Supper as the minister is bound to attend and distribute it: for we cannot give as we are commanded, unless you are ready to receive. Is it not, then, the commandment of your Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ that you partake in the holy communion of His body and blood? Is not the partaking in it a duty which you owe to Christ who died for you, and to whom you promised obedience at your baptism? And is it not a duty which you owe to yourselves, if you would receive any benefit from His death?

And this I say, Christian brethren, even supposing this to be no more than an ordinary commandment of our Saviour. But there are circumstances which distinguish this from all other commandments, and make it in an especial manner your duty.

you

It is the last and, as it were, the dying commandment and request of your Saviour. He who was on the right hand of God the Father, in whom shone the fulness of His Father's glory, and who was the express image of his person: He humbled Himself for you; He took your nature and form upon Him; He became obedient unto death, even the cruel and ignominious death of the cross; and when He was now upon the point of fulfilling His surprising love towards by laying down His life for your sakes, Ile gives you this commandment, that you eat and drink the bread and wine offered you by His ministers! Is not the last request of a dying friend entitled to some regard? And of Him, too, who was such a friend? It is the way by which you are to show that you "remember" Christ, and have a just sense of His goodness towards you. This do" (said He) "in remembrance of me." You may indeed say that you remember Christ, that you have a just sense of His goodness, although you do not partake in the communion of His body and blood. But if He has appointed a particular way by which He would have you remember Him, I know not how you can show that you do remember Him, except by following that one way; and I know not how you can stand acquitted of forgetfulness and ingratitude to Him, unless you perform this His command

ment.

The partaking in the Lord's Supper is again the only proper act of Christian worship. The professors of other religions, Jews, Turks, and Heathens, worship God by praying too, by thanking, and by praising Him. In addition to these acts of worship, Christians perform that of eating and drinking bread and wine, as Christ has commanded. So that however devoutly you may worship God in general when you come to Church, you do not in so strict a sense worship as Christians unless you partake in the

335

bread and wine, which represents the body and blood of Christ; and thus perform that act which Christ has made a mark of distinction to His followers.

The partaking in the holy communion is also a duty which you owe to yourselves on account of the benefits which you may receive from it: not only that benefit which may be expected by all who generally fulfil God's commandments, but those particular benefits which follow upon a hearty and conscientious performance of this. Sermons, Vol. i., 249.

HENRY HALLAM, LL.D.,

Eton and Oxford, died 1859, was the author born at Windsor, 1777, and educated at of three great works, "either of which," as I have remarked in another place, "is of sufficient merit to confer upon the author literary immortality": A View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages, Lond., 1818. 2 vols. 4to (supplementary Notes, 1848, 8vo), 11th edit., 1855, 3 vols. er. 8vo, Popular edition, 1857, 3 vols. p. 8vo, New York, Widdleton, 3 vols. cr. 8vo, in French, by P. Dudouit and A. R. Borghers, Paris, 1830-32, 4 vols. 8vo, 2d edit., 1837, 4 vols. land, from the Accession of Henry VII. to 8vo; The Constitutional History of Engthe Death of George II., 1760, Lond., 1827, 2 vols. 4to, 8th edit., 1855, 3 vols. cr. 8vo, Popular edition, 1857, 3 vols. post 8vo, New York, Widdleton, 3 vols. cr. 8vo, in French, edited by Guizot, Paris, 1828, 4 vols. 8vo: add to it Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George III., 1760-1820, by Sir T. E. May, Lond., 1871, 3 vols. 8vo; New York, 1880, 12mo; Introduction to the Literature of Europe, in the 15th, 16th, and 17th Centuries, Lond., 1837-39, 4 vols. 8vo, 5th edit., 1856, 4 vols. cr. 8vo, New York, 4 vols. cr. 8vo, in French, by M. A. Borghers, Paris, 1839, 4 vols. 8vo.

"The cold academic style of Robertson may suit the comparative calmness of the eighteenth century, but the fervour and animation of its close commu

nicated itself to the historical works of the next.

HALLAM was the first historian whose style gave token of the coming change; his works mark the

transition from one age and style of literature to

another. In extent and variety of learning, and a deep acquaintance with antiquarian lore, the historian of the Middle Ages may deservedly take a place with the most eminent writers in that style that Europe has produced: but his style is more imaginative than those of h's laborious prepression often reveals the ardour which the heartdecessors, and a fervent eloquence or poetic exstirring events of his time had communicated to his disposition."-SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON: Hist. of Europe, 1815-1852, ch. v.

ent with the valorous and romantic character of its author, belongs to a more advanced period of philosophy than his own. It will, at all events, I presume, be admitted that we cannot reason about Don Quixote except from the book, and I think it may be shown in a few words that these ingenious writers have been chiefly misled by some want of consistency which circumstances produced in the author's delineation of his hero.

In the first chapter of this romance, Cervantes, with a few strokes of a great master, sets before us the pauper gentleman, an early riser and keen sportsman, who, "when he was idle, which was most part of the year," gave himself up to reading books of chivalry till he lost his wits. The events that follow are in every one's recollection: his lunacy consists, no doubt, only in one idea; but this is so absorbing that it perverts the evidence of his senses, and predominates in all his language. It is to be observed, therefore, in relation to the nobleness of soul ascribed to Don Quixote, that every sentiment he utters is borrowed with a punctilious rigour from the romances of his library: he resorts to them on every occasion for precedents. If he is intrepidly brave, it is because his madness and vanity have made him believe himself unconquerable; if he bestows kingdoms, it is because Amadis would have done the same; if he is honourable, courteous, a redresser of wrongs, it is in pursuance of these prototypes, from whom, except that he seems rather more scrupulous in chastity, it is his only boast not to diverge. Those who talk of the exalted character of Don Quixote seem really to forget, that, on these subjects, he has no character at all: he is the echo of romance; and to praise him is merely to say, that the tone of chivalry, which these productions studied to keep up, and, in the hands of inferior artists, foolishly exaggerated, was full of moral dignity, and has, in a subdued degree of force, modelled the character of a man of honour in the present day. But throughout the first two volumes of Don Quixote, though in a few unimportant passages he talks rationally, I cannot find more than two in which he displays any other knowledge or strength of mind than the original delineation of the character would have led us to expect.

The case is much altered in the last two volumes. Cervantes had acquired an immense popularity, and perceived the opportunity, of which he had already availed himself, that this romance gave for displaying his own mind. He had become attached to a hero who had made him illustrious, and suffered himself to lose sight of the clear outline he had once traced for Quixote's

337

personality. Hence we find in all this second part, that, although the lunacy as to knights-errant remains unabated, he is, on all other subjects, not only rational in the low sense of the word, but clear, acute, profound, sarcastic, cool-headed. His philosophy is elevated, but not enthusiastic: his imagination is poetical, but it is restrained by strong sense. There are, in fact, two Don Quixotes: one whom Cervantes first designed to draw, the foolish gentleman of La Mancha, whose foolishness had made him frantic; the other a highly-gifted, accomplished model of the best chivalry, trained in all the court, the camp, or the college could impart, but scathed in one portion of his mind by an inexplicable visitation of monomania. One is inclined to ask why this Don Quixote, who is Cervantes, should have been more likely to lose his intellects by reading romances than Cervantes himself. As a matter of bodily disease, such an event is doubtless possible; but nothing can be conceived more improper for fiction, nothing more incapable of affording a moral lesson than the insanity which arises wholly from disease. Insanity is in no point of view a theme for ridicule; and this is an inherent fault of the romance (for those who have imagined that Cervantes has not rendered Quixote ridiculous, have a strange notion of the word); but the thoughtlessness of mankind, rather than their insensibility, for they do not connect madness with misery, furnishes some apology for the first two volumes. In proportion as we perceive, below the veil of mental delusion, a noble intellect, we feel a painful sympathy with its humiliation; the character becomes more complicated and interesting, but has less truth and naturalness: an objection which might also be made, comparatively speaking, to the incident in the latter volumes, wherein I do not find the admirable probability that reigns through the former. . . . But this contrast of wisdom and virtue with insanity in the same subject, would have been repulsive in the primary delineation, as I think any one may judge by supposing Cervantes had, in the first chapter, drawn such a picture of Quixote as Bouterwek and Sismondi have drawn for him.

I must, therefore, venture to think as, I believe, the world has generally thought for two centuries, that Cervantes had no more profound aim than he proposes to the reader. If the fashion of reading bad romances of chivalry perverted the taste of his contemporaries, and rendered their language ridiculous, it was natural that a zealous lover of good literature should expose this folly to the world by exaggerating its effects on a fic

The genius of the man then shone forth with extraordinary lustre. His knowledge of law, which had hitherto been scanty, and never enlarged by practice, was now expanded to whatever dimensions might seem required for performing his high office; nor was he ever remarked as at all deficient even in the branch most difficult to master without forensic habits, the accomplishments of a case-lawyer: while his familiarity with the principles of jurisprudence and his knowledge of their foundations were ample, as his application of them was easy and masterly. The Rolls Court, however, in those days, was one of comparatively contracted business; and although he gave the most entire satisfaction there, and in presiding at the Privy Council in Prize and Plantation Appeals, a doubt was always raised by the admirers of Lord Eldon whether Sir William Grant could have as well answered the larger demands upon his judicial resources, had he presided in the Court of Chancery. That doubt appears altogether unfounded. He possessed the first great quality for despatching business (the "real" and not "affected despatch" of Lord Bacon), a power of steadily fixing his attention upon the matter before him, and keeping it invariably directed towards the successive arguments addressed to him. The certainty that not a word was lost deprived the advocate of all excuse for repetition; while the respect which his judge inspired checked needless prolixity, and deterred him from raising desperate points merely to have them frowned down by a tribunal as severe as it was patient. He had not indeed to apprehend any interruption: that was a course never practised in those days at the Rolls or the Cockpit; but while the judge sat passive and unmoved it was plain that though his powers of endurance had no limits, his powers of discriminating were ever active, as his attention was ever awake; and as it required an eminent hardihood to place base coin before so scrutinizing an eye, or tender light money to be weighed in such accurate scales as Sir William Grant's, so few men ventured to exercise a patience which yet all knew to be unbounded. It may, indeed, be fairly doubted whether the main force of muscular exertion, so much more clumsily applied by Sir John Leach in the same court to effect the great object of his efforts, the close compression of the debate,-ever succeeded so well, or reduced the mass to as small a bulk, as the delicate hydraulic press of his illustrious predecessor did, without giving the least pain to the advocate, or in any one instance obstructing the course of calm, deliberate, and unwearied justice.

The court in those days presented a spec

339

The

tacle which afforded true delight to every person of sound judgment and pure taste. After a long and silent hearing, a hearing of all that could be urged by the counsel of every party,-unbroken by a single word, and when the spectator of Sir William Grant (for he was not heard) might suppose that his inind had been absent from a scene in which he took no apparent share, the debate was closed,-the advocate's hour was passed,the parties were in silent expectation of the event, the hall no longer resounded with any voice, it seemed as if the affair of the day for the present was over, and the court was to adjourn, or to call for another cause. No! The judge's time had now arrived, and another artist was to fill the scene. great magistrate began to pronounce his judgment, and every eye and every ear were at length fixed upon the bench. Forth came a strain of clear unbroken fluency, disposing alike, in most luminous order, of all the facts and of all the arguments in the cause; reducing into clear and simple arrangement the most entangled masses of broken and conflicting statement; weighing each matter, and disposing of each in succession; settling one doubt by a parenthetical remark; passing over another difficulty by a reason only more decisive that it was condensed; and giving out the whole impression of the case, in every material view, upon the judge's mind, with argument enough to show why he so thought, and to prove him right, and without so much reasoning as to make you forget that it was a judgment you were hearing, by overstepping the bounds which distinguish a judgment from a speech. This is the perfection of judicial eloquence: not avoiding argument, but confining it to such reasoning as beseems him who has rather to explain the grounds of his own conviction, than to labour at convincing others; not rejecting reference to authority, but never betokening a disposition to seek shelter behind other men's names for what he might fear to pronounce in his own person; not disdaining even ornaments, but those of the more chastened graces that accord with the severe standard of a judge's oratory. This perfection of judicial eloquence Sir William Grant attained, and its effect upon all lis teners was as certain and as powerful as its merits were incontestable and exalted.

In parliament he is unquestionably to he classed with speakers of the first order. His style was peculiar: it was that of the closest and severest reasoning ever heard in any popular assembly; reasoning which would have been reckoned close in the argumentation of the bar or the dialectics of the schools. It was, from the first to the last, throughout, pure reason, and the triumph