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certain sum of money;-here, she says, the laws of man are opposed to those of God.

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A Newspaper was now announced by the Mission, for the avowed purpose of saving and comforting the poor, arousing the rich, and generally impressing the public mind with the great signs of the times. title was GAZETTE FOR POOR," with this Nota Bene below the title: "The poor will receive this paper gratis: let them give it to the rich for food, and pray for them." One number only of this work was permitted to be published, and it appeared on the 5th May, 1817, having for its motto the three first verses of the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah:

"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek: he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted; to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;

"To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;

"To appoint unto them that moum in Zion; to give unto them beauty for ashes; the oil of joy for mourning; the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified."

The first article of this newspaper is addressed, and runs, as follows:

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To you who are despised and rejected by the world; who are encompassed with injustice, and hear nothing but bad news :— to you, dearly beloved Poor, this paper is dedicated. It will bring you glad tidings of a new kingdom, where you may find refuge; where a king rules who is a father to the poor and to the orphan. In this country, all the hungry are fed, the thirsty are refreshed, the naked are clothed. There, also, all strangers are harboured. You want no money in your purses to be admitted there; nor are the ways there unsafe, like our high-roads. Every subject has, at any hour, free access to the king of that country. You will not there, as here, be turned away from the doors of the mansions, or the gates of the cities: on the contrary, it is the king himself who invites you to come to him.

The newspaper for the poor is intended

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After the address, from which the above are only extracts, follow, under the head of " Divine Annunciations of the Judgments of the Kingdom of God," accounts of dreams, prophe cies, and what are called "the preachings of nature," by storms, floods, earthquakes, whirlwinds, pestilence, famine, &c. The first number of the Journal concludes with two anecdotes and a hymn. The allegory of the two kingdoms, we think, will be allowed to be remarkably well kept up, and the contents of "the Newspaper for the Poor," too expertly calculated for those to whom it is addressed, to have given it a chance of permission to live. That it would have had an immense circulation, had it been continued, may be safely affirmed.

Madame Krudener continued to travel from town to town,-but no where was she allowed by the au thorities to stop. The municipalities were on the alert to warn her off

their premises the moment of her arrival. These measures only tended to increase the crowds that followed her. One of her apologists, about this time, published the following remarks concerning her, with which we shall conclude the present article. Early in 1818, she was delivered over. by the Saxon police to the Prussian, and conducted by the lat ter, with her friends, to Konigsberg, since which time nothing has been heard of this remarkable woman

Whoever sees and hears her with an unbiased mind, will allow that she is now as respectable and venerable, as she was formerly amiable and full of feeling. Neither vanity nor hypocrisy are the motives that

have led her to this stange and trying mode of life. From the imputation of fanaticism perhaps, it may not be so easy to free her; but to the dull observer, every motion of a mind that outflies his own seems fanatical. This nobly-formed female stands above her contemporaries: she has passed her early years in pleasure, and gaiety: she has enjoyed the intimacy of kings and princes, and now she knows of nothing better than to preach happiness, and the doctrines of Jesus to the poor. Surrounded by a small but faithful band of friends; inhabiting a wooden cottage; clad in a plain blue dress, she is accessible to every one, during the few hours she abstracts from solitary contemplation,-and then she speaks with decent eloquence, and lively inspiration, the words of exhortation to a christian

life: words which she always admirably adapts to circumstances of time and place, and the characters of those whom she is addressing. Her two great objects not eyen scandal can defame:-the first is that of bringing together Christians, disunited by doctrines, in the universal grasp of holy charity; and the second, the regeneration of society, and the establishment of peace on the earth, by causing the rich to become brethren with the poor.-In the pursuit of these objects she is chargeable with faults; she goes to work with pious levity, and blind zeal; yet she not only surpasses a great many of our clergy in eloquence and spirit, but also sets them an example by discharging intrigue and pretension from the service of religion.

TABLE-TALK.
No. II.

ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITING AND SPEAKING.

Ir is a common observation, that few persons can be found who speak and write equally well. Not only is it obvious that the two faculties do not always go together in the same proportions: but they are not unu sually in direct opposition to each other. We find that the greatest authors often make the worst company in the world; and again, some of the liveliest fellows imaginable in conversation or extempore speaking, seem to lose all their vivacity and spirit the moment they set pen to paper. For this a greater degree of quickness or slowness of parts, education, habit, temper, turn of mind, and a variety of collateral and predisposing causes are necessary to account. The subject is at least curious, and worthy of an attempt to explain it. I shall endeavour to illustrate the difference by familiar examples rather than by analytical reasonings. The philosopher of old was not unwise, who defined motion by getting up, and walking.

The great leading distinction between writing and speaking, is that more time is allowed for the one than the other: and hence different faculties are required for, and different objects attained by, each. He is pro

perly the best speaker, who can collect together the greatest number of apposite ideas at a moment's warning: he is properly the best writer who can give utterance to the greatest quantity of valuable knowledge in the whole course of his life. The chief requisite for the one then appears to be quickness and facility of perception-for the other, patience of soul, and a power increasing with the difficulties it has to master.* He cannot be denied to be an expert speaker, a lively companion, who is never at a loss for something to say on every occasion or subject that offers: he, by the same rule, will make a respectable writer, who, by dint of study, can find out any thing good to say on any one point that has not been touched upon before, or who, by asking for time, can give the most complete and comprehensive view of any question. The one must be done off-hand, at a single blow: the other can only be done by a repetition of blows, by having time to think and do better. In speaking, less is required of you, if you only do it at once, with grace and spirit: in writing, you stipulate for all that you are capable of, but you have the choice of your own time

* "Some minds are proportioned to that which may be dispatched at once or within a short return of time: others to that which begins afar off, and is to be won with length of pursuit "-LORD BACON.

and subject. The difference of quick er and slower, however, is not all: that is merely a difference of comparison in doing the same thing. But the writer and speaker have to do things essentially different. You do not expect from the manufacturer the same dispatch in executing an order, that you do from the shop-keeper or warehouseman. Besides habit, and greater or less facility, there is also a certain reach of capacity, a certain depth or shallowness, grossness or refinement of intellect, which marks out the distinction between those whose chief ambition is to shine by producing an immediate effect, or who are thrown back, by a natural bias, on the severer resources of thought and study. We see persons of that standard or texture of mind that they can do no thing but on the spur of the occasion: if they have time to deliberate, they are lost. There are others who have no resources, who cannot advance a step by any efforts or assistance, beyond a successful arrangement of common-places: but these they have always at command, at every body's service. There is; meet him where you will in the street, he has his topic ready to let off in the same breath with, or almost before, the customary forms of salutation; he is hand and glove with it; on it goes and off, and he manages it like Wart, his caliver.

Hear him but reason in divinity,
And, all-admiring, with an inward wish
You would desire that he were made a
prelate

Let him but talk of any state-affair,
You'd say, it had been all in all his study
Turn him to any cause of policy,
The Gordian knot of it he will unloose,
Familiar as his garter. When he speaks,
The air, a charter'd libertine, stands still
but ere you have time to answer him,
he is off like a shot to repeat the same
careless fluent observations to others:
➡a perfect master of the sentences,
a walking polemic wound up for the
day, a smartly bound political pocket-
book! Set the same person to write a
common paragraph, and he cannot
get through it for very weariness:
ask him a question, ever so little out
of the common road, and he stares
you in the face. What does all this
bustle, animation, plausibility, and
command of words amount to? A
lively flow of animal spirits, a good

deal of confidence, a communicative turn, and a tolerably tenacious me mory with respect to floating opinions and current phrases. Beyond the routine of the daily newspapers and coffee-house criticism, such persons do not venture to think at all: or if they did, it would be so much the worse for them, for they would only be perplexed in the attempt, and would perform their part in the mechanism of society with so much the less alacrity and delightful volubility.

The most flaming orator I ever heard, is the flattest writer I ever read. In speaking, he was like a volcano vomiting out lava; in writing, he is like a volcano burnt out. Nothing but the dry cinders, the hard shell re mains. The tongues of flame, with which, in haranguing a mixed assem bly, he used to illuminate his subject, and almost scorched up the panting air, do not appear painted on the margin of his works. He was the model of a flashy, powerful dema gogue a madman blest with a fit audience. He was possessed, infu riated with the patriotic mania: he seemed to rend and tear the rotten carcase of corruption with the remorseless (I will not say indecent) rage of a wild beast: he mourned over the bleeding body of his country, like another Antony over the dead body of Cæsar, as if he would "move the very stones of Rome to rise and mutiny:" he pointed to the " Persian abodes, the glittering temples" of op pression and luxury, with prophetic exultation; and, like another Helen, had almost fired another Troy! The lightning of national indignation flashed from his eye; the workings of the popular mind were seen labouring in his bosom: it writhed and swelled with its "fraught of aspics' tongues," and the poison frothed over at his lips. Thus qualified, he "wielded at will the fierce democracy, and thundered over" an area of souls, of no mean circumference. He who might be said to have "roared you in the ears of the groundlings" an 'twere any lion, aggravates his voice on paper, "like any sucking-dove." It is not merely that the same individual cannot sit down quietly in his closet, and produce the same, or a correspondent effect that what he delivers over to the compositor is tame, and trite, and tedious-that he cannot by

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any means, as it were, "create a soul under the ribs of death"-but sit down yourself, and read one of these very popular and electrical effusions (for they have been published) and you would not believe it to be the same! The thunder-and-lightning mixture of the orator turns out a mere drab-coloured suit in the person of the prose writer. We wonder at the change, and think there must be some mistake, some leger-de-main trick played off upon us, by which what before appeared so fine now appears to be so worthless. The deception took place before; now it is removed. "Bottom! thou art translated!" might be placed as a motto under most collections of printed speeches that I have had the good fortune to meet with, whether originally addressed to the people, the senate, or the bar. Burke's and Windham's form an exception: Mr. Coleridge's Conciones ad Populum do not, any more than Mr. Thelwall's Tribune. What we read is the same: what we hear and see is different "the self-same words, but not to the self-same tune." The orator's vehemence of gesture, the loudness of the voice, the speaking eye, the conscious attitude, the inexplicable dumb shew and noise, all "those brave sublunary things that made his raptures clear," are no longer there, and without these he is nothing;-his "fire and air" turn to puddle and ditch-` water, and the God of eloquence and of our idolatry sinks into a common mortal, or an image of lead, with a few labels, nicknames, and party watch-words stuck in his mouth. The truth is, that these always made up the stock of his intellectual wealth; but a certain exaggeration and extravagance of manner covered the nakedness, and swelled out the emptiness of the matter: the sympathy of angry multitudes with an impassioned theatrical declaimer, supplied the place of argument or wit; and the physical animation and ardour of the speaker evaporated in "sound and fury, signifying nothing," and leaving no trace behind it. A popular speaker (such as I have been here describing) is like a vulgar actor off the stage-take away his cue, and he has nothing to say for himself. Or he is so accustomed to the intoxica tion of popular applause, that without that ulus he has no motive or

power of exertion left-neither ima gination, understanding, liveliness, common sense, words or ideas-he is fairly cleared out; and in the intervals of sober reason, is the dullest and most imbecile of all mortals.

+

An orator can hardly get beyond common-places; if he does, he gets beyond his hearers. The most suc cessful speakers, even in the House of Commons, have not been the best scholars or the finest writers-neither those who took the most profound views of their subject, or adorned it with the most original fancy, or the richest combinations of language. Those speeches that in general told best at the time, are not now readable. What were the materials of which they were chiefly composed? An imposing detail of passing events, a formal display of official documents, an appeal to established maxims, an echo of popular clamour, some wornout metaphor new-vamped up,-some hackneyed argument used for the hundredth, nay thousandth time, to fall in with the interests, the passions, or prejudices of listening and devoted admirers;-some truth or falsehood, repeated as the Shibboleth of party time out of mind, which gathers strength from sympathy as it descends, because it is understood or assented to by all, and finds, in the increased action of the minds of numbers, the weight and force of an instinct. A COMMON-PLACE does not leave the mind" sceptical, puzzled, and undecided in the moment of ac tion:"-" it gives a body to opinion, and a permanence to fugitive belief." It operates mechanically, and opens an instantaneous and infallible communication between the hearer and speaker. A set of cant-phrases, arranged in sounding sentences, and pronounced "with good emphasis and discretion," keep the vulgar and irritable humours of an audience in constant fermentation; and levy no tax on the understanding. To give a reason for any thing is to breed a doubt of it, which doubt you may not remove in the sequel; either because your reason may not be a good one, or because the person to whom it is addressed may not be able to comprehend it, or be cause others may not be able to comprehend it. He who offers to go into the grounds of an acknowledged

axiom, risks the unanimity of the tion: they were blanks in the debate:
company "by most admired disor- they could at best only be laid aside,
der," as he who digs to the foundation and left ad referendum. What would
of a building, to show its solidity, it signify if four or five persons, at the
risks its falling. But a common-place utmost, felt their full force and fasci-
is enshrined in its own unquestioned nating power the instant they were
evidence, and constitutes its own im- delivered? They knew that they
mortal basis. Nature, it has been would be utterly unintelligible to nine-
said, abhors a vacuum; and the House tenths of the persons present, and
of Commons, it might be said, hates their effect upon any particular indi-
every thing but a common-place!-vidual, more knowing than the others,
Mr. Burke did not often shock the
prejudices of the House: he endea-
voured to account for them, to "lay
the flattering unction of philosophy
to their souls." They could not en-
dure him. He did not do this by dry
argument alone: he called to his aid
the flowers of poetical fiction, and
strewed the most dazzling colours of
language over the Standing Orders of
the House. It was a double offence
to them-an aggravation of the en-
croachments of his genius. They
would rather "hear a cat mew or an
axle-tree grate,” than hear a man talk
philosophy by the hour;-

would be involuntarily paralysed by
the torpedo touch of the elbow of a
country gentleman, or city orator.
There is a reaction in insensibility as
well as in enthusiasm; and men in
society judge not by their own con-
victions, but by sympathy with others.
In reading, we may go over the page
again, whenever any thing new or
questionable "gives us pause:" be-
sides, we are by ourselves, and it is
a word to the wise. We are not afraid -
of understanding too much, and being
called upon to unriddle. In hearing,
we are (saving the mark!) in the
company of fools; and time presses.
Was the debate to be suspended,

Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools sup- while Mr. Fox or Mr. Windham took

**pose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute,
And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets,
Where no crude surfeit reigns.

ner

He was emphatically called the Dinr-Bell. They went out by shoals when he began to speak. They coughed and shuffled him down. While he was uttering some of the finest observations (to speak in compass) that ever were delivered in that House, they walked out, not as the beasts came out of the ark, by twos and by threes, but in droves and companies of tens, of dozens, and scores! Oh! it is the heaviest stone which melancholy y can t throw at a man," when you are in the middle of a delicate speculation to see ❝ a robusteous, periwig-pated fellow" deliberately take up his hat and walk out. But what effect could Burke's finest observations be expected to have on the House of Commons in their corporate capacity? On the supposition that they were original, refined,comprehensive, his auditors had never heard, and assuredly they had never thought of them before: how then should they know that they were good or bad, till they had time to consider better of it, or till they were told what to think? In the mean time, they stopped the quesVOL. II.

this or that honourable member aside, to explain to them that fine observation of Mr. Burke's, and to watch over the new birth of their understandings, the dawn of this new light! If we were to wait till noble lords, and honourable gentlemen, were inspired with a relish for abstruse thinking, and a taste for the loftier flights of fancy, the business of this great nation would shortly be at a stand. No: it is too much to ask that our good things should be duly appreciated by the first person we meet, or in the next minute after their disclosure: if the world are a little, a very little, the wiser or better for them two centuries hence, it is full as much as can be modestly expected!-The impression of any thing delivered in a large assembly must be comparatively null and void, unless you not only understand and feel its value yourself, but are conscious that it is felt and understood by the meanest capacity present. Till that is the case, the speaker is in your power, not you in his. The eloquence that is effectual and irresistible must stir the inert mass of prejudice, and pierce the opaquest shadows of ignorance. Corporate bodies move slow in the progress of intellect, for this reason, that they must keep back, like Ꭰ

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