221 Over-Refining.-It is idle to ignore in Mr. Gladstone's ~, style an over-refining in words, an excess of qualifying propositions, a disproportionate impressiveness in verbal shadings without real difference. Nothing irritated opponents more. They insisted on taking literary sin for moral ohli-, quity, and because men could not understand, they assumed that they wished to mislead. Yet if we remember how care-'l essness in words, how the slovenly combination under the same name of things

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... ly different, how the taking for granted as a matter of positive proof what is at the most only possible, or barely probable-when we think of all the mischief and folly that has been wrought in the world by loose habits of mind that are almost as much the master vice of the head, as selfishness is the master vice of the heart, men may forgive Mr. Gladstone for what passed as sophistry and subtlety, but was in truth scruple of conscience in that region where lack of scruple half spoils the world. Italian Preaching.-The fundamental distinction be-tween English and Italian preaching is, I think, this : The mind of the English preacher'or reader of sermons, however impressive, is fixed mainly upon his composition, that of the. Italian on his hearers. The Italian is a man applying himself by his rational and persuasive organs to men in order to move thcm ; the former is a man applying himself, with his best ability in many cases, to a fixcd form of matter in order to make it move those whom he addresses. Theaction in the one case is warm, living, direct, immediate, from heart to heart ; in the other; it is transfused through a medium comparatively torpid. The first is surely far superior to the second in truth;and reality. The preacher bears an awful message. Such 'messengers, if sent with: authority, are too much identified with and possessed by that which they carry to view it. objectively during its delivery ; it absorbs thcir very being and all its energies ; they are their message, and they see nothing extrinsic to themselves except those to whose hearts they desire to bring it.