Mr. George Dawson, the well-known Birmingham lecturer and preacher, died
suddenly, at the age of fifty-five, on Thursday morning, at his own house, in consequence, it is said, of the bursting of a blood-vessel. He was a student of Glasgow, where he took his degree, and his chief function in life was to popu- larise for the middle-classes of England, and especially for the middle-classes of Birmingham, some of the best ideas of contemporary thinkers. He was a kind of literary middleman between writers like Carlyle and Ruskin and those ordinary English manufacturers, or merchants, or tradesmen, who like thought, but like it well illustrated by a great many conspicuous and striking examples. In Birmingham his influence was always great, and almost always on the right side. There was a very high moral tone in his preaching, which he was not afraid to associate with a little banter, directed against popular weak- nesses or insincerities. Like the newspapers, he loved to deal with topics of the day, and to avoid mere abstractions. He was not an original man, but he was a very effective retailer of the thoughts of others, and this power, combined with a great deal of moral earnestness, made him a considerable power in Birmingham, where his influence will be greatly missed. It would be well if every great town in England had such another literary middleman, to keep it familiar with the best thinkers of the day.
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