“Talmage’s accent," (says the Bulletin) “ is, as he would himself describe it, something 4 currible,’ and his voice sug gests a corncrake in low circumstances." Here is the Bulletin’s account of his first lecture:—“His opening lecture dealt with ‘The Bright Side of Things,’ and his philosophy is that this is the best of all possible worlds, and the best of all possible epochs, and everything is right

generally. The sky is just blue enough, and the grass just green enough, and the waters just clear enough, and our legs just long enough to reach the floor, and therefore we ought to be content. He is full of the glad optimism which goes with a big salary, and a big bank account, and a good dinner. There was not, in all his lecture, one gleam of a suggestion that the world contained such things as cold, hunger, pain or misery. Hi 3 illus trations all dealt with banks, and bankers, and people in business and affluence generally—except when now and then he spoke unctuously in his hard voice about beautiful girls, and then the little fat preacher on the platform beside him threatened to go into convulsions. In his own hard, unsympathetic way, Talmage is humorous ; his jokes are very, very old, but he has the art of whirling his lank arms as he utters them till some how they sound almost new. AI3O, in his own hoarse and shriekful fashion, he is eloquent. Even in his humour, how ever, his yearning for hell fire can’t be altogether restrained. ‘ The Bright Side of Things ’ is illustrated by a garish, penny-dreadful account of the burning ot the Smithsonian Institute, in which Tal mage lets himself loose about the devouring element and the ‘ spirits of destruction and calamity and w-o 0 0-0-0- 0-0 o o o O OE,’ in a sudden yell and an abrupt stopprge which sugg sts that he has fallen down and broken both his knees. Then he winds up with an irre levant bang and roar about the end of the world —the blackness, the ashes, the combustion, the general bursting up of all things and the falling of everything in the bottomless black abyss of frost and forgottenness—and retires. 