Perhaps we should have before discriminated popular lectures from lectures for students. There will always be both, as long as there is a distinct class of students in the world, and a large class of persons who are not professed students, but yet who continue learners all their lives. The use of lectures to students is rather for revision than the beginning of any study. They serve to revive or review old studies or doctrines, but they ought not to be heard at the beginning of their course. Lectures give results, not processes. Profound scholars must, however, go through certain processes to verify these results, whereas a mixed audience must build their knowledge on faith in the lecturer.

The present is allowed to be a critical age-an analytic age. We would rather speculate on principles than follow a long narrative of facts. We substitute, then, the historical lecture for the history. The same will apply to morals, and religion, and politics. For one who reads Locke, twenty read Cousin; for one who reads Cudworth, twenty study Macintosh. The Federalist is laid by when Daniel Webster is to speak; and the old divines are closed, when a fashionable preacher mounts the pulpit.

We have spoken of lectures for students, and popular lectures. The last kind are infinite in variety, and as regards the class of audiences they address-from merchants to mechanics, from ladies to laborers. Every craft must have its lecture-room, and will have at some future day. The whole empire of knowledge will be ransacked for subjects of disquisition and amusement.

Many attend lectures now as they attend the 'opera, for the sake of the fashion. But good lectures require a capacity of attention, and a degree of thought, that are not

always possessed, or bestowed. When placed on a right footing, none will attend except for instruction, and partial entertainment. Few persons go to a lecture knowing what they have a right to expect. The subject is an abstract topic, and they expect an amusing narrative, or it is historical, and they look for sentimental passages. This is to be reformed.

On the whole, we are apt to consider the lecture a very important department of modern literature, and a most pow erful instrument of popular instruction. As a corollary to this, it follows, the lecturer should occupy a dignified position. The public taste, to be sure, needs correction on many material points connected with this subject; nor are the best critics infallible in their judgments on lecturers. Like most evils in this world, these will mend themselves in good time. There must be no forced improvements; but gradual changes, and a wiser policy. Some of these errors, as the selection of committees, can be amended at once; but the taste of audiences is to be formed. The surest method to attain good ends is to employ noble means; and thus we hope lectures will continue to improve with the capacity in the public for appreciating them. We look for the time, with confidence, when the lecture shall occupy no neutral ground in the public esteem, and when the lecturer will be an established professional character.

X.

HUGH LATIMER.

THIS brave old Bishop, an apostolic prelate of the true stamp, a gallant chief in the Noble Army of Martyrs, is the earliest great name, now extant, in the long list of great English Divines.* His humor and eloquence, rude and homely as they are, were in his day above rivalry; and to him was conceded the fame, not only of the simple minded and upright Christian, but also of the fervid, indignant, copious orator. He was, beyond dispute, the St. Paul of London, of the sixteenth century, who attracted the dainty ears of fastidious scholars, and high bred courtiers, equally with the unlettered, but not inattentive, audiences of a lower stamp. Admired by the gentry, except where he was feared for his honesty, he was the idol of the populace, who would crowd around him as he walked down the Strand, to preach at Whitehall, and, endeavoring to catch but the hem of his cloak, would cry aloud, "Have at them, Father Latimer!" It is this paternal character, exhibited in his public discourses, as well as in his private conduct, that we would describe, in a portrait of the successor of the Apostles.

The life of Latimer is impressed with more than one im

* Of those who have left printed Discourses for the edification of posterity.

portant lesson. A great change occurred both in his doc trines and his preaching. He was, at one time, a zealous Romanist, and preached with severity against the Reformers, reflecting bitterly against Melancthon, the gentlest of men: again, he renounced the Pope, and declared in favor of Henry, both as to his supremacy, as head of the Church, and in the matter of the divorce. Finally, he became a decided Protestant, and was a distinguished leader of the Reformation, under Edward VI., when he was at the zenith of his popularity. In the savage reign of Mary, he was burnt at the stake, with those other glorious Martyrs to Truth and Religious Liberty, Cranmer and Ridley. In his conversion, we may admit no question of his sincerity: and in his devoted adherence, first to Henry, and afterwards to Edward, (differing as the tiger and the lamb,) he was pursuing a single purpose. Always the sentinel of the Church, he was, besides, an effective champion. He attacked vice and crime, with all its pride of place, and pomp of pedigree, at the same time that he stood on the defensive; and, at last, lost his life in the same way that he had gained his just fame, by the exercise of a pure, undaunted, and holy zeal, that knew no obstacles to the propagation of truth and the extirpation of error, while the means of advancing the one, and destroying the other, remained.

The paternal character was the leading feature of Latimer's mind and moral constitution. He knew how, and when, to give wise and safe counsel, and feared not to administer it. He was indignant at the open vices of the clergy and nobles, and hesitated not to express his indignation, generally by way of strong humorous satire. He was the Patriarch of old, revived in modern days. Generally, the Priest has been said, and often truly, to defend the failings

of his caste, in order to preserve an esprit de corps. This is, in a right sense, commendable. But Latimer sided with the people against the corruptions of the clergy. He openly and sharply rebuked them. He disclosed many an acknowledged evil, that the timidity of the good would have shielded from the vulgar eye, lest Religion herself, and the pure priestly character, might be indiscriminately attacked. But he feared nothing of the sort. It was he that so vigorously depicted idle ministers,' 'unpreaching prelates,' 'mock gospellers,''minting priests,' 'blanchers,' 'mingle manglers,' 'bells without clappers,' i. e., unfurnished pulpits, from which lazy preachers drew regular salaries. In his comprehensive care of his people, Latimer was no less observant of the broad and undistinguishing corruption of the times, among the lawyers, and especially the judges, with whom bribery was considered a perquisite of their offices. He inveighed, with force and acuteness, against bribers, whom he also calls giffe-gaffes, against covetousness, against woodmongers (an odious class of monopolists), against flock-panders, against gratifiers of rich men. Latimer wisely joined religion with daily life, and moral censures to incentives to piety. So glaring were the corruptions above mentioned, in his time, that he devoted not a little space to a severe castigation of their abettors. Some of his sermons, in themselves, were true Juvenal strains in all of them he has long passages of a similar kind. Many of his discourses might be collected under the same title, that Wither adopted for his satires, Abuses stript and whipt.' And the good Bishop's censures were far from unavailing. His keen rebukes cut many to the heart. In his second sermon, preached before King Edward, he refers to the common practice of giving and taking bribes, and also of restitution. He proceeds, in