that gather and glitter for a moment, and then burst, leave on the forgetful sea.

But the late Dr. Legge was in every way a man whose character merited some lasting commemoration, and concerning whom an interesting and effective book might have been written. The subject is not devoid of material, for although there was nothing in the visible life that varied from the common routine of human experience, still the inward organization of the man teemed with scope and suggestion, and was deeply chequered with the lights and shadows of thought, imagination, sympathy-intensely instinct with the fine workings of a quick heart and a busy brain. In his private relationships Dr. Legge displayed many most engaging qualities and insensibly attracted and rivetted the warmest regard. It seems odd to think and say it concerning one of his years and learning, but we always felt that there was a good deal of the child about him-the freshness, gentleness, and sweetness of the young wedded to the wisdom of the mature. He had the singular charm of perfect simplicity and a certain sportive humour-an ethereal lightness of playful fancy which sat with somewhat of grotesqueness yet not ungracefully on that massive and unwieldy figure. He was a man whom to know was not only to esteem and venerate, but emphatically to love. A feeling of tenderness naturally intertwined itself with the respect which his great native gifts, ripe culture, and extensive attainments so justly commanded: and his memory we are sure, is written in letters that will never wear away in deep and tender places within hearts that loved him living passing well, and to whom the thought of him now often comes to make sacred the common moments of the world-sacred not with soft retrospection only but with a blessed hope, like a fragrant land breeze to overwearied mariners, breathing of home joys lost once but anon returning-of green fields, and the

chime of church bells, and the final peace.

Dr. Legge's theology was thoroughly human and therefore Christian in the very highest sense. He saw and felt much more than is commonly seen and felt in the fact that the Lord Christ assumed actual human nature and came to save the lost, to save them here and now, and so by consequence save them hereafter. There was for him emphatic significance in the view of Christianity considered as a revelation from heaven to earth, its work being on the earth, amongst men, to reform and refine them, and so purify the springs of social and national life, making in the end the earth the fitting vestibule of heaven-peradventure itself a province of Paradise-one of the many mansions of the Great Father's house. This present salvation from sin and error into the freedom and power and pureness of a heavenly life below was the great end of all his preaching. This was the one safe and indispensable foundation which he persistently and fervently urged must here be builded to ensure the blessed destiny hereafter. That he did not lose sight of that mysterious futurity, that he did not undervalue the ultimate issues of temporal action, those who ever heard him will not require to be reminded; nay, his own earnest persuasion of them often gave peculiar solemnity to his public expostulations; but he rightly held that his main business as a preacher of the gospel and of Christian morals, was to follow Christ himself in demanding present repentance and a righteous life. True he sometimes soared in fancy and aspiration away to the empyrean,' but it was that he might bring down more of its light and purity to the homely earth he loved; and prophetically see invested with the spiritual brightness of another more real and enduring world all the dear scenes and forms of this. They have by no means a monopoly of tenderness whose desires are never lifted out of the sphere of their de

hights; so far from this it may be safely said that the most celestially tending natures are the most human and domestic too. These are indeed

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have left some seeds of intelligence and aspiration that this man's rare and versatile capacity remained so long unrecognized and unappreciated. In the course of not unfrequent visits to Leicester it has been our

Home.'

Amongst such most surely be numbered him of whom we are writing. Dr. Legge was at once devout and genial. He believed that nothing human ever dies.' The hand clasping hand firm and warm in friendly pressure; the eye kindling with intelligence and sensibility; the voice musical with gentleness; the cheek flushing or whitening with the hues of the heart; and the other thousand eloquent expedients by means of which the soul expresses and communicates its unseen life were all to him the signs and guarantees of their spiritual correspondencies their imperishable counterparts. So Time the shadow implied Eternity the substance; and the dimmed but touching spell of the still beautiful earth predicted and faintly symbolized the perfectness of heaven. Therefore it was that he found nature, and life, and friendship, and love, so rich and fair; therefore it was that he felt empowered (as he so often said) to taste the golden day and triumph in existence;' therefore it was that he so 'disported' himself amid the wonders of creation, pondered the ways of men, and looked back with a tenderness so undisguised to his early home, and his father's grave, and the far Highland hills with their peaks of purple and wreaths of rainy mist.

We have referred admiringly to Dr. Legge's private personal characteristics, but considered in his public capacity as preacher, we believe him to have been equally noteworthy and deserving of honour. And we regard it as by no means redounding to the credit of the religious communities in the midst of which the far-reaching influence of Robert Hall might be supposed to

late Dr. Legge, and most of the sermons in the volume before us are vividly linked with the wellremembered gestures of the earnest speaker and with the tones of the living voice. We picture to ourselves at this moment the burly figure slowly rising to read the text. The voice is neither strong nor melodious; the utterance is harsh, halting, and spasmodic, now gushing in a whispered hiss, and now hurried by intensity of feeling into unexpected and emphatic loudness; the action is made ungainly by convulsive shakes and twitches, and a kind of ponderous nautical oscillation and roll; there is as yet no redeeming animation, no gleam of genius playing over the somewhat blurred and heavy features; nothing in fact to fascinate, but something to offend the unprepared or superficial, or fastidious auditor. wait-observe-and listen. With

But

self-possession, ease, and quiet power, the preacher propounds and defines the subject which he deems deducible from the passage of Holy Scripture he has cited. In a few clear and methodical sentences he presents an outline of the ground over which he intends to travel, and then proceeds by discussing seriatim the propositions he has advanced to an elaborate and exhaustive treatment of his theme. Onward in a stream of nervous, vigorous, and elastic language flows the logical consecutive thinking, enriched with teeming illustrations from history, science, and philosophy, enlivened by a rap of caustic humour, a strain of eloquent fancy, a quip of homely quaintness, or a flash of true poetic fire. It is the movement and gleam, and ripple of a charming rhetoric, instructed and inspired by earnestness and piety. And mark now how the far-set eye lightens from under