vainer man. loving thoughts he held a cherished place, was so imperishably associated. It was generally known, therefore, that when he accepted office under the Derby Administration as Master-general of the Ordnance, he joined the ranks of the Protectionists, as then they were believed to be, with the understanding that an unqualified adherence to their policy, especially on points connected with the commercial system of the country, was not to be demanded from him. The arrangement was honorable alike to him who made, and them who accepted, the condition. It was soon found how wise a choice Ministers had made. Lord Hardinge went to the Ordnance office at a time when the arming and equipment of our national forces pressed for some speedy revision, that in this respect we might not altogether be distanced by our foreign neighbors; and he soon made the appointment a laborious one. The Master-generalship of the Ordnance in his hands was a strenuous reality. If anything had before been needed to demonstrate Lord Hardinge's qualifications for a higher military post, it would have been supplied by the intelligence and activity displayed by him during his tenure of office at the head of the Ord When he took his seat in the House of Lords the Peers upon both sides welcomed him warmly. But, save when called upon to do honor to the brave men whom he had left behind him, and who had been hotly engaged in another war--and no man more delighted to pay the tribute of generous admiration to his comrades--he took no conspicuous part in public affairs. Contented with the role of the English gentleman, he settled quietly down into private life, and was never seen to greater advantage than when superintending the improvements which were going on on his estate, or talking over old times amidst the Sikh trophies in the hall of his Kentish home. As with the body, so with the mind, you best see its fine proportions in repose. Earnest and active as in the days of his youth, with the same quickness of eye and vivacity of manner, there were years and years of good work in him when he returned from his eastern conquests. But a marvellous contentedness sate upon him. No aspirations after new honors disturbed the serenity of his mind. He spoke of himself, with all cheerfulness, as of one whose work was already done, and whose future days were to be passed in an uneventful but not wholly uncongenial privacy. But al-nance Board. He was, indeed, doing so though a mind so well-balanced as Lord Hardinge's was sure not to waste itself in vain repinings, and in all conditions of life could find healthy occupation, they who knew him, and, knowing him, had constant proof of the freshness and vigor of the moral and intellectual, no less than of the physical man, never ceased to hope that the requirements of the public service would some day call into action again all the energies of his unclouded mind and unwasted body. In spite of all that he had gone through-all the storms to which the sapling and the old tree had been exposed-there were few younger men at three-score amongst us, than Lord Hardinge, when the accession to office of Lord Derby and his friends made people ask each other, whether the new Ministers would be fortunate enough to secure the services of the retired Governor-general, the old friend of Wellington and Peel? Lord Hardinge did not altogether belong to that party. His sympathies were with that more moderate segment of the great political circle, which had owned Sir Robert Peel as its chief, and on the death of that great leader had looked up to Sir James Graham as its head; and he would never have consented to assist in the reversal of that policy with which his lost friend, the great statesman, in whose last much good at the head of that department, that we cannot help regretting his removal from it, especially as the combination of the business of the Horse Guards with that of the Ordnance Office has been recommended by the first military authorities, and there could not have arisen a better opportunity than the present of combining them under one competent chief. Still the arrangements consequent upon the death of the great Duke, are altogether so fair in themselves, and likely to be so advantageous to the country, that, even upon this account, it would be ungrateful to demur to them. The apointment of Lord Hardinge to the chief command of the army has given universal satisfaction. It is a subject, indeed, of congratulation to the country, that we have secured the services of the fittest manof a man not merely distinguished for what he has done, and, therefore, to be rewarded, -but, also, for what he is, and, therefore, to be selected. However desirous we may be to see past services rewarded; however intolerant of national ingratitude; we would never wish that the mere skeletons of past activities should be thrust into high and responsible office. Lord Hardinge has done much. He had earned for himself a niche in history forty years ago; but he was then a just man; with as few prejudices as any soldier in the army. All branches of the service are sure to be equally patronized and protected by him; and, perhaps, there is not a man in the country so well acquainted with the details of them all. He knows the Com very young man. He is now, in all essential | respects, by far the youngest of our surviving military heroes. He is a distinguished soldier,-gallant and skilful in the field, and, at the same time, an excellent man of business. With great natural vivacity and activity, he combines those useful, and not unheroic qual-pany's army, too, as well as the Queen's; and ities, industry and perseverance. He is as pains-taking in execution as he is prompt in conception; and he is thoroughly conscientious. It is no small matter, that the great quality of justice should be conspicuous in the character of the Commander-in-chief. We believe Lord Hardinge to be, all in all, a it is a happy circumstance that, at such a period, when not only are battles to be fought, but perhaps armies to be reorganized in India, the first military authority in the country should be an officer of such wide Indian experience and fine Indian reputation as HENRY, LORD HARDINGE. From Hogg's Instructor. DR. WARD LAW. BY GEORGE GILFILLAN. TIME was that when the member or min-, ister of a dissenting body ventured to praise the "great man" of another denomination, it was with "bated breath and whispered humbleness"-with prefixes of mean apology, and affixes of voluntary humiliation. At the close of the panegyric you heard the rustle of the author's skirts stealing away amid the brushwood, like one who had done a guilty thing. It is very different now. Dissenting bodies, partly through common difficulties, and partly through the spread of a more generous spirit, are fast becoming welded into one; so that in commending Dr. Wardlaw we seem to be commending the general patriarch of Scottish dissent. Dr. Wardlaw's superiority over all the ministers of his own denomination is incontestible. Dr. Russell, of Dundee, had perhaps more natural force of intellect; but this appeared even larger than it was from the comparative want of artistic culture. Dr. Wardlaw, if not a giant, is a sincere and highly-finished man, whose name might have been a crown to any church in any age. The clear stream is sometimes very rich. So Dr. Wardlaw has collected the resources of a widely-stored intellect and memory into a reservoir of crystal. Not excepting Robert No sentence which Hall ever uttered seems to us so shallow as that reported by one or other of his biagrophers-"Style, sir! Style, after all, is the great thing." As well have said, "The light, sir, is nothing; the window pane is the great thing, after all." It is not to be wondered at that he seems to have preferred Virgil to Homer and Dante, Cicero to Demosthenes, or perhaps Plato! If style, judged by mechanical standards, be the great thing, then we must dismiss, among a crowd of others, Shakspeare, Jeremy Taylor, Coleridge, Wilson, and Carlyle, from our catalogue of gifted immortals. This is the estimate of a tailor, who judges of a man, not by his countenance, but by his clothes. Hall had, to be sure, besides his style, many admirable and great qualities; and so Dr. Wardlaw, apart from the clearness, force, and facility of his diction, possesses a manly intellect, a distinct logic, a mild imagination, and a quiet yet strong enthusiasm. He reminds usauthor though he be of the "Discourses on the Unitarian Controversy"-more of Dr. Channing than of any modern divine. His constant clearness, and the calm, measured, equable march of his sentences, his deficiency in the very highest qualities of imagination and metaphysical insight, the candor and amenity which mingle with all his controversial effusions, the frozen splendor of his higher flights, and the chastity of his general manner, all go to constitute him the Scottish Channing. His writings, however, possess both more life and more liveliness than Channing's -the life of a better creed, and the liveliness of a keener intellect. We have elsewhere deplored the spectacle of a noble intellect, wholly given up to controversy. All controversialists put themselves in a false position. They pick out some mere fragment of the truth, and proceed to do as desperate battle for it as though it were the great rounded whole itself. Controversy is seeing with one eye, or walking with one limb. How seldom does it strike out sparkles of truth on its lurid way! How few books of this class deserve to be, or are read, ten years after their first appearance! Dr. Wardlaw's books are not altogether an exception to this rule. They strew few flowers around the borders of their thorny ground, nor often reach general through the avenue of particular truth; but their language, life, clearness, energy, frequent wit, and constant earnestness, seem a salt sufficient to embalm them till the latest possible date of the ephemeral class to which they belong. Quiet, gentle power is Wardlaw's peculia rity as a writer of controversy. He prostrates his adversary with a whisper. His "asides" are thunderbolts. We are reminded of the stripling David, with his fair face and smooth stones from the brook, annihilating Goliath. Without entering on the merits of his dispute with Marshall on the atonement, we may describe their different characters as disputants. Wardlaw is a generous, candid opponent. Marshall is fierce, intolerant, one-sided, sharp, strong, and narrow as the edge of a razor. His dogmatism, to be tolerable, would require to be backed by powers and acquirements little short of divine. No mere man of talent-and Marshall is nothing more-has a right to assume the airs of an oracle. Genius, like a glorious summer tree, may fold itself up in its own beauty, and speak in accents from the depth of its heart; but naked talent can only produce a dry and wintry rustle. And yet not Goethe nor Coleridge ever spoke with the authority assumed by the hero of Kirkintilloch, to whom we are willing to concede energy of language, force of logic, and strong sarcastic emphasis, but who possesses neither the higher nor the lower qualities of a writer— neither the genius which creates, nor the taste and gentlemanly feeling which decorate and beautify. Who that ever saw or heard Dr. Wardlaw, could, previous to information, dream that he had been engaged in so many and so diverse warfares, that he had fought his way round the whole circle of Christian truth-how possibly have divined a whole century of controversies from the mild gravity of that countenance and the honeycomb accents of that voice? One would have expected a burly form, a knotted brow, and a voice of thunder. But when we consider Wardlaw's management of the majority of the topics he has touched, we find the puzzle explained. He is the meekest of gladiators. It is with a gloved hand that he handles his nettles and thorns; and as to his opponents, in the words of the song, he kicks them down stairs with such a sweet grace that they think he is handing them up." Yet he has seldom been worsted. Andrew Thomson alone had the complete advantage; but who could resist the brawny muscle, the strenuous logic, the style of iron, the stalwart wit, and the determination at all hazards and by all means to level his opponent, which distinguished that " mighty man of valor?" Wardlaw wields a light elegant sword-cane; Thomson had the club of Hercules-he had a giant's power, and he did use it like a giant. In reading all his writings you feel yourself surrounded by an air of high literary accomplishment. He has read extensively, variedly, and digested his knowledge into healthy chyle. If not a learned man, in the sense in which Bentley, Clarke, and Warbur'ton were learned men, his scholarship is elegant, true, thoroughly under his control, and furnishes quite sufficient fuel for the mild flame of his genius. We mention last among his general qualities that liberality, blended with Christian and catholic charity, which is the glory of his character, even as his gray locks are the crown of his venerable head. While warmly attached to his own denomination, his real home is the universal church. Hence he has, amid his multitude of opponents, never, we believe, made a single enemy; hence his name goes out to the extreme boundaries of the church, like a spilled fragrance; hence, when his "post" shall come, similar lamentations shall be made for him as were made for Stephen, Paul, and Chalmers; and a similar reception beyond the river awaits him, when again "glorious it shall be to see how the open region is filled with horses and chariots, with trumpeters and pipers, with singers and players on stringed instruments, to welcome this pilgrim as he goes up, and enters in at the beautiful gate of the city." High prospect! How different the harmonious and heaven-seeking life of a man like Wardlaw clear, aspiring, complete, and holy, as the flame on an altar-from the brilliant, but haggard, broken, and sad existence of the many unfortunate men of genius in this age, who have wandered into that wide field full of dark mountains, where they have stumbled and fallen, to rise no more! With all Wardlaw's works, so exceedingly numerous and diversified, we do not profess to be acquainted, nor have we any notion that all or most of them shall survive him; gems, selections, beauties, may and must; and when he puts off this tabernacle, we trust his friends will show themselves possessed of more sense than to inflict on the public every scrap of his composition which can be rescued from the litter of his library or the sweepings of his study-floor. Either the vanity of the author who leaves so much rubbish within the reach of publication, or the folly of his posthumous friends, must be enormous. There is one work we wish Dr. Wardlaw had not been induced to undertake, we refer to his "Lectures on Prostitution." All honor to the motives which suggested the course, but to set a mind like his to rake the kennel of vulgar vice, and to produce its filthy spoils before the eye of day, was inexcusable, unless good effects of the most unequivocal kind could have been prognosticated to flow from it. Can any touch pitch and not be defiled? Dr. Wardlaw certainly managed the topic with delicacy and tact; but the effect, we fear, of any book upon a subject purely disgusting cannot be good. Pity and horror it ought to have produced in equal proportions; but the horror preponderated, and horror is seldom, we suspect, in itself, a moral agent. Often, like a view from a precipice, it produces a shuddering desire to plunge over and know the worst. We have no gossip to give about Dr. Wardlaw, nor, though we had, would we care to give it. We have never met him in private, but have reason to believe that he is there all that is gentlemanly, accessible, and amiable. We quote from a Glasgow publication the following particulars of his history: "He was educated in the Secession Church-a church of which his progenitors were the distinguished founders. We have seen in his possession some of the relics of Ralph Erskine, to whom he is related. At the time he was about to receive license he joined the Independents, who were then instituting the present form of congregationalism. He was ordained in North Albion Street Chapel-a building now otherwise occupied-in 1803, where he labored about twenty years, when his people erected their present place of worship in West George Street, at a cost of about £10,000. He has generally preached there every Sabbath, and often three times. During the earlier part of his ministry he preached without notes; but since that time he generally reads his sermons, and it is universally admitted that he reads gracefully and energetically. As a reader of the Scripture he is certainly without a rival. For forty years he has discharged the duties of Professor to the Glasgow Theological Academy, and till very lately his labors were entirely gratuitous." 66 We may, in conclusion, quote from ourselves a short description of his manner. 'As a speaker, Dr. Wardlaw's tones are soft, tender, and trembling; the key he assumes may be called a long audible whisper. There is a silvery sweetness in his notes, like that of gently flowing streams. He reads, and reads so easily and elegantly, with such earnest quiet of manner, and such fairy music of intonation, that you wish him to read on for ever. Yet there is nothing mawkish about him. You may, indeed, on reflection, wish there had been a greater variety-that, instead of the eternal dropping of honey from | rocks; but you do not feel this at the time. the rock, there had been a mixture of manlier While the preacher's voice continues to sound, melodies, the crash of the thunder, the shiver-you listen as to the song of the Syrens—it ing burst of the cataract, the full-lipped har- winds round you like an enchanted threadmony of the deep river, the jagged music of you suck it in like honey-dew, or the milk of the mountain stream, or the boom of the Paradise. Gravity, without sternness, is the breakers in the half-glutted hollows of reef-leading expression of his countenance." From the Quarterly Review. THE GOLD DISCOVERIES IN AUSTRALIA. WITH the Californian discovery of gold science had nothing to do. It was other wise with the more recent discoveries in Australia. Sir R. Murchison in his latest address to the Geographical Society reminds them that, when he first filled their chair, in 1844, he noticed a forthcoming work by Count Strzelecki on the physical geography of Australia; and declared that on an examination of that traveller's collection of rocks, fossils, and maps, he could not but recognize a singular uniformity between the Australian Cordillera and the auriferous Ural mountains. Two years later he received evidence of the truth of his conjecture in some specimens of gold quartz sent to him from Australia. Thus confirmed, he strongly advised a body of Cornish emigrants to select Australia, and to seek for gold among the débris of its older rocks. His advice, printed in the Cornish papers, and transmitted to Sydney, stimulated inquiry, which was so far successful that in 1848 he received several letters from persons in the colony, stating that they had detected gold, and expressing anxious hope that Government would so modify the law as to make it worth their while to engage seriously in mining speculations. In that same year, 1848, Murchison addressed a formal communication on the subject to Earl Grey, but that statesman did not take any steps in consequence, because, says Sir Roderick, as his lordship has since informed me, he feared that the discovery of gold would be very embarrassing to a wool-growing country.' More nonsense has been written on the auri sacra fames' theme than on almost any other. It is remarked | by one of the acutest of the French novelists that money can hardly, in one sense, be illspent, as it so rapidly flows from wasteful to industrious hands. We are inclined, however, to think that the converse is more true, and that money can hardly be ill-saved. In its more literal sense the phrase will not better stand scrutiny. If in any country the collection of gold is more profitable than the rearing of sheep, we know no reason why it should not preferably be followed. We were quite unprepared for such pastoral predilection in the Colonial Office under Lord Grey's presidency. To realize Arcady in New South Wales and convert convicts into Strephons might be a very amiable conception, but would hardly justify the minister of a great commercial empire-above all, a zealot of Free Trade-in an attempt to cushion rich sources of mineral wealth opened in a colony under watch of his intelligence." By the despatches of Governor Fitzroy we learn that it was some time in 1849 that a formal application was made to the authorities at Sydney to know what reward would be given for the discovery of a gold district. The applicant was a Mr. Smith-who produced a specimen of gold imbedded in quartz. The reply was a very proper one, that they *We believe most of our readers are aware that Murchison finally developed his views on the Distribution of Gold throughout the Earth in an article of this Journal for 1850. But it is due to him that we should state the fact; for, on the title-page of an Italian translation of that article lately forwarded to us the authorship is ascribed to Herschel-the translator adding that Sir John was rewarded for it by the Mastership of the Mint!!! |