With such tastes and views as the daughters of Lady Woodstock possessed, it is not to be supposed that they should be long in town without forming an acquaintance with the charming preacher, whose melodious voice and pious similies so regularly delighted and edified them every Sunday. And let no critic carp at this phraseology. To be delighted is to be put in good humor; to be put in good humor is to have the best feelings of our souls called into action. There is to some ears devotional impulse and excitement to holy feeling in the wordless eloquence of a well-played voluntary; and why should not a well-turned period from the lips of a graceful speaker have power to edify as well as to please? There was not any impropriety in Lady Woodstock's taking notice of the preacher of whom we are speaking. He was a middle-aged married man with a numerous family, for whom he was endeavouring to provide as well as might be. His preferment was but little, though his popularity was great. He was unfortunate in having too many patrons. Every body thought that, as Mr. Henderson had a very fashionable audience, he must of necessity be in the way of preferment; and so he certainly was, as the one mile stone is on the road to Windsor a very little way on, and not likely to get any farther.

Now old John Martindale had his crotchets, as our readers may have perceived; and one of his crotchets was, that with all his natural obstinacy, if he ever took a fancy to an individual for one quality which pleased him, he kindly gave that individual credit for every possible human excellence, and would suffer himself to be led, guided, or drawn, ad libitum, by the said individual. He was pleased with Lady Woodstock as being a woman of good natural sense, quiet, unobtrusive, unaffected manners; and he was also pleased with the young ladies her daughters, because they differed much from the majority of young ladies of the present age. Thereupon, whatever Lady Woodstock said was right; and the daughters also had their influence over the old gentleman. Had any one else attempted to persuade Mr. Martindale to attend service at Mr. Henderson's chapel, he would have uttered such an outrageous and violent philippic against popular preachers, as would have shocked and terrified all lovers of velvet cushions. But the young ladies ruled their mamma, and Mr. Martindale thought that there must be some good sense in a preacher whom so intelligent a woman as Lady Woodstock could tolerate. He therefore was prevailed on to attend occasionally at this fashionable chapel; and a very nice, warm, snug, comfortable place it was. Yet, though Mr. Martindale was induced to give his occasional attendance, he could not help so far yielding to his natural propensity as to criticise somewhat cynically and severely the performances and exhibitions of the preacher. When, indeed, preachers condescend to lose sight of the dignity of their profession, and to set themselves up as orators and flower-mongers to attract the gaping gaze of a rabble of Sunday loungers, they must not feel mortified if their performances undergo the same kind of criticism, and produce no more than the same effect as the performances of singers, dancers, fiddlers, conjurors, or any others who exhibit themselves for the amusement of the public.

By more frequent attendance the old gentleman grew less fastidious, and he fancied that he could discern, amidst all the flowery and pretty eloquence of the popular preacher, some symptoms of strong good sense; and he more than suspected that the style was assumed for the sake of rendering that tolerable which otherwise would not be attended to. Pleased with his imagined discovery, he was desirous of being acquainted with Mr. Henderson, and very readily acceded to Lady Woodstock's request to meet him at her house. Judging from his own impression of Mr. Henderson's strength of mind and fulness of information, he thought it not unlikely that he should find in him a fit and proper person to induce Signora Rivolta to look more favorably on the English religion. But the old gentleman was not aware that it is possible for a man to be a popular preacher, and to utter very elegant harangues, and even to display in his composition a sound judgment as well as an elegant taste, but at the same time to be grievously unfurnished with stores of literature, and altogether unexercised in the harsher struggles and conflicts of polemic disputation. This he found to be the case with Mr. Henderson. The worthy preacher was a man of good sense, graceful and agreeable manners, fluent in conversation, well acquainted with all the popular and fashionable topics of conversation, and quite as well satisfied as Mr. Martindale himself of the folly and vanity of the passions and pursuits of the day. One of the two thought that he could not do better than set himself cynically against the world—the other humored its follies; the one did no good by his cynical humor—the other did a little by his management and direction of the prevalent follies. Mr. Henderson, we are inclined to think, judged the wisest of the two. It is not in the power of a weak hand to stop a headstrong horse; but less power than is required to stop the animal, may direct its course. Thus thought the popular preacher. He was as aware as Mr. Martindale that fashion was folly where folly was fashion. He knew that the springs and motives of action must be of a mingled nature: he knew that action was different from contemplation. The latter was pure virtue and reason; the former mingled with passion and folly. From vanity the preacher often extorted liberality. From the pride, the superstition, the caprice, the indulgence of the rich, he was frequently able to extract clothing and food, and medicine for the poor. Well and wisely did he think that if all the benevolence that sprung from mixed motives should immediately cease, and that if nothing were to be done for the miseries and sufferings of humanity but from the purest and most intellectual motives, a mass of good would be withdrawn from society, the absence of which it would painfully and deeply feel. To his view there was some use in splendid hospitals, even in their splendor; and he was not wanting in the ingenuity that could manage to indulge those benevolent ones who delighted in the chiaro oscuro of benevolence, and who wished to have the credit of unostentatious charity, and to make their darkness visible: for if unostentatious benevolence is good, it ought to be known to exist for the sake of example; and as there is much merit in it, that merit should not go unrewarded. Mr. Henderson was also of opinion, if elegant people by going to church could benefit the world by the force of example, it was a pity not to indulge them with something that might render church agreeable and pleasant. The public he knew did not analyse the motives or think of the taste of the church-going gentry; they merely saw and knew the fact, and that fact had its influence on the public mind. It was something to the world that the gentry and nobility should go to church; but it was nothing to the world that the gentry and nobility in going to church should there find gratification of their taste, and be as much delighted with the fine-turned periods and graceful utterance of the preacher, as they are by the elegant evolutions of the opera-dancer. Mr. Henderson in his younger days had been as wise as any mental hero of one-and-twenty, he had seen the nothingness and vanity of the world of fashion, and he had declaimed in his early themes on the dignity of man and the purity of motives; but growing up, he found that he could not model the world according to his own pattern, and instead of turning cynic and snarling at the world by way of teaching it wisdom and sobriety, he became a popular preacher, and he was very much admired, and he enjoyed the admiration, but he could see through it, and he had the good sense not to overvalue himself for it. He had read Mandeville, and he found that the analysis of motive, however agreeable an employment for the mind, was but a thankless task, and that people would not believe what they did not like to believe; and since he had become a father, he found that the best mode of managing children was by flattery, and that the encouraging though not always accurate expression of commendation "There's a good boy!" did much more for the cause of virtue and order than a more strict and book-like kind of philosophy. And so he managed those children of a larger growth, to whose ears his lips distilled the honied eloquence of Sunday exhortation. Such was Mr. Henderson's character; and whether it be good, bad, or indifferent, whether it be execrable or admirable, we decide not. It may however be easily imagined, that with such a character and under such circumstances he would not be offensive to old John Martindale; and it may be also as easily imagined, that he would not be very likely to induce a mind constituted as that of Signora Rivolta to renounce the religion in which she had been educated. Many, however, were the attempts made by Mr. Martindale to introduce and continue discussions for that purpose; and Signora Rivolta could very readily discern the altitude of Mr. Henderson's mind as regarded controversial discussion. It appeared to her, that Mr. Henderson was a person more likely to be converted in Italy than to convert in England.

One good, however, clearly accrued from the frequent and encouraged visits of Mr. Henderson to the Woodstocks and Martindales; namely, that the old gentleman was rendered rather less cynical, and more Catholic in his general notions and views of society. The contrast between the characters of the popular preacher and the old gentleman was very great, but the collision was not attended with unpleasant effects, because both of them had natural good-humor, and because Mr. Henderson had been long practised in the habit of managing the opulent, and yielding himself gracefully to their humors and whims.

In process of time, Mr. Martindale liked the preacher so much that he felt inclined to patronise him, should it be found on inquiry that patronage was desirable. But the old gentleman thought as many others had thought, that a man so situated could not stand in need of patronage, but must be well provided for. He did not think how heedless the world in general was towards such as ministered to their pleasures, and that they regarded the metropolitan Sunday lecturer as the minister to their Sunday pleasures, thinking him, if they thought at all, amply remunerated for his labors by the honor of their attendance and approbation.

As hitherto Mr. Martindale did not know whether Mr. Henderson were married or single, he one day asked him the question; and when that question was answered in the affirmative, and mention was made of the number of the reverend gentleman's family, the old gentleman then proceeded to make further inquiries, such as are allowable from a man of great wealth who has livings in his gift. The answer to these inquiries astonished Mr. Martindale. But Mr. Henderson was not at all astonished at Mr. Martindale's astonishment; for he had been asked the same questions by many of his opulent hearers, and had given them the same answers, and heard the same or similar expressions of astonishment. Hitherto, however, no fruit had resulted from these flattering and promising inquiries: therefore he did not build any hopes on the language used by Martindale, which was to his ear but an echo of what he had heard very, very many times for a dozen years at least. The impression, however, on Mr. Martindale's mind from Mr. Henderson's answers to his inquiries, was stronger than the impression on Mr. Henderson's mind from Mr. Martindale's expressions and exclamations of astonishment at the ill success which the eloquent divine had experienced in his profession. It was one of Mr. Martindale's fancies that he was a great patron of merit, and as he wished to have an opportunity of indulging this propensity, he was very willing to see in Mr. Henderson quite as much merit as the reverend gentleman himself could ever think of laying claim to. As Mr. Martindale also very highly enjoyed declaiming against the world and its blindness and insensibility to all that was really deserving, he was very well pleased that he could quote Mr. Henderson as an instance of neglected merit. Notwithstanding his own general distaste of popular and splendid preaching, he could not but admire Mr. Henderson, who, he said, was far superior to the common run of popular men. There is in Mr. Henderson, he used to say, a strong foundation of good sense and knowledge of the world: he is far above the silly vanity of aiming merely at popular applause; and he never uses figurative or splendid language except where it is appropriate; and all his metaphors, and similes, and illustrations, are in such pure and perfect good taste.

Now it fortunately happened just at this critical moment, that a living in the gift of Mr. Martindale fell vacant. It was the immediate impulse of the old gentleman's mind to present Mr. Henderson to that living; and he also thought at the very same moment how very strange it was that of all that host of people of fashion and opulence who given him a living. But the wonder a little abated, when a host of applications and recommendations, backed and seconded by most powerful considerations, came rushing in upon him. Among the rest was one from Lord Martindale himself, not so much supplicating for the living, as reminding Mr. Martindale that as Trimmerstone was now vacant, it might be desirable to place some one there to keep it till Robert Martindale, who was now just going to the university, should be of age to take it. There was also another application from a person of higher rank and greater influence in the world, who accompanied his recommendation with a hint that if gratified in this request, he might in his turn be of some service to Lord Martindale's family. The motive to provide for one's own family or connexions is certainly much stronger than the motive to provide for a stranger; but the motive of caprice or crotchet is as powerful as any motive that can rule the human heart. There was a considerable struggle in the old gentleman's mind, but the motive attended Mr. Henderson's chapel, not one of them should ever have of caprice was the strongest. He had wealth enough to provide for his family as well as they could expect to be provided for, and as for government patronage he needed it not for himself or for any of his relatives. He certainly did feel some gratitude, though he would hardly acknowledge it, for the title by which the name of Martindale became ennobled. As to Robert Martindale, he thought that it would be quite as well to wait a little longer before any steps were to be taken in his behalf. On this principle he wrote a note to Lord Martindale, stating that he would not forget to provide in due time for the establishment of his family, but that he did not approve of the practice of keeping livings in reserve for young men who were not old enough to know their own minds. The note concluded with an abundance or superabundance of protestations on the part of the old gentleman; and requesting that Lord Martindale would have the goodness to acknowledge the receipt of the note, and to express his acquiescence in its principle.

Before, however, it was possible that this note could have reached his lordship, another came from Lady Martindale, requesting to see the old gentleman immediately, for Lord Martindale had been seized by a return of his complaint, and his medical attendants thought him to be in very imminent danger. There was no refusing such a summons as this. He therefore promptly obeyed it, but firmly resolved to give the living to Mr. Henderson; and very much did he dread any thing of a discussion on the subject with his noble relatives.

There was no opportunity for the discussion he dreaded. Lord Martindale was obviously near his end, and his power of thought and attention was rapidly failing. He recognised his relative, and thanked him very cordially and formally for his many acts of kindness to himself and family. He then seemed to lose thought and sensation for a few minutes. Again he opened his eyes, and inquired for Philip; but when told that Philip was on a tour with his bride, he seemed distressed at his forgetfulness, and endeavoured to make an effort to revive his languishing strength, but it was all in vain. Not being able to shake off his weakness, he endeavoured to disguise it, and complained of drowsiness, and that the medicine which he had taken last night had deprived him of rest, and that he would now sleep a little, and then he should be better able to converse. This movement was complied with by his attendants, and they were silent. The patient closed his eyes, but his lips kept moving, and in a very few minutes he awoke again, but the eyes looked more dim; and he endeavoured to fix a steadfast look on Mr. Martindale, and he said, "Is that Philip?" He had just discernment enough to see that he was wrong, and just power enough to express a sense of his weakness. He presently ceased to ask questions, and he no more attempted to reply to those which he asked him. He once more looked on those about him, and waved his hand, and faintly said "Go," as if he wished to be left alone; but there was not time to comply with his request, for that word was his last: he was no longer conscious. The empty or the crowded apartment was precisely the same to him.