It is somewhat startling to find men of cultivated taste, who are familiar with the highest class preaching of the English Church, expressing their sense of the superior effect of pulpit oratory of a very different kind.  No doubt Caird and Chalmers are the best of their class; and the overwhelming effect which they and a few other Scotch preachers have often produced, is in a great degree owing to the individual genius of the men, and not to the school of preaching they belong to.  Yet both are representatives of what may be called the Scotch school of preaching:  and with all their genius, they never could have carried away their audience as they have done, had they been trammelled by those canons of taste to which English preachers almost invariably conform.  Their manner is just the regular Scotch manner, vivified into tenfold effect by their own peculiar genius.  Preaching in Scotland is a totally different thing from what it is in England.  In the former country it is generally characterized by an amount of excitement in delivery and matter, which in England is only found among the most fanatical Dissenters, and is practically unknown in the pulpits of the national church.  No doubt English and Scotch preaching differ in substance to a certain ‘extent.’  Scotch sermons are generally longer, averaging from forty minutes to an hour in the delivery.  There is a more prominent and constant pressing of what is called evangelical doctrine.  The treatment of the subject is more formal.  There is an introduction; two or three heads of discourse, formally announced; and a practical conclusion; and generally the entire Calvinistic system is set forth in every sermon.  But the main difference lies in the manner in which the discourses of the two schools are delivered.  While English sermons are generally read with quiet dignity, in Scotland they are very commonly repeated from memory, and given with great vehemence and oratorical effect, and abundant gesticulation.  Nor is it to be supposed that when we say the difference is main ly in manner, we think it a small one.  There is only one account given by all who have heard the most striking Scotch preachers, as to the proportion which their manner bears in the effect produced.  Lockhart, late of The Quarterly, says of Chalmers, ’Never did the world possess any orator whose minutest peculiarities of gesture and voice have more power in increasing the effect of what he says; whose delivery, in other words, is the first, and the second, and the third excellence in his oratory, more truly than is that of Dr. Chalmers.’  The same words might be repeated of Caird, who has succeeded to Chalmers’s fame.  A hundred little circumstances of voice and manner—­even of appearance and dress—­combine to give his oratory its overwhelming power.  And where manner is everything, difference in manner is a total difference.  Nor does manner affect only the less educated and intelligent class of hearers.  It cannot be doubted that the unparalleled impression produced, even on such men as Wilberforce, Canning, Lockhart, Lord Jeffrey, and Prince Albert, was mainly the result of manner.  In point of substance and style, many English preachers are quite superior to the best of the Scotch.  In these respects, there are no preachers in Scotland who come near the mark of Melvill, Manning, Arnold, or Bishop Wilberforce.  Lockhart says of Chalmers,