swaying all
around him with its imperial rule. At first, indeed, there is nothing to
make one suspect what riches are in store. He commences in a low,
drawling key, which has not even the merit of being solemn, and advances
from sentence to sentence, and from paragraph to paragraph, while you
seek in vain to catch a single echo that gives promise of that which is
to come. There is, on the contrary, an