MACKINTOSH, the Right Honourable Sir James, one of the most distinguished men of his time, and who attained to great eminence in literature, philosophy, history, and politics, was born at Aldourie, on the banks of Loch Ness, Scotland, on the 24th of October 1765. His father, Captain John Mackintosh, was the representative of a family which had for above two centuries possessed a small estate called Kellachie, in Inverness-shire. He had served long in the army, which he entered very young, and had been severely wounded at the battle of Feling-hausen, in the Seven Years’ War. His mother was Marjory Macgillivray, daughter of Mr Alexander Macgillivray by Anne Fraser, sister of Brigadier-General Fraser, who was killed in General Burgoyne’s army in 1777. His father joined his regiment at Antigua sôon after his birth, and remained in that island and in Dublin for eight or nine years. He was reared with great care and tenderness by his mother, notwithstanding the anxiety and discomfort incident to the condition of one who had no available resources of her own. His father, a subaltern and younger brother, found his pay not too much for his own expenses; and all the kindness of his mother’s family could not relieve the mind of that lady from the painful, not to say humiliating, sense of dependence. This probably contributed to the extreme affection which she cherished for her child. He depended upon her alone; and as there is nothing which so much lightens the burden of receiving benefits as the pleasure of conferring them, she loved him “with that fondness which we are naturally disposed to cherish for the companion of our poverty.”

In the summer of 1775, young Mackintosh was sefit to school at the town of Fortrose, where he was placed under a master of the name of Smith. In a short memoir of this early period of his life, he says, “I have little recollection of the first two years at school but he had scarcely learned to read when he evinced that predilection for abstract speculation which afterwards formed so prominent a feature of his intellectual character. A gentleman of the name of Mackenzie having· lent him Burnet’s Commentary on the Thirty-nine Articles, he perused it with great avidity; “and I have now,” says he, writing many years afterwards, “a distinct recollection of the great impression which it made.” But the part which struck him most forcibly, and which he read with peculiar eagerness and pleasure, was the commentary on the seventeenth article, which relates to predestination; a strange subject to engage the attention and interest the understanding of a mere boy. “I remember,” says he, “Mr Mackenzie pointing out to me, that though the bishop abstained from giving his own opinion on that subject in the commentary, he had intimated that opinion not obscurely in the preface, when he says that ‘ he was of the opinion of the Greek church, from which St Austin departed.’” He was of course profoundly ignorant of what the Greek church was, and knew nothing of St Austin’s deviations; but the mysterious magnificence of this phrase had an extraordinary effect upon his imagination. His mind appears to have revolted at the doctrine of eternal decrees of election and reprobation; though surrounded by orthodox Calvinists, he became a warm advocate for free will; and before he had completed his fourteenth year, he was probably the boldest heretic in the county. About the same time he read the old translation of Plutarch’s Lives, and Echard’s Roman History, which led him into “a ridiculous habit,” which afterwards clung to him, of building castles in the air. During his vacations, which he spent at his grandmother’s house, he read such books as fell in his way, and amongst these the works of Pope and Swift. His first poetical attempt was a pastoral or elegy on the death of his uncle Brigadier-General Fraser, who fell on the 7th of October 1777; butin 1779 and 1780 his muse was exceedingly prolific, and he even commenced an epic poem on the defence of Cyprus by Evagoras, king of Salamis, against the Persian army.

In October 1780 he went to college at Aberdeen, where he remained during that and the three .following sessions. On entering King’s College, he was admitted into the Greek class, then taught by Mr Leslie, who, however, did not attempt to do more than teach the first rudiments of the language. The second winter, according to the scheme of education then pursued, he fell under the tuition of Mr Dunbar,^[1. Author of Essays on the History of Mankind. ] and remained under the care of this gentleman until he left college. At Aberdeen he was by common [7:13:654]consent recognised as inter studiosos facile princeps ; whilst his courteous demeanour, refined manners, playful fancy, and easy flow of elocution, rendered him a general favourite amongst his companions. His chief associate at King’s College was the late Reverend Robert Hall, whom the exclusive system of the English universities had forced to seek, in this northern seminary, for Aat academical education which was denied to him, as a dissenter, in his own country. Like Castor and Pollux, these young men were assimilated in the minds of all who knew them, by reason of the equal splendour of their talents, although in other respects they were extremely unlike. They were of the same intellectual stature, but differently moulded; the one being remarkable for gracefulness of manners and symmetry of powers, with much elegance and refinement; the other plainer, and withal less polished, but distinguished for perfect sincerity, ardent piety, and undeviating love of truth. The society and conversation of Hall had great influence on Mackintosh’s mind. Their controversies were almost unceasing. Even at this early period, Hall “displayed the same acuteness and brilliancy, the same extraordinary vigour both of understanding and imagination, which have since distinguished him, and which would have secured to him much more of the admiration of the learned and the elegant, if he had not consecrated his genius to the far nobler office of instructing and reforming the poor.”

, In the spring of 1784, having previously taken his degree of master of arts, he finally quitted King’s College, “with,” he says, “but little regular and exact knowledge, but with considerable activity of mind, and boundless literary ambition and in the October following he set out for Edinburgh to commence the study of physic, which he had made choice of as a profession. His arrival in that city opened a new world to his mind. Edinburgh was then the residence of many eminent men; of Adam Smith, Dr Black, John Home, Henry Mackenzie, Dr Cullen, Principal Robertson, Dr Ferguson, Dr Hutton, Professor Robison, Mr Dugald Stewart, and others; and although his age did not allow him to be much acquainted with these celebrated persons, yet accident furnished him with opportunities of access to some of them, whilst the concentration of so much genius and talent produced a powerful impression on his ardent and susceptible nature. His speculative turn of mind, however, soon betrayed itself. Within a few weeks after his arrival in Edinburgh, he became a zealous partisan of Brown, who had just become a teacher of medicine, and the founder of a new medical system; and having been elected a member of the Medical Society, he, in a few months, “before he could have distinguished bark from James’s powder, or a pleurisy from a dropsy in the chamber of a sick patient,” discussed with the utmost fluency and confidence the most difficult questions in the science of medicine. But he had soon an opportunity of displaying his peculiar talents on a theatre better fitted for the exercise of his powers. He was admitted a member of the Speculative Society, which had been established about twenty years before, and, during that period, numbered amongst its members all the distinguished youth in Scotland, besides many foreigners attracted to Edinburgh by the fame of its medical school. In this society, which had general literature and science for its objects, he found some congenial spirits, of whom he has left very graphic sketches, particularly Malcolm Laing the historian, John Wilde, afterwards professor of the civil law in the university of Edinburgh, Benjamin Constant, Adam Gillies, now Lord Gillies, and several other young men, who afterwards rose to eminence or attained distinction in different pursuits. In this exciting atmosphere, speculation rather than study engrossed his attention. Youth, the season of humble diligence and laborious application, was wasted, as he himself complains, in vast, vain, and fruitless projects. Speculators indeed are seldom submissive learners. Those who will make proficieney in useful knowledge, must for a time trust to their teachers, and believe in their superiority; but those who too early think for themselves must sometimes imagine themselves wiser than their masters; and hence docility is often extinguished when the work of education is scarcely commenced. After three years spent in irregular application, he became a candidate for a degree; and having obtained his diploma, he quitted Edinburgh in the month of September 1787, with a large stock of miscellaneous information, acquired by habitual though desultory reading, but without having concentrated his powers upon any one pursuit, or given to professional subjects that systematic and methodical attention which is indispensable to the attainment of professional eminence.

Early in 1788, he set out for London, accompanied by one of his college friends, and arrived on that great theatre of action at a moment sufficiently distracting for one of more advanced age and more settled pursuits. An ardent enthusiast for political amelioration, he came in contact with society when it was already heaving with the first throes of that great convulsion which was soon to overturn all the institutions of a neighbouring country, and to shake those of every other to their lowest foundations. To a young man like Mr Mackintosh, a period of such excitement had irresistible allurements. He had cultivated habits of public speaking, both at Aberdeen and at Edinburgh; he was fond of moral and political controversy, rather perhaps as an exercise of the reasoning powers than with any view to the formation of settled opinions; he found, on the subject of politics, the boldest speculations in which his mind had been engaged, about to receive a practical application; and he longed to mingle in the discussions, if not to take part in the scenes, which distinguished that memorable time. Still his views were, in the first instance at least, directed to the medical profession; and he was led from circumstances to contemplate a medical appointment in Russia. But this project, in which he was supported by Mr Dugald Stewart, did not take effect; and it is probable that he felt but little regret at the failure of a scheme which would have removed him from such a scene of interest and enjoyment as London then presented. In the same year, his father’s death freed him from the little control which a soldier of careless and social habits had attempted to exercise over a studious youth; and, as the succession to i his paternal estate of Kellachie brought with it but little advantage to his means, his habitual profusion in money matters soon involved him in pecuniary difficulties. His next step was one which seemed but little calculated to diminish them. On the 18th of February 1789, he was privately married to Miss Catharine Stuart, a young lady of a respectable Scotch family; and at the age of twenty-four he found himself with no prospect of any immediate professional settlement, his little fortune rapidly diminishing, and a wife to provide for.

The struggle regarding the regency that followed the announcement of the malady with which the king had been attacked in the autumn of 1788, was the occasion of a pamphlet by Mr Mackintosh, in support of the analogy which Mr Fox endeavoured to establish between the actual state of his majesty and a natural demise of the crown. This seems to have been his first public appearance in the field of politics, for which his mind had now taken a decided turn. About the same time he made the acquaintance of Horne Tooke, whose cause he warmly espoused at the election for Westminster, and in whose rich and lively but sarcastic conversation, he always took great delight. Another effort to establish himself in practice as [7:13:655]a physician proved unavailing, probably from his distaste for his profession, and his unwillingness to leave London, which he considered as the grand theatre for talent and ambition. In the autumn of 1789, he made a tour, in company with his wife, through the Low Countries to Brussels; and, upon his return to London, contributed a number of articles on Belgium and France to the Oracle newspaper, with which he appears to have been for some time connected. To the same date must be referred his resolution to devote himself to the study of the law. Hitherto the exercise of his powers had been almost exclusively confined to the columns of a newspaper; but although the most successful efforts of ability are often passed unheeded, or make but a feeble and transitory impression where such are neither looked for nor expected, yet this preliminary training was not without its advantage, and the time now approached when he was to appear before the world in a higher and more independent character.

The extraordinary impression produced by the publica tion of Mr Burke’s Refiections on the French Revolution, the admiration excited by the work in some quarters, and the vehement indignation with which it was greeted in others, are matters of universal notoriety. By some it was regarded as the most marvellous union of wisdom and genius that had ever appeared in the world, whilst to others it seemed inconsistent with the former life and opinions of the author, notwithstanding that an abhorrence for abstract politics, a predilection for aristocracy, and a dread of innovation, had always been articles of his political creed. The former magnified the sense of public duty which prompted, first the sacrifice of the long-cherished friendship of Mr Fox, ’ and then the publication of what they considered as the earnest admonitions of matured wisdom. The latter, mistaking the real principles of the author, imputed to him an inconsistency with which he was not really chargeable; and, whilst they endeavoured to refute his reasonings and deride his prognostications, branded him as a deserter of the principles he had once professed. The number of antagonists who hurried to break a lance against the champion of existing institutions proved the estimation in which he was held; a multitude of pamphlets appeared, and each shade of opinion was warmly defended against the common enemy of all change. The great majority of these productions, however, soon fell into oblivion. But Paine’s Rights of Man was not destined to perish so speedily. His strong sense, bold dogmatism, and coarse but vigorous sarcasm, conveyed in a style instinctively popular, made him a dangerous enemy at all times, but more especially at a period when the new principles of liberty had found favour with the people, and when the great masses of the middle and lower orders were to be appealed to in defence of them. But whilst Mr Burke was sustaining the attack of the man who had been his fellow-combatant in the American contest for freedom, “a bolt was shot from amongst the undistinguished crowd, but with a force which showed the vigour of no common arm.” The Vindiciae Gallicae was published in April 1791. It had been finished in a great hurry, but, with all its imperfections and defects, it at once placed the author in the first rank of the party in this country who were upholding the cause of France. He was courted and caressed on all hands, his company was eagerly sought for, and, as he himself expressed it, he was for a few months the lion of the place. In the mean time, the sale of the book exceeded his most sanguine expectations; three editions followed one another with great rapidity; it was quoted in the debates in parliament, eulogised by Mr Fox, and even commended by Mr Burke, for whose genius Mr Mackintosh entertained a chivalrous admiration. In a word, the execution of the work answered every expectation which had been formed of the author; and though he saw occasion afterwards to modify some, if not many, of the opinions expressed in it, yet it is impossible not to acknowledge that it deserved the favour and applause with which it was received by the friends of popular liberty.

In Michaelmas term 1795, Mr Mackintosh was called to the bar, and attached himself to the home circuit. Having thus entered upon a path which, when pursued by the patient steps of genius and industry, so often leads to wealth and distinction, he evidently enjoyed the satisfaction which arises from having in view a constant and honourable occupation. But a severe affliction awaited him in the death of his wife, which took place early in 1797; whilst slowly recovering from the birth of a child, Mrs Mackintosh was attacked by a fever, to which she soon fell a victim, leaving three daughters. In 1799 Mr Mackintosh formed the plan of giving lectures upon the law of nature and of nations. The benchers of Lincoln’s Inn granted him the use of their hall, and he commenced his course by an exposition of the general aim and scope of the undertaking, as well as of the views and feelings which had led him to embark in it. In the introductory lecture, after an eloquent vindication of the term “law of nature,” and a review of the works of the different masters of the science, exhibiting its progress (in which the character of Grotius is delineated in a manner worthy of his great learning and genius), the subject is marked out into six great divisions, viz. first, an analysis of the nature and operations of the human mind; secondly, the relative duties of private life; thirdly, the relations of subject and sovereign, citizen and magistrate, the foundation of political liberty and political rights; fourthly, the municipal law, civil and criminal, exemplified by the progress of the codes of Rome and of England; fifthly, the law of nations strictly so called, or the science which regulates the application of the sanctions of private morality to the great commonwealth of nations; and, lastly, a survey of the diplomatic and conventional law of Europe. This discourse, which the lecturer was induced to publish, had no sooner issued from the press than commendations poured in upon him from every quarter. Mr Pitt, Lord Loughborough, Dr Parr, and others, united their suffrages in its praise; and it must be confessed, that if Mackintosh had published nothing else than this discourse, he would have left a striking monument of his intellectual strength and symmetry. His political opinions, indeed, had undergone a considerable change, and as the tone of these lectures differed materially from that of the Vindiciae Gallicae, and of the Letter to Mr Pitt, this circumstance, together with the support ostentatiously given to them by the ministers of the day and their connections, served to alienate from him several of his old political friends, and to beget suspicions for which there existed no solid foundation. At the same time, it may be conjectured that the friendship and correspondence of Mr Burke, and the warm commendations of Mr Pitt, may have unconsciously had some influence on his mind; and that the change to which we have alluded, and which he himself was too honest not to acknowledge, may not be altogether imputable to horror at the excesses which disgraced the cause of liberty in France, and disappointment at not seeing it established so speedily and purely as he had anticipated.

We come now to an event of great importance in the life of Mr Mackintosh; we mean the trial of Μ. Peltier, an emigrant royalist, for a libel on the First Consul of France. The circumstances which led to this memorable trial, the extreme novelty or rather singularity of the case, its immediate connection with the state of political feeling which then prevailed, and the importance which was generally attached to the result, are too well known to require any specification in this place. It is sufficient to observe, that the address delivered by Mr Mackintosh, as counsel for the accused, formed one of the most splendid displays of eloquence ever exhibited in a court of justice[7:13:656], and that it will, beyond all doubt, maintain its place amongst the few efforts of forensic oratory which have survived the occasions that produced them, and are preserved as models for future artists in the same line. “ I perfectly approve of the verdict,” said Mr, afterwards Lord Erskine; “but the manner in which you opposed it, I shall always consider as one of the most splendid monuments of genius, learning, and eloquence.” Similar testimonies of applause were bestowed by other distinguished persons; and it was admitted on all hands, that, by this single effort, Mr Mackintosh had suddenly raised himself to the very highest rank amongst forensic orators. This trial took place on the 21 st of February 1803, and, some months afterwards, Mr Mackintosh was appointed to the office of recorder of Bombay, vacant by the death of Sir William Syer. Mr Addington, the first minister of the crown, had been previously made acquainted with Mr Mackintosh’s wishes in relation to an appointment in India; and these were now seconded by the friendly zeal of Mr Canning and Mr (afterwards Lord Chief Commissioner) Adam, to whose exertions the appointment must in a great measure be attributed. In taking this step, he was probably influenced by two considerations; first, the comparative ease which it would immediately secure to him; and, secondly, the amount of the salary, which, he believed, might in a few years enable him (as it would if prudence had been amongst the number of his virtues) to accumulate a sum which, in addition to the retired allowance, would render him independent, give him the entire command of his time, and enable him to pursue the course of life best suited to his inclinations. But the hopes of men are often as vain as their calculations are sanguine, and outrun even the consciousness of their own failings. Upon his appointment, he received the customary honour of knighthood, and, early in 1804, sailed with his family for India.

For an account of his life during the eight years which he spent in India, it is only necessary to refer the reader to the Memoirs of his Life, published by his son; a work which, independently of the interest attaching to the principal subject, will be read with instruction and delight on account of the infinite variety of original thoughtsand fine observations with which it abounds. His time, indeed, appears to have been divided between the discharge of his judicial duties, literary occupations somewhat irregularly pursued, correspondence with his numerous friends in Europe, and occasional excursions into different parts of the country. The experiment, however, was not successful, in as far as regarded the views which had induced him to solicit the appointment. For, although we now know that his mind was in a state of great vigour and activity during the whole of his residence in India, yet he was not enabled to accomplish, indeed scarcely to commence, any of the great works he had contemplated; whilst his habitual inattention to economy prevented any great improvement in the state of his worldly affairs. The consequence was, that he returned to England in 1812, with broken health and spirits, uncertain prospects, and vast materials for works which were never to be completed.

Mr Percival was now at the head of the government, and, almost immediately on his arrival, endeavoured to secure the support of Sir James, by offering him a seat in parliament, and an early promotion to the head of the Board of Control. These tempting offers, however, he declined, as inconsistent with those principles of liberty “which were then higher in his mind than twenty years before.” But he was almost immediately returned on the Whig interest, as member for the county of Nairn. After this, his life scarcely admits of any detailed abstract. He continued in parliament, and true to liberal principles, for the remainder of his days. In 1818, he was appointed professor of law at Hayleybury, and resigned that situation in 1827. He had contemplated a similar appointment at Edinburgh, which, unhappily for the fame of the metropolitan university of Scotland, did not take place. He contributed articles of great value to the Edinburgh Review ; and in a Preliminary Discourse to this work, being the second in order, furnished by far the best history of ethical philosophy that has ever been given to the world, and which has been reprinted in an octavo size, with a valuable preface by Professor Whewell of Cambridge. To Sir Samuel Romilly, in his exertions for the improvement of the criminal law, he gave the most efficient and zealous support; and, after the death of that virtuous lawyer, became the leader in that most necessary and unexceptionable branch of reform. After printing several volumes of a popular and abridged History of England, which contains more thought and more lessons of wisdom than any other history with which we are acquainted, he left, at his death, the invaluable fragment of the History of the Revolution of 1688, of which a very masterly account will be found in the sixty-second volume of the Edinburgh Review. Under Lord Grey’s administration, in 1830, he was appointed to a seat at the Board of Control, and cordially co-operated in all the great measures of reform which were then brought forward, and carried after a severe struggle. He died in 1832, regretted with more sincerity, and admired with less envy, than any man of his age. In him, perhaps more than in any man of his time, was exemplified that mitis sapientia, which formed the distinguishing attribute of the illustrious friend of Cicero, and which wins its way into the heart, whilst it at once enlightens and satisfies the understanding.

With regard to the intellectual character of Sir James Mackintosh, we cannot do better than quote the words in which the able writer who reviewed the Memoirs of his Life by his son, in that journal to which he was so valuable a contributor, has described, or rather pourtrayed it. “His intellectual character cannot be unknown to any one acquainted with his works, or who has even read many pages of the Memoirs now before us; and it is needless, therefore, to speak here of his great knowledge, the singular union of ingenuity and soundness in his speculations—his perfect candour and temper in discussion—the pure and lofty morality to which he strove to elevate the minds of others, and in his own conduct to conform, or the wise and humane allowance which he was ready, in every case but his own, to make for the infirmities which must always draw down so many from the higher paths of their duty. These merits, we believe, will no longer be denied by any who have heard of his name or looked at his writings. But there were other traits of his intellect, which could only be known to those who were of his acquaintance, and which it is still desirable that the readers of these Memoirs should bear in mind. One of these was that ready and prodigious memory, by which all that he learned seemed to be at once engraved on the proper compartment of his mind, and to present itself at the moment it was required; another, still more remarkable, was the singular maturity and completeness of all his views and opinions, even upon the most abstruse and complicated questions, though raised, without design or preparation, in the casual course of conversation. In this way it happened that the sentiments he delivered had generally the air of recollections—and that few of those with whom he most associated in mature life could recollect of ever catching him in the act of making up his mind in the course of the discussions in which it was his delight to engage them. His conclusions, and the grounds of them, seemed always to have been previously considered and digested; and though he willingly developed his reasons, to secure the assent of his hearers, he uniformly seemed to have been perfectly ready, before the cause was called on, [7:13:657]to have delivered the opinion of the court, with a full summary of the arguments and evidence on both sides. In the work before us, we have more pceps into the preparatory deliberations of his great intellect—that scrupulous estimate of the grounds of decision, and that jealous questioning of first impressions, which necessarily precede the formation of all firm and wise opinions,—than could probably be collected from the recollections of all those who had most familiar access to him in society. It was owing perhaps to this vigour and rapidity of intellectual digestion that, though all his life a great talker, there never was a man that talked half so much, who said so little that was either foolish or frivolous; nor any one perhaps who knew so well how to give as much liveliness and poignancy to the most just and even profound observations as others could ever impart to startling extravagance and ludicrous exaggeration. The vast extent of his information, and the natural gaiety of his temper, made him independent of such devices for producing effect, and, joined to the inherent kindness and gentleness of his disposition, made his conversation at once the most instructive and the most generally pleasing that could be imagined.”

We cannot deny ourselves the satisfaction of adorning this meagre notice with another citation from the same admirable article, in which the writer replies to and exposes the depreciatory judgment of Mr Coleridge. The passage is severe, but not more so than the occasion and the aggression seemed to require. “In the Table Talk of the late Mr Coleridge, we find these words, ‘1 doubt if Mackintosh ever heartily appreciated an eminently original man. After all his fluency and brilliant erudition, you can rarely carry off anything worth preserving. You might not improperly write upon his forehead, Warchouse to let.’ W r e wish to speak tenderly of a man of genius, and, we believe, of amiable dispositions, who has been so recentlyrerhoved from his friends and admirers. But so portentous a misjudgment as this, and coming from such a quarter, cannot be passed over without notice. If Sir James Mackintosh had any talent more conspicuous and indisputable than another, it was that of appreciating the merits of eminent and original men. His great learning and singular soundness of judgment enabled him to do this truly; while his kindness of nature, his zeal for human happiness, and his perfect freedom from prejudice and vanity, prompted him, above most other men, to do it heartily. As a proof, we would merely refer our readers to his admirable character of Lord Bacon {Edinburgh Review, No. 53, vol. xxvii.). And then, as to his being a person from whose conversation little could be carried away, why, the most characteristic and remarkable thing about it was, that the whole of it might be carried away—it was so lucid, precise, and brilliantly perspicuous. The joke of the ‘ Warchouse to let’ is not, we confess, quite level to our capacities. It can scarcely mean (though that is the most obvious sense) that the head was empty, as that is inconsistent with the rest even of this splenetic delineation. If it was intended to insinuate that it was ready for the indiscriminate reception of anything which any one might choose to put into it, there could not be a more gross misconception, as we have, no doubt Mr Coleridge must often have sufficiently experienced. And by whom is this discovery, that Mackintosh’s conversation presented nothing that could be carried away, thus confidently announced? Why, by the very individual against whose own oracular and interminable talk the same complaint has been made, by friends and by foes, and with an unanimity unprecedented, for the last forty years. The admiring, or rather idolizing, nephew, who has lately put forth this hopeful specimen of his relics, has recorded in the preface, that ‘ his conversation at all times required attention; and that the demand on the intellect of the hearer was often very great; and that when he got into his “huge circuit” and large illustrations, most people had lost him, and naturally enough supposed that he had lost himself.’ Nay, speaking to this very point, of the ease or difficulty of carrying away any definite notions from what· he said, the partial kinsman is pleased to inform us, that, with all his familiarity with the style of his relative, he himself has often gone away, after listening to him for several delightful hours, with divers masses of reasoning in his head, but without being able to perceive what connection they had with each other. ‘ In such eases,’ he adds, ‘ I have mused, sometimes even for days afterwards, upon the words, till at length, spontaneously as it were, the fire would kindle,’ &c. And this is the person who is pleased to denounce Sir James Mackintosh as an ordinary man; and especially to object to his conversation, that, though brilliant and fluent, there was rarely anything in it which could be carried away.

“An attack so unjust and so arrogant leads naturally to comparisons which it would be easy to follow out, to the signal discomfiture of the party attacking. But without going beyond what is thus forced upon our notice, we shall only say, that nothing could possibly set the work before us in so favourable a point of view as a comparison between it and the volumes of Table Talk, to which we have already made reference—unless, perhaps, it were the contrast of the two minds which are respectively pourtrayed in these publications.

“In these memorials of Sir James Mackintosh, we trace throughout, the workings of a powerful and unclouded intellect, nourished by wholesome learning, raised and instructed by fearless though reverent questionings of the sages of other times (which is the permitted necromancy of the wise), exercised by free discussion with the most distinguished among the living, and made acquainted with its own strength and weakness, not only by a constant intercourse with other powerful minds, but by mixing, with energy and deliberation, in practical business and affairs; and here pouring itself out in a delightful miscellany of elegant criticism, original speculation, and profound practical suggestions on politics, religion, history, and all the greater and the lesser duties, the arts and the elegancies of life—all expressed with a beautiful clearness and tempered dignity—breathing the purest spirit of goodwill to mankind—and brightened not merely by an ardent hope, but an assured faith in their constant advancement in freedom, intelligence, and virtue.

“On all these points, the Table Talkoĩ his poetical contemporary appears to us to present a most mortifying contrast; and to render back merely the image of a moody mind, incapable of mastering its own imaginings, and constantly seduced by them, or by a misdirected ambition, to attempt impracticable things—naturally attracted by dim paradoxes rather than lucid truth, and preferring, for the most part, the obscure and neglected parts of learning to those that are useful and clear—marching, in short, at all times, under the exclusive guidance of the Pillar of Smoke —and, like the body of its original followers, wandering all his days in the desert, without ever coming in sight of the promised land.” (a.)