y remarkable about Mr.
Brown. He is tall--thin--of light complexion, a very different style of
man to the fat, indolent-looking old gentlemen that figure in the picture
gallery of a certain popular religious magazine, but with an appearance
of intellectual activity and readiness for his work and age, to which few
of the good old conventional divines now happily gathered to their
fathers ever seem to have had an idea.

THE REV. JOHN CAMPBELL, D.D.

If the reader has ever been in the habit of attending public meetings, he
must occasionally have seen an amendment proposed by a man evidently in a
minority, yet proposed nevertheless. The man who does this is a man of
confidence, of good lungs and nerve. First, the meeting will not hear
him at all. 'Down, down!' is the universal cry. But the man stands
firm, fixes his arms across his breast in the manner of the 'Napoleon
musing at St. Helena' of the late Mr. Haydon. He knows that that angry
hubbub cannot last long: that the indignant public will be out of breath
in five minutes; that the more frantic it is now, the more exhausted and
quiet it will be anon; and, with a calm smile of pity, he waits the
result. All that he has to do is simply to stand still, and, if he does
this long enough, there is no meeting on the face of the earth that can
refuse him a hearing.

In some such manner has the Rev. John Campbell made good his position in
the religious world, or rather in that one section of the Congregational
body over which he rules with a rod of iron. At times there has been a
hubbub, but the Doctor knows no hubbub, however loud and angry, can last
long; and to the mass, destitute alike of information and principles, it
is a real blessing to get hold of a firm, dogmatic man, who knows his own
mind, and who will kindly take care of theirs. Fluent in pen, meagre in
attainment, seemingly master of no one subject, yet writing vehemently on
all, the Doctor is precisely the man to give the law to that low class of
readers more or less present in all religious denominations. It is easy
to see what he is, and what he is not. He is not an accomplished orator,
for he eschews the graces of the platform. He is not a man of learning,
for learning softens the manners. He is not a man of lofty grasp of
thought, for he has never said a word, or written a line, that is not
narrow and sectarian and one-sided. But he is hard, energetic,
confident, loud in voice, and boistero