“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 partisanship 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 space 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 space 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 passages 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 class. He is no hero-worshipper, but he shows that he has a keen appreciation of the higher forms of pulpit eloquence.” The People.
LONDON: WILLIAM TWEEDIE, 337, STRAND.