a town in the Austrian province of Tyrol, circle of the Lower Inn, on the left bank of that river, by means of which it communicates with Vienna. It occupies a picturesque situation between two mountains, is surrounded by walls, and has a fine old Gothic church. It has very extensive salt-works, with some linen and cotton factories. Pop. about 5000. There are several smaller towns in Germany of this name.

or Suabian Hall, a town of Württemberg, circle of Jaxt, on the Kocher, 35 miles N.E. of Stuttgart. It was formerly a free imperial city, and is surrounded by strong walls, defended by towers and ditches. It has a town-hall, seven churches, a gymnasium, and two public libraries. It is chiefly famous for its extensive salt-works, supplied from saline springs in the vicinity. Sugar, soap, starch, are its other products. It has also a large trade in cattle. Including the three suburbs, it has about 6500 inhabitants.

in Architecture, a large apartment at the entrance of a house or palace.

HALL is also applied to an edifice where courts of justice are held, as Westminster Hall, in connection with which are the courts of Queen's Bench, Chancery, Common Pleas, Exchequer, the Rolls Court, and the Vice-Chancellor's two courts.

CAPTAIN BASIL, a distinguished British traveller and miscellaneous writer, was born at Edinburgh in 1788. His father was Sir James Hall of Dunglass, a man still remembered for his Essay on the Origin, Principles, and History of Gothic Architecture, and for his ingenious researches into geology, with a view of establishing the theory of Hutton in opposition to that of Werner. Basil Hall entered the navy in 1802, and rose gradually to be post-captain in 1817. In the course of his many voyages, he set himself to observe the manners and customs of the peoples whom he visited, as well as the physical peculiarities of the countries which they inhabited, and in this way collected the materials for a very large number of scientific papers which he contributed to various journals and encyclopedias. Perhaps the most interesting of his works is his Voyage of Discovery to the Western Coast of Corea and the Great Loo-Choo Island, in the Japan Sea, which had a very wide and rapid circulation. His Travels in North America were equally popular, less through their intrinsic merit, than from the violence with which they were assailed by the American press for their very partial and unfriendly view of American society. Various other works of travel followed these from Captain Hall's pen, but of inferior interest and merit. His last, which appeared in 1841 under the title of Patchwork, had not been long published when its author was seized with insanity, from which he was only relieved by death in 1844.

EDWARD, the author of the Chronicle known by his name, was born in London about the close of the fifteenth century. He was educated at Cambridge, and became a fellow of King's College there, but afterwards removed to Oxford. He then studied law at Gray's Inn, and became first a common serjeant, and finally under-sheriff of London. Before his death, which happened in 1547, he had been appointed one of the judges of the sheriff's court.

Hall's Chronicle, first printed by Berthelette in 1542, is now extremely rare. It is entitled, "The Union of the two Noble and Illustrate Families of Lancaster and York," and was dedicated to Henry VIII. Grafton continued the work from the point at which Hall had broken it off, and brought it down to the end of the reign of Henry VIII., and published two editions of it during his life. Another appeared in London in 1809 among the English Chronicles. Though the work is mentioned approvingly by Peck, Hearne, and other antiquaries, its intrinsic value does not appear to be very great.

JOSEPH, the learned and pious Bishop of Norwich, was born in 1574 at Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire. He was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of which he afterwards became a fellow. Entering the church, he was, in 1617, appointed dean of Worcester; in the following year took part in the synod of Dort as one of the English deputies; nine years later was promoted to the see of Exeter; and in 1641 translated to that of Norwich. The latter years of Hall's life were spent in misery and gloom. His fervent piety and zeal seemed to identify him with the Puritan movement, though there was not then living a more ardent upholder of Episcopacy than he. He had given practical proof of that zeal and devotion, by his able defences of the liturgy and discipline of the Church; but he had held out against the Arminianism of Laud, and thus exposed himself to the malignant and wanton attacks of that primate and his crew. "I plainly told the Archbishop of Canterbury," he said, "that rather than I would be obnoxious to those slanderous tongues of his misinformers, I would cast up my rocket. I knew I went right ways and would not endure to live under undeserved suspicions." In the January of 1642, Hall having joined the prelates who protested against the validity of all laws made during their forced absence from parliament, was committed to the Tower. It was proposed to prosecute them all for high treason, and the impeachment was actually begun, but the prosecution was finally dropped, and Hall was set at liberty, though only after finding bail for £5000. On returning to Norwich he enjoyed comparative quiet for a short time; but in the following year his revenues were sequestrated, and even his personal property destroyed or pillaged. In 1647 he retired to Higham, near Norwich, where he rented a small farm, and passed his remaining years in the exercise of such charity and hospitality as his scanty means allowed. He died there in 1656, in the eighty-second year of his age.

Bishop Hall's works have been published in various forms, folio, quarto, and octavo. The last complete edition, that of Pratt, appeared in 1808 in 10 vols. 8vo. The great bulk of these writings is controversial, and therefore of a merely temporary interest. Some of them, however, and those probably to which the author himself attached least importance, well deserve consideration, if not perusal. Of these may be mentioned his Satires, written partly when he was a student at College, and afterwards republished under the title of Virgidemiarum Sive Bodeos, i.e., six books of bundles of rods. These satires are described by Warton as marked by a classical precision to which English poetry had yet rarely attained. "They are replete with animation of style and sentiment. The characters are delineated in strong and lively colouring, and their discriminations are touched with the masterly traces of genuine humour. The versification is equally energetic and elegant, and the fabric of the couplets approaches to the modern standard. His chief fault is obscurity, arising from a remote phraseology, constrained combinations, unfamiliar allusions, elliptical apostrophes, and abruptness of expression." Of Hall's prose works, the best are those on practical religion, such as his Contemplations, his Art of Divine Meditation, and his Enochismus or Treatise on the Mode of Walking with God. All these works exhibit originality of thought, exercised clearly and systematically on the highest truths, which are never thrown into the back ground, however, by the wonderfully fine images employed to illustrate them. His appeals are all plain, direct, and practical; and his knowledge of human nature was great, for he had studied it at a time when it took little pains to disguise its worst features. He loved to condense his shrewd observations into pithy apophthegms which alternate in strange though pleasant contrast, with trains of seer-like meditation and bursts of fervent prayer and thanksgiving. His friend Sir Henry Wotton thought to compliment him when he called him the "English Seneca," unconscious that he was asso- ciating the name of Hall with that of a man to whom he was in all respects immeasurably superior.

Robert, one of the most celebrated writers and preachers England has produced, was born at Arnside, near Leicester, May 2, 1764. His father was the minister of the Baptist congregation in that place, and the author of several religious publications, one of which obtained con- siderable popularity. His character has been sketched by his more celebrated son, from whose testimony, as well as that of less partial witnesses, he appears to have been a man of no little ability and worth. Nor was Robert Hall less happy in his other parent—his mother being a woman of excellent sense and eminent piety. He lost her when he was but twelve years of age (1776); his father lived to re- joice in his son's dawning fame. He died in 1791.

Robert was the youngest of fourteen children. His in- fancy, like that of Newton, Locke, and Pascal, in whom the flame of life flickered as if it would go out almost as soon as kindled, while in the two last it but flickered all their days—was extremely sickly, and for some years there was hardly any hope of rearing him. As if to remind us how little we can anticipate the course of life, a full pro- portion of the great minds that have astonished and adorned the world, have come into it as if under sentence of im- mediately quitting it, with the worst possible promise of the great things they were destined to achieve.

Robert Hall's childhood was (as we shall presently see) unusually precocious—far more so than even that of most of the sons of genius; nor was the promise of the bright dawn, so often delusive, clouded as the day went on. It is said that he learned to talk and to read almost at the same time; his letters were assuredly learned in a strange school and from strange books, that is, in a graveyard, and from tombstones. The grave-yard was adjacent to his father's house, and thither his nurse used to carry him for "air" and "exercise." Whether a cemetery be the best place for childhood to take its "airings" in, or epitaphs the best spelling-book, may be doubted; but it was at all events a singular introduction to literature.

Even at the dame's school, where he received his first formal instructions, he betrayed his passion for books, and was often found, when school was over, in the above favourite but solemn "study"—the churchyard—engaged in solitary reading, though no longer poring over the tombstones. He pursued the same extra-official course of reading at his next school, which was kept by a Mr Simmons, at a village four miles from Arnside. He used to procure, it appears, from his father's library, books for these play-hour readings, and, doubtless, got more from his self-prompted studies than from any of his regular lessons. But the character of this "select library for the young" may well surprise us, and, if the fact were not well authenticated, his choice of favourite authors would seem incredible. Jonathan Edwards' Treatise on the Freedom of the Will, and Butler's Analogy, were, it seems, among these amusing "solatia" of his leis- ure hours; and Dr Gregory assures us that it is "an as- certained fact," that when he was about nine or ten, he had read and re-read these works with "an intense interest." Before he was ten, another incident evinced the tendencies of his mind to literature; he had composed, it seems, many little essays, and often "invited his brother and sisters to hear him preach." Similarly, when he was once disposing in imagination (as children sometimes will) of his father's "goods and chattels" before the worthy man's death, he willingly agreed that his brother should have "the cows, sheep, and pigs," but "all the books" were to come to him.

His early promise of eloquence, conjoined with religious sensibility, seemed to point to the sacred office; and, in fact, his father indulged at a very early period some antici- pations that the pulpit was his destination. At eleven he was removed to a school at Kettering, where the same bril- liant talents were evinced, but not very wisely developed. His master, flattered by having such a prodigy, sometimes invited him to display his precocious powers of oratory before a "select audience"—a folly which the sound judgment of Robert Hall loudly and justly condemned in after life. From this school he was removed to another of greater note at Northampton, kept by the Rev. John Ryland, a man of eccentric, but, like many others of the same family, of unusually vigorous intellect. The energy of Mr Ryland's character, and his original and impressive modes of teaching, seem to have given him a remarkable ascendancy over the minds of his pupils,—and there can be no doubt that Robert Hall's intellect was greatly and healthfully stimulated under his judicious training. Here he remained about a year and a half; and then, having de- cidedly expressed his predilections for the ministry, and pursued some preparatory theological studies under his fa- ther's roof, he repaired to the Baptist Academy at Bristol. This was in 1778, when only in his fifteenth year.

During his stay at Bristol he seems to have made rapid progress in all the studies which constituted the academic curriculum. His attention to the principles and practice of composition was very marked, though, as Dr Gregory ob- serves, the few remains of his juvenile compositions exhibit "more of the tumultuary flourish of the orator than he would have approved after his twentieth year." This is a com- mon case; for a severe taste is, even in the highest genius, of slow growth, though in Robert Hall perhaps as rapid as it ever was in any man.

His debut as a public speaker gave but little promise of the brilliant career which awaited him. On being ap- pointed to deliver an address (as the students were accus- tomed to do in rotation) at the vestry of Broadhead Cha- pel, he, after a brief but fluent exordium which excited the expectations of his auditors, suddenly, but completely lost his self-possession, and covering his face in an agony of shame, exclaimed, "Oh! I have lost all my ideas." His tutor confident (as Sheridan said after his own ignominious first appearance), that it was in him, and determined, as was Sheridan, that it should come out of him, appointed him to deliver the same address the following week; not very judiciously, perhaps, considering the laws of association, and how apt is a sensitive mind, like a spirited horse, to shy and falter at the same spot. Sad to say, he again failed, and failed completely. Yet the incident was of value to him. While there was little fear lest a transient morti- fication like this should permanently depress a powerful mind, fully conscious of its powers,—indeed, such minds are generally stimulated rather than depressed by obstacles,— it had a salutary effect on his moral nature. In relation to the sacred office he seems at this time, as Dr Gregory observes, to have been too little sensible of its higher pur- poses, and too ambitious of achieving intellectual eminence; perhaps also too conscious of his powers to achieve it. Some feeling of this kind is indicated by his own words, uttered after his second failure,—"If this does not humble me, the devil must have me!" Many other young orators who have afterwards attained eminence, have encountered similar disaster in their first attempts. The singularity in Robert Half's case is that he had not been hardened to self-possession by his previous juvenile appearances before those "select audiences," which his injudicious schoolmaster had so early taught the young Roscius to confront.

In the autumn of 1781, after staying three years at the Academy, he went, as an exhibitioner under Dr Ward's will, to King's College, Aberdeen, where he remained till 1785. Several of the professors there were men of note, especially Gerard and Leslie, while Marischal College could boast of the profections of Campbell and Beattie. Hall pursued his studies in the departments of classics, philosophy, and mathematics, with like distinguished success; being the first man of his year in all the classes. But the great charm of his residence at Aberdeen was the society of Macintosh, who, though a year younger, had entered college a year earlier. The friendship which ensued, and which only death dissolved, was equally beneficial to both parties. With some points of dissimilarity there were more of resemblance. The instant regards of Mackintosh, according to his own statement to Dr Gregory, were strongly attracted by Hall's ingenuous frankness of countenance, the mingled vivacity and sincerity of his manner, and the obvious signs of great intellectual vigour. He says he first became attached to Hall "because he could not help it." But daily intercourse, in which they studied together without rivalry, and incessantly disputed without anger—a true test of genuine attachment—cemented their first casual predilections into a lasting friendship. "After having sharpened their weapons by reading, they often repaired to the spacious sands upon the sea shore, and still more frequently to the picturesque scenery on the banks of the Don, above the old town, to discuss with eagerness the various subjects to which their attention had been directed. There was scarcely an important position in Berkeley's Minute Philosopher, in Butler's Analogy, or in Edwards On the Will, over which they had not thus debated with the utmost intensity. Night after night, nay, month after month for two sessions, they met only to study or to dispute, yet no unkindly feeling ensued. The process seemed rather—like blows in that of welding iron—to knit them closer together."

Though they both, doubtless, often fought for victory, they yet always thought at the time that it was for truth; and as Sir James strikingly said, "Never, so far as he could then judge, did either make a voluntary sacrifice of truth, or stoop to draw to and fro the serra λογικῶν, as is too often the case with ordinary controversialists." From these discussions, and from subsequent meditation upon them," Sir James declared that he had "learned more as to principles than from all the books he ever read."

In addition to their discussions over Berkeley, Edwards, Butler, and other philosophers, they read large portions of the best Greek authors together—especially Plato. Such complete intercommunion of minds in the same studies—such mutual reflection of lights and constant collision of argument—must have been of incalculable benefit to both. By this sort of student-partnership, when, as in this case, minds are congenial, the results of reading may be more than doubled. During the last years of Hall's academic course, his friend was no longer at college, and his mind sought no "new mate." He spent the time in solitary study, and, as appears by his own confession, was much engaged in devotion and religious meditation. He took his degree of A.M. in 1785.

The six months' vacation of the two last sessions at Aberdeen had been spent in assisting Dr Evans at Broadmead Chapel, Bristol. He now formally entered on the office of assistant-preacher, and about the same time was appointed to the classical tutorship in the Bristol Academy. This office, assumed at the early age of twenty-one, he discharged with great credit to himself and benefit to his pupils for more than five years.

Of his preaching at this early period, an interesting account is given by Dr Gregory, to which we can only refer the reader. His favourite model for a short time was the original but eccentric Robinson of Cambridge, and, fascinated with his manner, he resolved, not very judiciously, to imitate it. One so original was little fitted to be an imitator of any body, and his good sense soon reclaimed him from his error. The account he gave to Dr Gregory of the mode in which he was cured of this folly is characteristic. "I was," he says, "too proud to remain an imitator. After my second trial, as I was walking home, I heard one of the congregation say to another, 'Really Mr Hall did remind us of Mr Robinson!' That, sir, was a knock-down blow to my vanity; and I at once resolved that if ever I did acquire reputation it should be my own reputation, belong to my own character, and not be that of a likeness. Besides, sir, if I had not been a foolish young man, I should have seen how ridiculous it was to imitate such a preacher as Mr Robinson. He had a musical voice, and was master of all its intonations. He had wonderful self-possession, and could say what he pleased, when he pleased, and how he pleased; while my voice and manner were naturally bad; and, far from having self-command, I never entered the pulpit without omitting to say something that I wished to say, and saying something that I wished unsaid: and, beside all this, I ought to have known that for me to speak slow was ruin."

"Why so?" "I wonder that you, a student of philosophy, should ask such a question. You know, sir, that force or momentum is conjunctly as the body and velocity; therefore, as my voice is feeble, what is wanted in body must be made up in velocity, or there will not be, cannot be, any impression."

It seems that he sometime afterwards met Robinson in London, and young as he was, opposed in a public company some of the heresies which Robinson had then embraced. This he did so successfully that the latter, provoked out of his temper and good breeding, spoke with disdain of "juvenile defenders of the faith." Hall was tempted to reply that "if he ever rode into the field of controversy he would at least not borrow Dr Abbadio's boots,"—sarcasm in which there was a double sting, insomuch as Robinson had at this time abandoned the very views which he had once "borrowed" Abbadio's arguments to defend.

An unhappy misunderstanding with his colleague in 1789, and which threatened the peace of the church at Broadmead, led to Hall's leaving Bristol. Before the close of his connection with that congregation, suspicions of heterodoxy on some points had been excited; and in reply to certain inquiries he gave a frank and explicit statement of his views. To one or two singularities of opinion, which he afterwards abandoned, he pleaded guilty. He avows he was at this time a "materialist," but declares that his sentiments did not affect his theology, and that he wished his materialism "to be considered a mere metaphysical speculation." It may be observed that in the same document, in which he fully avows his belief in the divinity of Christ, he makes no mention of his belief in the personality of the Holy Spirit—a doctrine of which at this time he was not convinced. His materialism he altogether abandoned in 1790; to the ordinary Trinitarian views he did not give his unqualified adhesion till some years later (1800).

From Bristol Mr Hall went (1790) to Cambridge, to the congregation over which Robinson formerly presided. After a twelvemonth's trial of the place, he was invited to the pastorate, and accepted it. As no small portion of the congregation had been in various degrees infected with the errors of their former minister, it has been well conjectured by Dr Gregory that the very immaturity of Hall's sentiments on certain points was an advantage rather than otherwise. They listened to him when they would not have listened to a man of more strongly marked orthodoxy. As Hall gradually approximated to the sentiments generally held by his co-religionists, he led his congregation with him; and at length, by the force of his preaching, the influence of his splendid reputation, and the still better influence of his persuasive life and character, overcame all opposition to his ministry, and thoroughly weeded out the errors that had infested his flock.

In 1793 he published his celebrated *Apology for the Freedom of the Press*. The account of its origin is amusing. It seems that, on this occasion he was "importuned into controversy," which, in spite of his unrivalled polemical powers, he ever avoided if possible. "And so, in an evil hour," says he, "I yielded. I went home to my lodgings and began to write immediately; sat up all night; and, wonderful for me, kept up the intellectual ferment for almost a month; and then the thing was done. I revised it a little as it went through the press, but I have ever since regretted that I wrote so hastily and superficially upon some subjects brought forward, which required touching with a master hand, and exploring to their very foundations." The estimate he formed of the production was, it must be confessed, sufficiently modest; for, as an exhibition of intellectual vigour, it is certainly equal to almost anything he ever produced. It may be conjectured, indeed, from the more cautious political tone in his later publications, and the far different terms in which, like his friend Sir James, he learned to speak of the French Revolution, that, had he written at a later period, he would have modified some of his statements, though he always declared his adhesion to the "essential principles" asserted. The reasons he assigns in the above extract, but, still more, his ingenuously expressed regret for the "asperities" in which he had occasionally indulged in this piece, would not permit him in his later years to consent to its republication, till the booksellers left him no alternative. An earlier tract, entitled *Christianity Consistent with the Love of Freedom*, was impudently pirated, on paper which bore the watermark of 1818, with a title-page which bore the year 1791! It was, as Dr Gregory says, "a very skilful imitation in paper, type, and date."

An anecdote here may be worth relating, as showing how completely at this time he had resiled from Socinianism, into which it had been once suspected he was fast lapsing. His spirited eulogium on Dr Priestley rekindled the hopes of some of that gentleman's partisans, and rendered on some occasions Mr Hall's "denial" of any of the imputed tendencies "imperative." "On one of these occasions," says Dr Gregory, "Mr Hall having in his usual terms panegyrized Dr Priestley, a gentleman who held the doctor's theological opinions, tapping Mr Hall upon the shoulder, said, 'Ah! sir, we shall have you among us soon I see.' Mr Hall, startled and offended by the rude tone of exultation in which this was uttered, hastily replied, 'Me amongst you, sir! Me amongst you!' Why, if that were the case, I should deserve to be tied to the tail of the great red dragon, and whipped round the nethermost regions to all eternity."

In 1801 appeared one of the most eloquent and original of all his productions—the sermon on *Modern Infidelity*. A curious account of its preparation for the press is given by Dr Gregory. Like most of Hall's sermons, it was delivered almost entirely unwritten, though the matter, of course, had been profoundly meditated. The torture to which composition exposed him from the mysterious dis-

ease in his back, quite indisposed the preacher to undertake the labour of preparing the sermon for the press. It was therefore procured in fragments from his dictation as he lay on the floor (a few paragraphs or pages at a time), and passed through the press, as his biographer assures us, without the author's having seen a line of it. Of its merits it is superfluous to speak; as a luminous defence of some of the first principles of all religion, and a philosophical exposition of the anti-social tendencies of infidelity, it has never been surpassed. It raised Hall's reputation to the highest pitch; excited the admiration of men of all ranks and opinions; conciliated the esteem of those who had been offended with the *Apology*; crowded his chapel with throngs of university students; and, perhaps a still better proof of its success, exposed him to the rabid attacks of atheism and its champions.

Two other discourses of surpassing excellence appeared in the course of the great struggle with France. One was entitled *Reflections on War*, preached on occasion of the "general thanksgiving," at the transient peace of Amiens (1802). This, as Dr Gregory surmises, was the only sermon Hall ever delivered *memoriter*, and the embarrassment he felt in some passages was sufficient to prevent him from ever repeating the attempt. The other was delivered on the renewal of the war (1803), and was entitled *Sentiments proper to the present crisis*. In spite of one or two rhetorical flights, scarcely admissible in a Christian pulpit, it is deservedly considered one of the most extraordinary effusions of his eloquence.

During the latter years of his residence at Cambridge this powerful and brilliant mind was more than once transiently eclipsed. These accesses of mental disease were doubtless attributable to many causes; partly to solitude, partly to excessive study, partly to the severe and harassing suffering in his back and the sleepless nights which it occasioned, partly to a severe disappointment, but principally, no doubt, to that which exacerbated all other causes of mischief—the extremely strong and sensitive mind which is too often, as Dryden long ago observed,

"And thin partitions do their bounds divide."

Just before his first attack (Nov. 1804) his severe sufferings from his old complaint induced his medical advisers to recommend his living a few miles from Cambridge, and using horse exercise. Equestrian exercise would seem a questionable remedy, considering the local symptoms of his mysterious disease, though country air might doubtless be beneficial. But whatever advantage this might secure was more than counterbalanced, it is to be feared, by the solitude to which his secluded residence doomed him, and which probably much contributed to his mental attack. The retreat chosen for him was at Shelford, four miles from Cambridge. There he was engaged in solitary study and meditation during the whole day, and often deep into the night. The first melancholy attack took place in Nov. 1804.

To the delight of his congregation, who had proved, by their provident care of him, their attachment to his ministry, he was able to resume his public functions in April 1805. As it was feared that the associations of Shelford might prove prejudicial, he was recommended to change his residence, and, most injudiciously as it seems to us, he was again advised to reside in a remote village. He took a house at Foumire, nine miles from Cambridge. Solitude once more proved his bane, and another attack soon supervened. After a year spent under judicious medical care at Bristol, he recovered sufficiently to engage in occasional village preaching, and to apply moderately to study. But it was thought prudent that he should quit Cambridge altogether, and he accordingly sent in his resignation.

---

1 Gregory's Memoir, p. 33. 2 Ibid., p. 35. Mr Hall spent about fifteen years at Cambridge. Of his residence there—his studies, his modes of preparation for the pulpit, his social habits—an interesting account will be found in Dr Gregory's Memoir, to which only a reference can here be made. His biographer naturally dwells with partial minuteness on this period of Hall's history, as that in which he became intimate with him, and enjoyed unrestricted daily intercourse. It was that period also in which Mr Hall achieved his great public reputation, and produced his most brilliant, if not his most useful, publications.

Leicester was the next scene of Hall's labours, whither he removed in the year 1806, and where he resided nearly twenty years, longer by some years than at any other place. In the limits of this brief article there is no space for details, nor is it necessary. He lived as retired as his reputation would allow him to be. If tame came, it came unsought; if the world intruded upon him, as it often did, and often inconveniently, he gave it a courteous welcome, but was still better pleased when it left him to his studies and his flock. But much as he loved privacy, privacy for him was no longer solitude; in 1808, after a somewhat singular courtship, he married, and, as it turned out, most happily. This event largely contributed to his welfare; and it is observable that no symptoms of mental disease afterwards appeared. In relation to what he himself would consider the great purpose of his life,—the successful prosecution of his ministry,—the years spent at Leicester were the best of his life. However obscure might seem his lot, it was yet most happy; for he was eminently useful, and universally beloved. His chapel was twice enlarged to accommodate the increasing crowds who thronged to hear him. Occupying a central spot in the kingdom, he was frequently importuned to preach, on public occasions, in all directions of the compass; and, so far as his incessant and painful maladies permitted, he complied with such requests ungrudgingly. From time to time, and quite as frequently as the same physical infirmities allowed, he also gave the public the benefit of his pen. Besides several reviews, tracts, and other pieces, he published, during his residence at Leicester, some of his most celebrated sermons; two of them—on the Discouragements and Supports of the Christian Minister, and on the lamented Death of the Princess Charlotte—are among the most striking efforts of his eloquence. He here also published the largest, and in some respects most valuable of his writings—those on the Terms of Communion. These treatises are equally distinguished by acuteness of logic and catholicity of sentiment. It has been sometimes lamented that he should not have given his consummate logical powers a more ample theme. But, in fact, his genius has made the theme ampler than it seems. Not only have these pieces exerted a wide influence in liberalizing the opinions and practice of his own denomination, but they abound in reasonings and sentiments of practical application to every church in Christendom, and cannot be read by any thoughtful Christian without making him feel something of that noble expansion of soul which animated their author; without making him sigh for the day when "every middle wall of partition," which jealous bigotry has interposed to the inter-communion of those who reciprocally acknowledge each other to be Christians, may be "broken down."

On Dr Ryland's death (1825), Mr Hall was invited to Bristol, and, after a severe struggle, consented. It is scarcely a figure to say that he tore himself away from his congregation at Leicester. On the last occasion of celebrating the Lord's Supper, he sat down, overcome with his emotions, and, covering his face with his hands, "wept aloud." To see the "strong man thus bowed," dissolved the people also in tears;—and so they parted; his flock, as the Ephesian elders from Paul, "sorrowing most of all for the words that he spake, that they should see his face no more."

Mr Hall was in his sixty-second year when he removed to Bristol, and it was his last change; thus terminating his labours where he began them. He was fast approaching the close of his career. The mysterious and intractable malady which had so long tormented him, which had rendered his days and nights so "wearisome," became more urgent, and doses of opium almost fabulous produced little effect. The indirect effects of his complaint,—forbidding exercise, inducing plethora, and impeding the circulation,—produced that diseased condition of the heart which was the immediate cause of his death. The close of his life was a scene of frightful tortures, the sum of which, added to the almost constant pain in which his life was passed, must have been tantamount to many martyrdoms. The pages in Dr Gregory's Life which depict his last sufferings, and the triumph of patience over them, form some of the most sorrowful, and yet also some of the brightest, in the records of Christian biography. Deep were the clouds which gathered round his sunset, but they were all penetrated and transfigured by the glory of the descending luminary; and even he who doubts whether Christianity be true, can surely hardly read the closing scenes of this great and good man's life without feeling, that since humanity is thus subject to suffering, it is much to have such consolations. His death took place, February 21, 1831. After detailing the appearances presented by the post-mortem examination, the eminent physician, Dr Prichard, adds,—"Probably no man ever went through more physical suffering than Mr Hall;" he was a fine example of the triumph of the higher powers of mind, exalted by religion, over the infirmities of the body. His loss will long be felt in this place, not only by persons of his own communion, but by all that have any esteem for what is truly great and good."

The mind of Robert Hall was of that select order which are equally distinguished by power and symmetry; where each single faculty is of imposing dimensions, yet none out of proportion to the rest. His intellect was eminently acute and comprehensive; his imagination prompt, vivid, and affluent. This latter faculty, indeed, was not so exuberant (as Foster justly remarks) as that of a Burke or a Jeremy Taylor; nor could it have been so, without marring the harmony just mentioned. His reasoning was close as that of almost any controversialist of any age, but expressed in all the charms of a most chaste and polished style;—severe logic clothed in the most tasteful rhetoric. His talents for the successful prosecution of abstract science—especially metaphysical and ethical—were of a very high order; but they were conjoined with strong practical sense, keen powers of observation, and a vivid sensibility. His memory was tenacious, and his aptitudes for the acquisition of knowledge, generally, far beyond the ordinary measure; but in him, as in all very vigorous minds, diversified Knowledge was but the material and aliment of original thought, and was subordinated to that Wisdom which insists that it shall be the handmaid, not the mistress of intellect. His sense of the beautiful and the ludicrous seemed nearly equally vivid; and graceful imagery and pointed wit animated alike his writings and his conversation. His style is the very impress of all this amplitude and variety of endowments. It is masculine and compact, for a robust logic and strong sense form the basis of it; energetic and vivacious, for it is animated by imagination and sensibility; polished and elegant,

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1 No wonder; for, to say nothing of the agonies of the closing scene, it was found that the right kidney was entirely filled with a large rough-pointed calculus; and this Dr Prichard justly concludes to have been the cause of the dreadful torture that had harassed Mr Hall through life.

2 Gregory's Memoir, p. 134. for taste, exquisite, sometimes even to a morbid fastidiousness, presided over it.

On the whole, minds of greater power in several given directions, or of more absolute originality in some one, may be readily pointed out; some too more strongly characterized either by rugged strength or imaginative exuberance; but seldom indeed has a mind appeared so variously dowered with all the choicest gifts of strength and grace in happy unison.

It has been well said of his style by a critic in the Quarterly Review, that it is "constructed after no model; it is more massive than Addison's, more easy and unconstrained than Johnson's, more sober than Burke's." This is, in fact, one of its surpassing excellencies; it is eminently beautiful, but for that reason has no predominant features; it is the just image of the happy conjunction and equilibrium of the author's powers—music in which no excess in any of the parts mars the harmony.

If his more elaborate productions have a fault at all, it is the result of that very sensitiveness of taste to which reference has been made. In polishing to an extreme of fastidious elegance, he has perhaps here and there pared away a little of the energy of his style. For this reason it has even been conjectured that some of his strictly extemporaneous effusions—extemporaneous as to the language—to which he gave utterance in the all but preternatural dilation of mind, which sometimes characterized his eloquence in its prime, transcended in force and beauty his most deliberate compositions, produced as these always were amidst bodily sufferings little favourable to the free action of his faculties. In truth, his extemporaneous command of all the resources of language (equally seen in the pulpit and in conversation) was one of his most extraordinary endowments, and perhaps, to the degree in which he possessed it, almost unique. Some may have been as copious in their diction, others as precise; but he conjoined both excellencies in equal measure, and added to them, what is more rare, an astonishing command of construction; so that he could throw the rapid and voluble words, which seemed to come at will, into the most apt and elegant collocations.

This singular gift of extemporaneous speech put the copestone on all his other excellencies as an orator. The general structure of his mind, his robust reasoning faculties, his vigorous though ever ministering imagination, his keen sensibility, and his vehement passions, pointed in the same direction, and fitted him to be a great public speaker. Such he would have become under any circumstances; but it was his rare gift of extemporaneous language which enabled him to combine the immense advantages of unwritten composition with a freedom from all its usual defects; to clothe, not extemporaneous thoughts indeed,—on which no man should reckon, though after careful preparation such thoughts may come unbidden,—but carefully meditated matter, in all the graces of the most eloquent language. His usual mode of preparation for the pulpit is thus described by Dr Gregory:

"The grand divisions of thought—the heads of a sermon for example—he would trace out with the most prominent lines of demarcation; and these, for some years, supplied all the hints that he needed in the pulpit, except on extraordinary occasions. To these grand divisions he referred, and upon them suspended all the subordinate trains of thought. The latter, again, appear to have been of two classes, altogether distinct; outline trains of thought, and trains into which much of the detail was interwoven. In the outline train the whole plan was carried out and completed as to the argument; in that of detail the illustrations, images, and subordinate proofs were selected and classified; and in those instances where the force of an argument or the probable success of a general application would mainly depend upon the language, even that was selected and appropriated, sometimes to the precise collocation of the words. Of some sermons, no portions whatever were wrought out thus minutely; the language employed in preaching being that which spontaneously occurred at the time: of others, this minute attention was paid to the verbal structure of nearly half; of a few, the entire train of preparation, almost from the beginning to the end, extended to the very sentences. Yet the marked peculiarity consisted in this, that the process, even when thus directed to minutiae in his more elaborate efforts, did not require the use of the pen, at least at the time to which these remarks principally apply."

So perfect was the form in which he could give expression to a train of thought, that (as already intimated) it may even be surmised that his spoken style often surpassed, in all the essential excellencies of eloquence, that of the most admired and elaborate of his published discourses; the former having all the advantages of a more idiomatic diction and more colloquial construction, yet without the sacrifice of the precision and elegance which distinguish the latter. His frequent paroxysms of pain must at all events have tended continually to distract his mind, and diminish the glow of feeling when in the act of composition; and hence the extreme reluctance with which he undertook the task. On the other hand, under the excitement of public speaking, the consciousness of painful sensations was less vivid, and sometimes vanished, as appears from one of his own curious but most sad confessions. He tells us that he did not know that he was ever perfectly free from the consciousness of distressing sensations in his back except now and then for a few minutes in the pulpit.

The same felicities of extemporaneous speech which marked his pulpit efforts were observable in private. His conversation possessed a vivacity, affluence, and elegance very rarely equalled. His repartees were particularly happy, and, as has been well remarked, strongly remind one of the manner of Johnson. Some of the pungent sayings, full of mingled wit and wisdom, which Dr Gregory has recorded, make one regret that some Boswell was not always at hand to preserve those brilliant but evanescent effusions of his genius.

Many have lamented that he did so little (compared with some other men) by his pen. In truth, however, considering his constant sufferings and the dreadful toil which composition imposed upon him, his six octaves entitle him to be considered even a voluminous writer.

Though, like most other men of powerful minds, he was fond of thinking than reading, his acquisitions were various, and, in several branches of study, profound. It may be added that his ardour in the pursuit of knowledge followed him to the last, of which Dr Gregory gives us a singular example. He says that he found him one morning, in the closing years of his life, lying on the floor with an Italian grammar and dictionary, deep in the study of that language. To this he had been stimulated by an article in the Edinburgh Review, in which an elaborate parallel had been instituted between the genius of Dante and that of Milton. With this critique he had been, he said, much delighted, and wished to judge for himself of the accuracy of the views propounded. Among the many triumphs achieved by Mr Macaulay's genius, it may be doubted whether any was ever more signal than that nearly his first "Essay" induced a mind like that of Robert Hall to study a new language at the age of threescore, just to verify the justice of the criticisms.

It has been justly remarked by Mr Foster, in his admirable critique on Robert Hall as a "preacher" (well worthy of universal perusal), that his eloquence in later years lost somewhat of the fire which characterized the oratory of

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1 Gregory's Memoir, pp. 57, 58. his youth and manhood. But what was lost in this respect was gained in tenderness and pathos, in elevation of Christian sentiment and depth of Christian feeling.

It is the crowning glory of Robert Hall that all his great powers were consecrated to the noblest purposes; subordinated to objects better worth living for than intellectual power or intellectual fame. His sacred ambition was for the formation, in himself and others, of the Christian character. To moral self-culture he sought, as all ought to do, but so few really do, to consecrate every endowment of his intellect. Of the possession of high powers he could not but be conscious; and of the temptations they involved he was also profoundly sensible. His life shows us that he had learned how to make them keep their place. Naturally impetuous, impatient, choleric, he sedulously watched over these infirmities in temper, and became remarkable for humility and simplicity; full of ambition, he submitted to cast down "every proud imagination;" in his youth fiery and pugnacious, he learned in his later years to hate controversy, and exercised in an eminent degree that charity towards all good men of all parties, which made him say in one of his sermons, "He who is good enough for Christ is good enough for me." In his manners he was as unsophisticated as a child, and in his conduct full of generosity and benevolence. His patience and fortitude were eminently displayed in the uncomplaining endurance of those frightful sufferings which made his life a perpetual martyrdom; while his faith and humility were evinced no less in his admission that none of those pangs could have been spared. It has been well said by a writer in the Quarterly Review, "It is impossible to read the works of this extraordinary man without perceiving that his passions in his youth were turbulent in the extreme—that the energies of his mind were then scarcely under his own control—that years of reflection and dear-bought experience were wanting to him, above all men, in order to tame his spirit—that, like Milton's lion, he was a long time before he could struggle out of earth. 'I presume,' says he, in one of his letters, 'the Lord sees I require more hammering and hewing than almost any other stone that was ever selected for his spiritual building, and that is the secret of his dealing with me.'"

In a word, he exhibited the traits of the genuine Christian—his character shining with a more lustrous light as he advanced in years, "growing brighter and brighter to the perfect day."

The character to which he chiefly aspired himself, he was equally anxious to aid in forming in his fellow men, and to this consecrated his genius as an object well worthy of it. Hence his contentment with a lot far more obscure than he could easily have attained in any department of secular life; and hence, with Paul, he accounted it his chief glory to be a "Christian Minister."