and the great have become fascinated, is neither more nor less than an individual belonging to a class of men, who, for more than two hundred years, have been well known, and for more than a hundred and fifty, cried down and ridiculed as the most. awkward, ungainly, and intolerable bores on earth; namely, the solemn league and covenant men of Scotland. Yes, reader, Edward Irving, a minister o' the auld covenanted kirk o' Scotland, a worthy Calvinist, a true representative of the Cargills, the Camerons, the Renwicks, and the Pedens, men who, ever since Charles's merry days," have been held out as objects of scorn and contempt, by all the lovers of gaiety and high life, is now elevated to the pinnacle of fashionable admiration; and the Caledonian kirk at Hatton garden, the mean and the despised Caledonian kirk! is become the irresistible centre of attraction, the grand theatre of pastime for the miscellaneous myriads of London! Here the courtier and the cit, the peer and the apprentice, the duchess and the grocer's wife, hasten and become, amidst the enthusiasm and excitement of so novel a scene, all exquisitely jumbled together in perfect equality!

Indeed how can they do otherwise, when, in the true levelling spirit for which his sect was formerly so much detested by the grandees and their parasites, the precious man, without regard to rank or station, enters boldly into communion with the soul of each, investigates freely, and as freely exposes their good and bad qualities, and admits them to heaven, or consigns them to hell, just as he finds they deserve, without waiting to think of their births, honours, or possessions!

Should such a state of things continue but for a few months longer, the stage-players, the rope-dancers, the exhibiters of dwarfs, speaking machines, automaton chess-men, nay, even the keepers of pleasure gardens, and gambling houses, may resign business. Multitudes of Caledonian preachers from beyond the Tweed, will soon smell out the loaves and fishes, and pour southward to assist Mr. Irving in gathering in the golden harvest. Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh, will be kept busy preparing, and sending forth their missionaries to labour in such a splendid and lucrative field. Wo then to Kean and Matthews, Neate and the Gasman, Signor Hengli and Madame Catalini! They should,

without delay, pack up their trunks, and be off to Paris or Dublin, New York or Philadelphia, or any other place, where men and women may continue to be amused in the usual way, for in London they will be no longer in request. Their talents there will be worse than damaged goods, they will not even sell for half price. Covent Garden and Vauxhall will be inevitably deserted; even the Bazaar of Soho will be in danger of losing its customers. If we believe recent accounts, the players have already taken the alarm, and Matthews, no doubt with one of his inimitably long faces, has been heard to deplore the success of his "brother actor," of the Caledonian.

What can be the cause of this prodigious revolution in the taste of the London gentry, in relation to their amusements, it is really no easy matter to determine. Can it be because their idol is a Scotchman? The taste of the whole English population has, for several years past, manifested as strong a predilection for every thing Scotch, as their ancestors, only "sixty years since," did aversion. In the early half of George the third's reign, the name of a Scotchman was, very undeservedly it is true, a term of reproach among their more wealthy and better circumstanced neighbours. Now, the latter can scarcely tolerate any thing, especially in the literary way, but what is Scotch. Scotch novels, Scotch poetry (Lord Byron is half Scotch) Scotch music, Scotch philosophy, Scotch criticism, Scotch superstition, and Scotch sermons, are all the go. It is true, the good English folks do Ireland the honour of importing from thence her statesmen, her warriors, and her orators. But every other deficiency they must bring from the romantic "North Countrie."-And that Providence may long furnish them with a plentiful supply of Highland skulls, well stocked wi' pawkie brains, to invent for them those amusements which are so necessary to protect them from their natural hypochondriacs, must be the sincere wish of every one who has, at any time, experienced the torment of "blue devils."

But, after all, we cannot heartily blame the good Londoners for this new whim of turning religious. If it be a real conversion towards long discarded puritanism, numbers of serious spirits in our castern States, will be rejoiced at it, and with

whatever affords them pleasure, we must also be pleased. Matthews and Kean may lose employment by the change, but then what an opening will be given to the numerous youths of classic lore and elocutory powers, that are yearly drilled at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and old St. Andrews! Nay, the players may not be so ill-fated as we might at first suppose. Their talents are adapted for public exhibition, and they have only to study the Bible and the creed of John Knox, instead of Shakespeare and the rules of Garrick, and then make a display in the pulpit instead of the stage, and all will be again well with them.

Nor will this change be any thing to their discredit, for Mr. Irving, whose manner they will have, of course, to copy, is really a man of talents. By falling into his manner, which their power of mimicry will enable them easily to do, and by enforcing his doctrines and precepts in his gorgeous and poetical style, which they must labour industriously to acquire, they may still be able to live as genteely as ever on the contributions of the public.

The London editors seem latterly to be more engrossed in discussing the merits of this new preacher, than even those of the Spanish question. His triumphs over the powers of worldly vanity and fashionable sin, are more celebrated than those of the Bourbon duke over Spanish freedom.

The editors are, indeed, much divided (but on what question are they not divided?) as to the propriety of encouraging such a man. Some insist that it will have the effect of bringing back the nation to all the moroseness, formality and bigotry of the Cromwellian times, while others insist, that it will only have the neutralizing tendency of checking the headlong disposition of the age to frivolity and libertinism.

But it is not alone to the revival of orthodoxy, and the reformation of the manners and morals of the age, that Mr. Irving applies his electrifying rhetoric. He has, also, in view, the correction of its literary taste, and has boldly entered the lists with. the admirers of Byron, Waverly and Moore. According to him, Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the whole school of the lullaby lake poets, are the only authors who write in the true legitimate strains of natural inspiration.

This system of dealing criticism from the pulpit is entirely new, and, among the rest of Mr. Irving's novelties, could not but have an immense effect on the wonder-loving Londoners. To hear the poctical bully who terrified the mighty reviewers of the Scottish capital, boldly denounced, by a simple clergyman, for his bad versification, as well as his profane ribaldry, could not but draw an audience-and what bachannalian peer, or frail fair one, could, for the very soul of them, remain absent from a scene, where it was understood that the amorous Moore was to receive a proper flagellation for his lewd Anacreontics, and his unspiritualized angelic loves? That great disfigurer of history also, who wrote Waverly, it was reported would not be spared for his libels upon the covenanted saints of the murderous days of Claverhouse, nor for the bad style in which he makes auld king Jamie speak Scotch, after having made his mother speak good English.

These, and a thousand other attractions, incident to his person, manners, style of oratory, and mode of announcement, may satisfactorily account for the astonishing popularity of Mr. Irving's public exhibitions.

But he has not trusted to his public exhibitions alone for his fame. These he knew were wind, and would consequently pass like a breeze through the forest. They might make a noise for a time, but that noise would not be lasting. Not so, he believed, would be the fruits of his genius, if he committed them to the immortalizing press. Accordingly, out came " Four Orations," entitled, "For the Oracles of God;" and an " Argument, in nine parts, entitled," For judgment to come."

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These titles are not greatly indicative of good taste, or splendid imagination, at least we should conceive them not very attractive to the readers of the modern great world. But then, "on the same title page, there follow the magical words, “ By the Rev. Edward Irving, minister of the Caledonian Church, Hatton Garden." This was enough for the reading epicures of Paternoster Row. Had all the rest of the title page been an absolute blank, this would have promised a feast, irresistibly attractive to the imaginations of the book gluttons. The work consequently sells, and all the critics are in a buzz. The small

fry of authors are sharpening their pens, and will inevitably daub Mr. Irving's writings into immortality, in spite of the abstruse nature of their titles.

We have met with some extracts from these productions; and, must confess, that their style is as novel and extraordinary for such subjects, as their author is said to be impressive and successful in his oratory. Their is a singular vein of poetry, and striking imagery, in his descriptions, at which, if professor Blair were alive, he would be absolutely shocked, as they most outrageously violate all the established canons of sermon writing. When he describes the joys of heaven, he completely out-metaphors Tom Moore's most rapturous paintings of beatitude; and, as to hell, neither the gloom of Byron, nor the horrors of Dantè, can approach to his terrifying pictures. Of the happiness of heaven, he speaks as follows:

"Think you the creative function of God is exhausted upon this dark and troublous ball of earth? or that this body and soul of human nature are the master-piece of his architecture? Who knows what new enchantment of melody, what new witchery of speech, what poetry of conception, what variety of design, and what brilliancy of execution, he may endow the human faculties withal-in what new graces he may clothe nature, with such various enchantment of hill and dale, woodland, rushing streams, and living fountains; with bowers of bliss and Sabbath scenes of peace, and a thousand forms of disporting creatures, so as to make all the world hath beheld, to seem like the gross picture with which you catch infants; and to make the eastern tale of romances, and the most rapt imagination of eastern poets, like the ignorant prattle and rude structures which first delight the nursery and afterwards ashame our riper years.

Again, from our present establishment of affections, what exquisite enjoyment springs, of love, of friendship, and of domestic life. For each one of which God, amidst this world's faded glories, hath preserved many a temple of most exquisite delight. Home, that word of nameless charms; love, that inexhaustible theme of sentiment and poetry; all relationships, parental, conjugal, and filial, shall arise to a new strength, graced with innocency, undisturbed by apprehension of decay, unruffled by jealousy, and unweakened by time. Heart shall meet heart

Each other's pillow to repose divine.