FATHER TAYLOR.

Such vast impressions did his sermons make,
He always kept his flock awake.

I venerate the man whose heart is warm,

DR. WOLCOTT.

Whose hands are pure, whose doctrines and whose life
Coincident, exhibit lucid proof

That he is honest in the sacred cause.

COWPER.

ONE Sunday morning I went to the Sailors' Chapel in Boston, to see and hear the far-famed mariners' preacher, Father Taylor. He was reading the familiar hymn which commences with the well-known lines, "Come, thou fount of every blessing," when I entered the house of worship. The choir wedded the words to music-the Divine blessing was invoked-a chapter was read-and then the sixteenth verse of the third chapter of Colossians was selected as the basis of the discourse. The striking peculiarities of the eccentric and celebrated preacher cannot fail to attract the attention of the seamen and landsmen who attend his church. He rises clumsily from the sofa in the pulpit, and puts his fore-finger on the text as though he anticipated the danger of losing it, or was determined to stick to it. After reading it distinctly and delib erately, he is pretty sure to raise the spectacles from his eyes and let them rest over the organs of causality.

Father Taylor does not ape the clerical stiffness which so

ill-becomes those who strive to make up in dignity what they lack in devotion and intellect. When he walks the pulpit floor, like a caged lion, or pounds the desk with his fists, there seems to be, and doubtless is, honesty in his zeal. When he distorts his weather-beaten face, and swings his out-stretched arms about him, and shakes his lean fingers in the faces of his hearers, we see that he has in him the elements of a good actor. He is an odd genius, and I have no hesitation in affirming that he will utter more wise sayings and more sayings that are otherwise, in a single sermon, than any other man in Massachusetts. Not unfrequently he mixes his pathos and humor so evenly, the listener knows not whether to laugh or weep. One minute he appeals to Heaven, in a strain of sublimity that excites your admiration and astonishment; and the next moment he appeals to Mr. Foster, or some other member of his congregation, in a style not comporting with the idea most men have of the dignity of the pulpit. Now, with compressed lips, grating teeth and flashing eyes, he denounces some vice or some heresy, in words steeped in a solution of brimstone; and then, with a smiling countenance, upturned eyes, and outspread hands, he lavishes encomiums on hope, faith, love, virtue, piety. Now he pours out a torrent of adjectives, as though he resolved to exhaust the vocabulary; then follows a stream of nouns, from his unfailing Cochituate of language. His sermons are ornamented with gems of poetry.

The following extracts from the sermon I heard a week or two since, will give the reader a tolerable idea of his matter; his manner is unreportable, for he is the Booth of the Boston

pulpit. "Some men," said he, "will lie for a glass of grog, and some women will lie for a cup of tea. If God respects some sinners more than others, there will be a back hole in hell for liars." "Who are so low, vile, mean, hateful, as the wholesale dealers and the retail pedlars in lies?" He prefaced a quotation from Proverbs with these words: "Solomon was a

wise old fellow, although he had strange notions about some things." Speaking of backsliders, he observed: "They slide by moonshining and deceiving themselves." He ridiculed, with bitter severity, the Oratorios of the present day; said that "profane lips dared to imitate the groans of Christ upon the cross. Infidels, with instruments of music, endeavored to show the sufferings of the Saviour in the garden-the driving of the nails, the dripping of the blood upon the accursed tree-and they mimicked the blast of the angel's trumpet." It was an eloquent and just rebuke to those who trifle with sacred things.

Father Taylor is a plain-looking man, and his bronzed face is strongly marked. He is now in the sunset of life, and his head is thickly sprinkled with grey hairs. When excited, his voice is harsh, and conveys the impression to the mind, that the "man behind it" hates the devil more than he loves Jesus. He is volcanic, and is often guided more by impulse than by intellect. Although he is in the autumn of his years, he can perform more service, endure more hardship, and preach better sermons, than half the young preachers of the present day.

JOHN C. CALHOUN.

No one at all acquainted with the political history of the United States, will deny the fact that John C. Calhoun, was one of the distinguished few whose voices penetrated every portion of our country. His bold and sententious and condensed utterances were also echoed in other lands, and excited indignation and admiration everywhere. The lovers of universal liberty admired his genius, while they deplored his course in the council chamber of state. Earnestly, eloquently, and perseveringly did he labor, in season and out of season, to defend and perpetuate slavery. Unlike such men as Jefferson, Randolph, Henry, and Clay, he regarded human slavery as an invaluable blessing-promoting the welfare of society, advancing the prosperity of the nation, and perpetuating the free institutions of the Republic-while they, on the contrary, declared involuntary servitude an unmitigated curse-impairing our social happiness, hampering the welfare of our common country, and threatening the stability of our free institutions.

John C. Calhoun was a sectional senator-South Carolina was so vast in his eye, he could never look beyond its boundaries. He legislated and labored in his study and in the senate, not for the good of the United States, but for the protection and prosperity of South Carolina. That state was

all the world to him, and he knew no North, no East, no West.

It is astonishing that any man, having such breadth of character, and such depth of intellect, did not have more comprehensive views-Webster went for our country, however bounded-Winthrop for our country, right or wrong, but Calhoun went for South Carolina-for her men, her laws, her institutions, and her slaves. He toiled during a life-time, to persuade the world, that slavery was not an infringement on the rights of man. He was aware that it paid no respect to the institution of marriage, and made every cabin liable to become a brothel. He knew that whips, and chains, and yokes, and thumbscrews, and bloodhounds, were some of the accompaniments of such a state of society, yet he defended it. He knew that it separated husband from wife, and child from parent, and consigned three millions of human beings to stripes, and sorrow, and premature death; yet he demanded its everlasting perpetuation. William Lloyd Garrison, speaking, said of him, with characteristic vigor, soon after Calhoun made an able speech in the senate: "There is no blood in him-he is as cold as a corpse. He is made of iron, not flesh; he is hybridous, not natural." Having seen the most forbidding side of the picture, let us do him and ourselves the justice to look at the favorable side. He was a consistent man, there was no two-facedness, no double-heartedness, no dough in the composition of his nature. Whichever way the wind might blow-whatever course the flood might take-he was