BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE LATE REV. DR CHALMERS. oll 
notion at all ; the effect must have arisen entirely from the manner. And when 
we consider how much pleasure the printed Sermons of Dr CuAaLMErs now afford 
to the intelligent reader, we may easily imagine the delight with which they must 
have been heard, coming with all their novelty and fervour, fresh from the 
preacher’s lips. To enter into any description or analysis of compositions so well 
known as these published Sermons, would be here quite out of place. I may per- 
haps refer to one or two passages as specimens, and favourable illustrations of 
his own peculiar manner. In his sermon “ On Cruelty to Animals” (preached in 
consequence of an endowment), he has occasion to shew that suffering is often in- 
flicted on the inferior creatures by man, not for the purpose of torment, but that it 
follows whilst he is occupied with other considerations and excitements ; and as 
an example, to illustrate the absence of any cruel purpose for the mere infliction of 
pain, he described in glowing colours the excitement and the interest of an English 
hunting-field, and he terms it “ this favourite pastime of joyous old England, on 
which there sits a somewhat ancestral dignity and glory.” And he described the 
“assembled jockeyship of half a province,” the assemblage “ of gallant knight- 
hood and hearty yeomen,” and he spake of “the autumnal clearness of the sky,” 
and “ the high-breathed coursers,” and ‘“ the echoing horn”—“ the glee and fer- 
vency of the chace,”—“ the deafening clamour of the hounds,” and “the dying 
agonies of the fox,” in such a strain of animation, that Lord Eicuo’s huntsman, 
who was present, declared that he had difficulty in restraining himself from get- 
ting up and giving a vue-holla. 
Of a far different character was the scene he drew in the conclusion of a sermon 
preached for the benefit of a Society in aid of Orphan Children of Clergymen. He 
described the sons and daughters ofa Scottish pastor obliged, at their father’s death, 
to leave the peacefulness of their father’s dwelling, and appealed to his hearers for 
their assistance in behalf of those who were so friendless and so dependent. 
«« With quietness on all the hills, and with every field glowing in the pride and 
luxury of vegetation, when summer was throwing its rich garment over this goodly 
scene of magnificence and glory, they think, in the bitterness of their souls, that 
this is the last summer which they shall ever witness smiling on that scene which 
all the ties of habit and affection have endeared to them; and when this thought. 
melancholy as it is, is lost and overborne in the far darker melancholy of a father 
torn from their embrace, and a helpless family left to find their way unprotected 
and alone, through the lowering futurity of this earthly pilgrimage.” I heard 
that sermon, and the tears of the father and the preacher, fell like rain-drops on 
the manuscript. 
In his Sermon on the Death of Dr Tuomson, describing in a picturesque point 
of view, the proximity of tenderness and power, of gentleness and strength, in the 
same human character, he added this happy illustration: “ This is often exem- 
plified in those alpine wilds, where beauty may at times be seen embosomed in 
