The Golden Lecture, as it is called, a lectureship, I
believe, belonging to the Mercers' Company, and worth about 400 pounds
a-year, is delivered every Tuesday morning, and Melville is the lecturer.
The church of St. Margaret, in Lothbury, is the spot selected, and it is
an appropriate place for a Golden Lecture, for everywhere around you, you
have--

'Gold and gold, and nothing but gold,
Yellow and hard, and shining and cold!'

On one side is _the_ bank that hides such treasures in its mysterious and
well-guarded cells. An hour's quiet walk in one of them, my good sir,
would make you and me independent for life. Every step of our way we are
surrounded by gigantic companies; We walk on enchanted ground; we breathe
enchanted air. Fortunes here are made and lost in a day. It was well
that the piety of our forefathers selected such a spot, that once in the
bustle of the week God's voice might be heard as well as that of Mammon.

But it is time we enter St. Margaret's.

Like most city churches, it is small and cold and mouldy--seeming to
belong more to the past than the present age. However, for once, it is
alive again. The old seats once more abound with beauty, and wealth, and
fashion--or, at any rate, with so much of them as belong to City dames.
We have left the roar of Cheap-side and Cornhill; but, after all, we have
the world with us here as well as there. For awhile we shall forget it,
for there is the preacher, and already the magic of his voice has charmed
every ear. I know no more magnificent voice. I know no statelier air.
It always carries me back in fancy to the days of the elder Pitt--or to
the earlier times of Bolingbroke--or to that still earlier day when the
Hebrew Paul preached, and the Roman Felix trembled on his seat of
splendour and of power.

Tall, of dark complexion, with grey hair and blue eyes, with a face lit
up with genius--the most brilliant preacher in the English Church: such
is Henry Melville. His action is simple and singular. When he commences
scarcely any is observable. Then as he flies along, and warms as he
proceeds, the head is dropped with a convulsive jerk, and the right hand
is raised, and the climax is ejaculated (for so rapid is his delivery it
can scarcely be called preaching) with a corresponding emphasis. No
sooner is the text enunciated than he plunges at once into his subject,
developing and illustrating his meaning with a brilliancy and rapidity
unp