The Night Side of London Part 8

"Written in a fluent and easy style."-_Weekly Times_.

"The personal sketches will engage attention; for the author has evidently been a close and attentive observer."-_News of the World_.

"Mr Ritchie's pen-and-ink sketches of the popular preachers of London are as life-like as they are brilliant and delightful. The thought of producing them was a happy one, and has been carried out in the volume before us with much agreeable animation. The collection of silhouettes herein presented to our contemplation will be especially acceptable, we conjecture, to our country cousins, as a guide among the more generally known of the metropolitan ecclesiastics. It will be perceived at a glance that the writer has familiarized himself with the subject, before undertaking its treatment. Chapter after chapter brings the popular preachers of the Capital before our mind's eye in a sort of stately clerical procession."-_The Sun_.

"Without going so far as the late Sir Robert Peel, and saying that there are three ways of viewing this as well as every other subject, it will be allowed that the clerical body may be contemplated either from within one of their special folds, and under the influence of peculiar religious views, or in a purely lay historical manner, and, so we suppose we ought to say, from the 'platform of humanity' at large. The latter is the idea developed in Mr Ritchie's volume, and cleverly and amusingly it is done.

One great merit is, that his characters are not unnecessarily spun out.

We have a few rapid dashes of the pencil, and then the mind is relieved by a change of scene and person . . . He displays considerable discrimination of judgment, and a good deal of humour."-_The Inquirer_.

"There is considerable verisimilitude in these sketches, though they are much too brief to be regarded as more than mere outlines. It is possible, however, to throw character even into an outline, and this is done with good effect in several of these smart and off-hand compositions."-_Tait_.

"It is lively, freshly written, at times powerful, and its facts carefully put together. It bears the stamp of an earnest spirit, eager in its search after truth, and strongly set against affectation and pretence of every sort."-_Globe_.

"Some of the sketches are very good."-_Literary Gazette_.

"They are penned in a just spirit, and are of a character to afford all the information that may be needed on the subjects to which they refer.

The author's criticisms on preachers and preaching are candid, and for the most part truthful. This book ought therefore to be popular."-_Observer_.

"They are written with vigour and freedom, and are marked by a spirit of fairness and justice-an admirable trait, if we recollect how much the spirit of partisans.h.i.+p governs such strictures as a rule."-_Weekly Dispatch_.

"A sketch of the comparative force of the religious denominations in London, and notes upon the chief popular preachers, orthodox or dissentient, republished from a newspaper-we think the Weekly News and Chronicle. The book, which is written in a sufficiently impartial spirit, will interest many people, and offend few."-_Examiner_.

"In this volume we have within a moderate s.p.a.ce pen-and-ink sketches of most of the popular preachers of the metropolis. We are bound to say that they are drawn with fidelity, and that the admirers of each Sabbath orator whose mental lineaments are placed before us will easily recognise the prominent features of the original. Although brief, they evince discrimination and talent; a fluent style being one of their chief recommendations, not much s.p.a.ce is devoted to each. The writer only reviews the most striking characteristics, and his sympathies are manifestly with those who display most liberal and manly tendencies in their religious expositions."-_Sunday Times_.

"What Mr Francis did some few years since for the parliamentary orators of the age, Mr Ritchie has in the volume before us effected for the pulpit orators of the day. In brief but graphic delineations, he gives daguerreotypes, as it were, of the living manners of the chief popular preachers of various Christian denominations."-_The Church and State Gazette_.

"This is a second edition of Mr Ritchie's smart little sketches taken from the life of the most noted metropolitan preachers. The outline is bold, rather than minute and diffuse; now and then character is seized with remarkable fidelity; whilst the genial spirit which generally pervades the volume takes from occasional pa.s.sages approaching censure anything like the sting of bitterness. There is scarcely a page that does not give the reader faith in the sincerity of the writer."-_Manchester Examiner and Times_.

"His sketches are characterized by a boldness, freedom, and vigour, which are rarely to be met with in works of that cla.s.s. He is no hero-wors.h.i.+pper, but he shows that he has a keen appreciation of the higher forms of pulpit eloquence." _The People_.

LONDON: WILLIAM TWEEDIE, 337, STRAND.

Footnotes:

{194} The Chelsea vestry complained of Cremorne, because it injured the property in the neighbourhood;-the defence was, that Mr Simpson had spent 30,000 or 40,000 upon it; that he had given 1200 to the Wellington fund, and 300-the profits of one night's entertainment-to the fund for the relief of the victims of the Indian mutiny.