Let me chronicle a few more names. Dr. Andrew Reed, whose occasional sermons at other places—I never heard him at Wycliffe Chapel—were most effective; Morris of Fetter Lane, who preached to a crowded audience with what seemed to me at the time a slight touch of German mysticism; Stratten, far away in Paddington, whom rich people loved to listen to, as he was supposed to be a man of means himself; and old Leifchild at Craven Chapel, filled to overflowing with a crowd who knew, however the dear old man might prose in the opening of his sermon, he would go off with a bang at the end. But I may not omit two Churchmen who, if they had not Melville’s power, had an equal popularity. One was the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel, who preached in a church, long since pulled down, in Bedford-row. He was tall, gentlemanly, silver-tongued, and perfectly orthodox. His people worshipped him, for was he not the son of a lord? His influence in London was immense, but he left the Church for conscientious reasons, and became a Baptist minister. That was a blow to his popularity which he never got over, though he lived to a grand old age. Another popular Evangelical preacher was Dale, who preached at St. Bride’s, Fleet Street. He was a poet and more or less of a literary man; but he had more worldly wisdom than Baptist Noel. Dale was a Professor of Literature at University College; but it was understood that University College, with its liberal institutions, with its Dissenters and Jews, was no place for a Churchman who wished to rise. Dale saw this, gave up his professorship in Gower Street, and reaped a rich reward.
London was badly off for _illuminati_ fifty years ago. The only pulpit effectually filled was that of South Place, Finsbury, where W. Johnson Fox, the celebrated orator and critic, lectured. He had been trained to be an orthodox divine at Homerton. One day he said to me, “The students always get very orthodox as they get to the end of their collegiate career, and are preparing to settle, as the phrase is.” Fox, it seems, was the exception that proves the rule. He was eloquent and attractive as preacher and lecturer. Dickens and Macready and Foster were, I believe, among his hearers. At any rate, he had a large following, and died an M.P. Lectures on all things sacred and profane were unknown in London fifty years ago. I once heard Robert Dale Owen somewhere at the back of Tottenham Court Road Chapel, but he was a weariness of the flesh, and I never went near him again. The provinces occasionally sent us popular orators; one was Raffles, of Liverpool, a man who looked as if the world had used him well. I well remember how he dealt in such alliteration as “the dewdrop glittering in the glen.” Then there was Parsons of York, with his amazing rhetoric, all whispered with a thrill that went to every heart, as he preached in Surrey Chapel, where also I heard Jay of Bath, who, however, left on me no impression other than he was a wonderful old man for his years. Sherman, the regular preacher there, was a great favourite with the ladies—almost as much as Dr. Cumming, a dark, scholarly-looking man, who held forth in a court just opposite Drury Lane Theatre, and whose prophetic utterances obtained for him a popularity he would otherwise have sought in vain. It makes one feel old to write of these good men who have long since passed away, not, however, unregretted, or without failing to leave behind them