the Rev. Dr. Hastings, Archdeacon of Dublin, a gentleman of distinguished worth and integrity, and to whom I am peculiarly indebted for every mark of politeness and attention. I can say the same, indeed, of some other dignitaries of the church to whom I had the honour of being introduced. On Sunday next I am to preach at St. Peter's, and for the first time in a Protestant place of worship. But though I have changed the sphere of my exertions, they shall still, under God, be invariably directed to the same object-to improve the human heart; to enlarge and enlighten the understanding of men; banish religious prejudices, and diffuse through society the great blessings of peace, order, and mutual affection. Such I conceive to be a principal duty of every Christian teacher. If I have passed to the church establishment, I have only passed into a situation in which I can better accomplish a desire which has ever been the next and dearest to my breast-that of rendering more service to the community, and inculcating the pure morality of the Gospel with greater fruit and extent. Upon the clearest reflection, I envisage Christianity, in a great measure, as a practical institution of religion, designed by Christ to regulate the dispositions and improve the characters of men. The various systems which ignorance, craft, or policy gave birth to, have deluged the world with more evils than the sword of ambition, or all the various propensities of human nature.

"Doubtless, I shall experience, on the present occasion, a considerable share of obloquy and misrepresentation; but I should deem myself unworthy, indeed, of standing forth in a situation of public utility, did I, while acting in conformity to the dictates of my understanding, dread either the malice of party, or the tooth of the bigot. It will be said that I was swayed by views of temporal advantage. To this usual reproach, I make a plain and candid answer. I never did set up for a stoic. I am not indifferent to the comforts which flow from competence and independence, nor insensible to the pleasures arising from an unblushing and wellearned fame. I do not pretend to a greater share of self-denial in such matters than the generality of men. If I differ from them in any degree of merit, it is only, perhaps, in a more than common desire of becoming useful in society, and devoting myself to the general interest. I have some habits of intimacy, sir, with characters truly enlarged and respectable, both in the town of Galway and the adjacent counties; and it is no small consolation to me, at this moment, to flatter myself that I shall lose nothing in the esteem of any individual who knows me well, or has honoured me with his friendship. As Galway is the place of my birth, and the sphere of my natural connexions, my heart points forcibly thither, and feels the most animated wishes for its happiness and welfare. Though probably it will never again be the place of my residence, yet I shall always recollect, with the truest gratitude, the very flattering distinction I have been favoured with; and every step it may hereafter make in opulence, commerce, and intellectual refinement, will produce feelings in my breast, which I should blush to avow that any force of language or strength of colouring could express. I do, however, propose, before the expiration of the present summer, paying my friends there a visit, and taking occasion to assure the public, in a place where they will have more room than in a small chapel, that a change of system has not robbed me of the milder affections of the soul, and that I have not forgot to plead in behalf of the unfortu

nate.

"W. B. KIRWAN."

His first semon attracted an overflowing audience, chiefly from the expectation that he would detail the reasons which led him to renounce his former communion. But no such expectation was gratified. He chose a subject upon which he might expatiate on the general interests of religion, without assailing the peculiarities of any denomination of professing Christians; and, agreeably to the spirit of the letter above recited, made his powers and attainments subservient to the inculcation of mutual forbearance and Christian benevolence amongst all sorts and conditions of men.

We do not here discuss the abstract propriety, or impropriety, of his thus abstaining from controversial dissertations. We simply record the fact. Doubtless he felt that he would be more worthily occupied by endeavouring to awaken in his hearers a sense of their Christian responsibilities, than by entering upon topics of self defence, or losing himself in the mazes of theological refinement. He might have conceived that the aids were many by which sincere inquirers after religious truth, might be led out of the errors of the papal system; while the times required that powers like those with which he was gifted, should be devoted to other, and, perhaps, not less important objects. Nor will we say that he erred in his judgment; nor that his exemplary forbearance,

in "not returning railing for railing, but, contrarywise, blessing," was, even humanly speaking, without its exceeding great reward.

Society in Ireland, at that period, presented something very dissimilar to its present aspect. But little was felt or known of vital and genuine religion. The writings of the infidels had taken effect upon the minds of the upper and the educated classes, who found no Paley to counteract their pernicious tendency; and the work of the immortal Butler was unheard of, except by a few quiet divines and scholars, who took little pains to make it known to others, however largely they might have profited by it themselves.

The church, as a moral and religious institute, had been wofully abused and neglected. Its highest places were all at the disposal of corrupt politicians and profligate courtiers; and the most confident claims to its best pre. ferments were often founded upon services which had little relation to the great end for which it was called into existence.

Added to this, the political excitement of the times was adverse to staid morality and sober thinking. The "one thing needful" was the political bubble, whatever it might be, which was, for the season, afloat. Men's passions were pre-occcupied by the giddy changes which heady and intemperate men were urging, with a preposterous earnestness, upon the public; and when they were not engaged in projects of democratic violence, a love of pleasure took possession of them, and was manifested in every variety of dissipation which could soothe their indolence, or minister to their amusement.

To this current of vice and irreligion, the pulpit had ceased to be an efficient counter-agent. The church had sunk below the level at which it could oppose any solid barrier to the flood of immorality which began to prevail. Some of the clergy were themselves of the profane; many of them indolent and careless; and where genuine piety might be said to exist, if it did not become fanatical, or take the complexion of dissent, it was altogether without the power which could alone, at that period, render pulpit ministrations useful.

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To arouse men from their torpid apathy, and awaken them to a sense of their moral and religious responsibilities, a voice of thunder was required. By those who were dead in trespasses and sins, and living, literally, without God in the world," no ordinary appeals would have been heeded. The passions and the frailties which had led them astray should be won over to the cause of truth and godliness, before they could be turned from the errors of their ways, or their headlong tendencies effectually arrested. The Gospel should be presented to them in the living attributes of present inspiration, before its sublime truths could be savingly felt; and that Walter Blake Kirwan was raised up by a gracious Providence to accomplish this great object, is not the fanciful speculation of a theorist, but the simple acknowledgment of an indisputable fact, which was recognised by his great cotemporary, Grattan, who was a frequent and an astonished listener to his magical discourses, and who described him as having come "to disturb the repose of the pulpit, and to shake one world by the thunders of another."

To such a preacher, the aspect of society was that of a moral wilderness. The very weeds which grew upon its surface indicated the fertility which lay beneath; and the soil required to be broken up before any beneficial process of moral husbandry could be instituted for the purpose of rendering it truly fruitful. When this service had been well performed, to others might belong the office of converting the reclaimed waste into the garden of the Lord. But the ploughshare should first sink deep, and make its long furrows, before the seeds could be profitably sown, which were to ripen into everlasting life.

It was not, therefore, by minute or hair-splitting theological disquisitions, that the effects were to be produced which, at such a scason, were most required. The affections of the human heart, which had been frozen by selfishness, or sensualized by indulgence, were to be called into healthful and beneficent activity, in order to induce the sacrifices which might indicate a growing love of eternal things, and supply the needs of those myriads of destitute objects who were the reproach and the evidence of an irreligious civilization. Nor was it by any slow approaches, or timid hesitancy in the attack, that the strongholds of infidelity and corruption were to be conquered. They should be shaken from their base-they should be rocked and agitated by an earthquake power, before they would give way to the assaults of the evangelical besieger.

All feebler efforts must only have recoiled upon those by whom they were made, and resulted eventually in discomfiture and mortification. The power by which alone they could be subdued must be commensurate, in all respects, with the gigantic magnitude of the evils with which it had to contend; and these were, open profligacy, audacious blasphemy, an utter mockery and contemptuous scorn of the truths and the evidences of revealed religion; not hiding in secret places, as if they shunned the light of the day, but paraded openly in courts and populous assemblies, as if they courted publicity and challenged admiration. Such was the Goliah who then defied the armies of the living God, and against whom the preacher of righteousness felt himself called upon to put forth his energies. And had not his powers been almost superhuman, against such fearful odds he never could have prevailed. But tradition informs us of his triumphs, to which all the greatest of his cotemporaries bore witness. And although in the midst of them he was snatched away, it was not before he had been permitted to see the temple of ungodliness begin to totter, and those forgotten and decaying edifices to wear a new face, and lift their modest heads through all parts of our city, which owed their re-erection to his commanding abilities and his untiring zeal, and were the fruits and the evidences of Christian charity.

His first efforts, after his conformity, were confined to the parish church of St. Peter's, where he soon attracted crowded congregations; and the Sunday collections for the poor rose four or five-fold above their usual amount. And before one year had fully elapsed, such was the impression which he produced, that, on the 5th of November, 1788, the governors of the general daily schools of the several parishes came to the following resolution :

"That, from the effects which the discourses of the Rev. Walter Blake Kirwan, from the pulpit, have had, his officiating in the metropolis was considered a peculiar national advantage; and that vestries should be called to consider the most effectual method to secure to the city an instrument, under Providence, of so much public benefit."

A testimony this, it will be acknowledged, of the most unequivocal kind, and from which, it might be supposed, some professional advantages should have resulted to the preacher. But Kirwan, although he never took any active part in politics, was in principle a Whig; and the government, to whom all high preferments belonged, were, without principle, Tory. Nothing, therefore, could be expected in that quarter. And Archbishop Fowler, who presided then over the see of Dublin, thought, no doubt, that he was providing most liberally for him, when he conferred upon him the little prebend of Howth. To this was added, by Lord Westmorland, the year following, the parish of St. Nicholas Without;—the joint income of both amounting to about £400 a-year.*

Such was the status and the income of a man who was himself a living source of revenue to the previously decaying charities of Dublin. But he had his reward: the hungry were fed; the naked were clothed; the sick and the aged were visited; the orphan was sheltered, and "trained up in the way he should go;" and the waters of healing, which had so long been stagnant, were stirred, as though an angel had descended into them; and those who were privileged to profit by their influence, went upon their way rejoicing. He had his reward. What could viceregal state exhibit, comparable to that picture which Grattan presented of him in the House of Commons, when he described the homage done to his genius and his virtues by "charity in extacies, and vice in humiliation?" He had his reward, when, like the prophet in the wilderness, who smote the stony rock, and the living waters gushed forth, to sustain the hearts and confirm the faith of the drooping and almost despairing

Lord Westmorland, when conferring this preferment upon him, observed, "It is far, far below your merits; but government must reserve its high rewards for the services of its friends;" so little ashamed were the highest personages, in that day, of professing profanation upon principle, and defending the abuses of church patronage which they practised, from the necessity under which they alleged they were placed of giving unto Cæsar the things that were God's ! We believe it would not be difficult to trace remotely to this source the rebellion of ninety-eight, which so nearly severed Ireland from the British crown.

Israelites, he beheld a self-renouncing benevolence triumph over the innate corruption of the human heart, and issuing in streams of mercy, which blessed both those who gave and those who received; and by which, while a sense of his Christian responsibility was awakened in the heart of the sinner, a provision was made for the moral wants of those who were "ignorant and out of the way." And what earthly preferment would such a man, even humanly speaking, have taken, in exchange for the divinest pleasure of being thus a benefactor to his species, while he was faithfully discharging his duty as a servant of the living God?

Of the vast sums which were collected after his sermons, we do not know that any authentic record has been preserved; but they were not only unprecedented, but enormous. Fifteen hundred pounds were collected on one occasion for the Meath Hospital. And such were the multitudes who assembled to hear him, that it was necessary to defend the entrances of the churches where he officiated, by guards and pallisadoes. And the contributors frequently poured upon the collection-plates, watches, jewels, trinkets, purses, every thing valuable which they had about them;-so entirely were they borne away by the powers of the preacher, and so spell-bound by the magic of an eloquence, which caused them not only to feel for the woe of another even as if it was their own, but, to use Grattan's words, "to discover in themselves a mine of charity of which the possessors were before unconscious."

His voice, though not deep, was full and melodiousits tones, of rich and varied harmony; and his management of it, as an instrument, quite perfect. A conscious grandeur characterised his action and manner, which was, as the occasion required it, earnest, pathetic, demonstrative, sublime. When he took his place in the pulpit, he seemed penetrated by a mingled sense of his high office and his great responsibility; but, as he proceeded, his kindling eye evinced the mastery which he felt he possessed over his audience; and his graceful and energetic delivery gave a peculiar impressiveness to the expostulations, the reasonings, and the exhortations, by which pride was rebuked, selfishness laid bare, avarice chastised and gibbeted, while the latent sentiments of charity and benevolence were evoked, as by an incantation, and the churl was surprised into liberality, and the miser dispossessed for a moment of the demon passion of his soul. Then it was that he gave a loose to all his powers. When his hearers began to be softened and subdued, he poured upon them the volleys of an eloquence which always rose with the occasion; and never desisted from pressing his appeals until he felt assured that his object had been answered. His language could not be so properly called flowery, as rich and appropriate. It was the costume which became his subject, and the richness of the material was forgotten in the gracefulness and the grandeur of the drapery into which it was disposed. ،، Non amputata oratio et abscissa, sed lata, et magnifica, et excelsa, tonat, fulgurat, omnia denique perturbat et miscet." His words, indeed, were "winged words," and characterised less by high-sounding impressiveness, than by simple force and exquisite fitness, which often gave an electrical power to the feeling or the sentiment they were intended to convey. Nor could his manner, studied though it was with the utmost care, be called affected or theatrical. Even in his moments of highest excitement, he was always self-possessed; and in the very tempest and whirlwind of the emotions by which he was actuated, and to which he was giving an almost inspired utterance, it would scarcely be so just to say that nature was improved by art, as that art was disguised in nature.

He was a very early riser. Four o'clock in the morning generally saw him up and stirring; and between that hour, and the hour of ten, his principal preparation for preaching was made. The general character and structure of his discourses were always very carefully forecast, and duly committed to paper; and many whole passages elaborated with the utmost care. These were retained in his memory, as if imprinted upon adamant; but never suffered so to overrule his thoughts, as to preclude those additions or variations, which the enthusiasm of the moment might suddenly inspire. They rather served to give steadiness and direction to what might otherwise be capricious, or driftless; and pitched, as it were, the key below which he could not descend; giving a sustained and elevated tone to the feelings, the sentiments, and the intelligence, which rushed from his tongue with a magical persuasiveness, or flashed from his every faculty with a resistless fascination. So that, in him,

what was unpremeditated partook of the character of what had been prepared, and, indeed, so grew out of it, as to be distinguishable only, like the blossom from the surrounding foliage, by the richness of its colours, and its superior brilliancy and freshness:-"Rem bene provisam, verba haud invita sequuntur," was a rule which he never neglected. And the consequence was, that, instead of, as often happens, the words suggesting the thoughts-the thoughts always governed the words; which were like well-disciplined battalions under the conduct of a skilful commander; or, rather, indeed, like flying Mercuries, winging, upon their godlike errands, their predestined way, between the intelligence which commissioned them, and the audience to whom they were directed:"Thus it was," as Grattan said, that "the preacher's desk became a throne of light. Round him a train, not such as crouch and swagger at the levee of princes-not such as attend the procession of a viceroy, horse, foot, and dragoons but that wherewith a great genius peoples his own state—charity in extacy, and vice in humiliation; vanity, arrogance, and saucy, empty pride, appalled by the rebuke of the preacher, and cheated for a moment of their native improbity and insolence."

Of the wonderful eloquence which could have justified such a panegyric, it is melancholy to reflect that no specimen survives; but that it was justified, nay, more than justified, we have the united testimony of all his great cotemporaries. He lived in what may be called the Augustan age of Irish taste and literature. He lived in the familiar society of Charlemont, Grattan, Flood, Yelverton, Curran, Fitzgibbon, Plunket, Bushe, and a host of others, who then constituted a galaxy of Irish genius, such as their country never saw before, and never may see again; and they are unanimous in their attestation to the transcendent powers of this gifted man, and describe the effects which were produced upon the great occasions when they were all put forth, as something stupendous and amazing.

Sir Jonah Barrington, himself an excellent speaker, and a keen and sagacious observer of men and things, says, Curran, Sheridan, and Kirwan, were the three greatest orators he ever heard; but that, of the three, Kirwan was the greatest.

The late Bishop Jebb, whose refinement and scholarship were the admiration of all who knew him, thus writes, upon an occasion when he was called to preach a charity sermon for the Female Orphan House, shortly after this great man's death: I think now more highly of Dean Kirwan than I ever did. During the two last years of his life, his views of religion became more deep, clear, and strong; and the effect was, that his preaching assumed a tone far surpassing anything I ever heard him deliver. His last five sermons, I understand, are masterpieces. I can answer for two of them, which I read with astonishment and delight, his own MSS. having been shewn to me. One of them was the last sermon he ever delivered, and that for the orphans." What a pity that such manuscripts should have been lost! possible to forbear condemning the carelessness of his relatives and friends, by whom such precious memorials were so strangely neglected?

And how is it

But, while his cotemporaries are thus unanimous, some who only possess a traditionary knowledge of his reputation, have ventured to represent him as nothing more than a finished actor, who was indebted to his rhetorical artifices for the admiration which followed him, and the triumphs which he won. Mr. Madden, the author of "Revelations of Ireland," thus describes him; and mentions a remarkable case-in which, when he only appeared in the pulpit at St. Peter's church, and pointed towards the orphans, for whom he was unable to plead, signifying, by this expressive gesture, that he commended them to the compassion of the beholders, an immense collection was made-as a proof of this incomparable acting. He calls it "a coup de theatre:" and evidently takes it for granted that the whole thing was a clever cheat, got up for the purpose of rhetorical illusion. In reviewing his volume in a former number, we adverted to his mistake in this particular; but the incident is too characteristic and interesting, not here to demand a fuller notice.

After the advertisement had been put forth, in which it was announced that he would preach for the orphans, he was violently attacked by bilious fever (a complaint to which he was constitutionally subject), and his life was considered in imminent danger. The physicians, from the first, forbad him to think of the sermon. So critical did they deem his case, that any excitement or