stranger to complimentary or smooth language, little concerned about the manner in which his reproofs were received, provided they were merited, too much impressed with the evil of the offence to think of the rank or character of the offender, he often "uttered his admonitions with an acrimony and vehemence more apt to irritate than to reclaim." Eut he protested, at a time when persons are least in danger of deception, and in a manner which should banish every suspicion of the purity of his motives, that, in his sharpest rebukes, he was influenced by hatred of vice, not of the vicious, that his great aim was to reclaim the guilty, and that, in using those means which were necessary for this end, he frequently did violence to his own feelings. Those who have charged him with insensibility and inhumanity, have fallen into a mistake very common with superficial thinkers, who, in judging of the characters of persons who lived in a state of society very different from their own, have pronounced upon their moral qualities from the mere aspect of their exterior manners. He was austere, not unfeeling; stern, not savage; vehement, not vindictive. There is not an instance of his employing his influence to revenge any personal injury which he had received. Rigid as his maxims as to the execution of justice were, there are numerous instances on record of his interceding for the pardon of criminals; and, unless when crimes were atrocious, or when the welfare of the state was in the most imminent danger, he never exhorted the executive government to the exercise of severity. The boldness and ardour of his mind, called forth by the peculiar circumstances of the times, led him to push his sentiments on some subjects to an extreme, and no consideration could induce him to retract an opinion of which he continued to be persuaded; but his behaviour after his publication against female government proves, that he was not disposed to improve them to the disturbance of the public peace. His conduct at Frankfort evinced his moderation in religious differences among brethren of the same faith, and his disposition to make all reasonable allowances for those who could not go the same length with him in reformation, provided they abstained from imposing upon the consciences of others. The liberties which he took in censuring from the pulpit the actions of individuals of the highest rank and station, appear the more strange and intolerable to us, when contrasted with the silence of modern times; but we should recollect that they were then common, and that they were not without their utility, in an age when the li. centiousness and oppression of the great and powerful often set at defiance the ordinary restraints of law. factor to humanity as St. Vincent. He was the son of a day-labourer in Gascony. When about thirty years of age, he was taken prisoner at sea, and carried to Tunis, where he continued two years a slave. Having escaped into France, he entered into holy orders, and devoted himself to the service of the unhappy persons condemned to the gallies. The reform, which he worked among them, the decent and resigned demeanor which he produced in them, and the alleviations of their sufferings, which his charitable exertions in their fayour obtained for them, were surprising. On one occasion, a poor young man, having, for a single act of smuggling, been condemned to the gallies for three years, complained to him in such moving terms of his misfortunes, and of the distress to which it would reduce his wife and infant children, that St. Vincent substituted himself in his place, and worked in the gallies, during eight months, chained by the leg, to the oar. The fact was then discovered, and he was ransomed. This circumstance was juridically proved, on his canonization, and he always retained, in one of his legs, a soreness from the chain which he had worn. He established the Foundling Hospital at Paris; and raised, by a single speech, which he made for it, in a moment of its distress, an instant subscription of 40,000 French livres. In the war of the Fronde, several thousand German soldiers, who had been seduced, by great promises, into the army of the Fronde, were placed in Paris and its neighbourhood; and the war proving unsuc cessful to those who had engaged them, were abandoned by them, and left to perish. St. Vincent stirred up such a general spirit of charity in their behalf, as enabled bim to provide for the immediate subsistence of them all, and to send them back, clothed and fed, to their own country. The calamities of the same war were terrible in Champagne, Picardy, Lorraine, and Artois; and a year of great scarcity coming on, famine and pestilence ensued; numbers perished for hunger, and their bodies lay unburied. Information of this scene of woe being carried to St. Vincent, he raised a subscription of twelve millions of French money, and applied it for the relief of the wretched objects. These, and a multitude of other acts of beneficence, were juridically proved, on his canonization, and Bossuet, in his letter of solicitation, dwells on them with great eloquence. St. Vincent was canonized by Pope Clement XII. and his feast fixed for the 19th of July. To the Editor of the Bombay Courier. Sir, I enclose some lines which have no value but what they derive from the subject: they are an unworthy, but sincere, tribute to one whom I have long regarded with sentiments of esteem and affection, and whose loss I regret with the most unfeigned sorrow. It will remain with those who are better qualified than I am to do justice to the memory of Doctor Leyden: I only know that he rose by the power of native genius from the humblest origin to a very distinguished rank in the literary world. His studies included almost every branch of human science, and he was alike ardent in the pursuit of all. The greatest power of his mind was, perhaps, shewn in his acquisition of modern and ancient languages. He exhibited an unexampled facility not merely in acquiring them, but in tracing their affinity and connection with each other; and from that talent, combined with his taste and general knowledge, we had a right to expect, from what he did in a very few years, that he would, if he had lived, have thrown the greatest light upon the more abstruse parts of the history of the East. In this curious, but intricate and rugged path, we cannot hope to see his equal. Doctor Leyden had from his earliest years cultivated the Muse with a success which will make many regret that Poetry did not Occupy a larger portion of his time. The first of his Essays which appeared in a separate form was "The Scenes of Infancy;" a descriptive poem, in which he sung, in no unpleasing strains, the charms of his native mountains and streams in Tiviot-dale. He contributed several small pieces to that collection of poems called the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, which he published with his celebrated friend Walter Scott. Among these the Mermaid is certainly the most beautiful. In it he has shewn all the creative fancy of a real genius. His Ode on the Death of Nelson is undoubtedly the best of those poetical effusions that he has published since he came to India. The following apostrophe to the blood of that hero has a sublimity of thought and happiness of expression which never could have been attained but by a true poet : Amid the waste of waters blue; "Blood of the brave, thou art not lost The tide that roils to Albion's coast And hosts of heroes rise when one shall bleed." It is pleasing to find him on whom nature has bestowed eminent genius, possessed of those more essential and intrinsic qualities which give the truest excellence to the human character. The manners of Doctor Leyden were uncourtly, more perhaps from his detestation of the vices too generally attendant on refinement, and a wish, (indulged to excess from bis youth) to keep at a marked distance from them, than from any ignorance of the rules of good breeding. He was fond of talking, his voice was loud, and had little ог er no modulation, and he spoke in the provincial dialect of his native country; it cannot be surprising, therefore, that even his information and knowledge, when so conveyed, should be felt by a number of his hearers as unpleasant, if not oppressive. But with all these disadvantages (and they were great) the admiration and esteem in which he was always held by those who could appreciate his qualities, became general wherever he was long known; they even who could not understand the value of his knowledge loved his virtues. Though he was distinguished by his love of liberty, and almost haughty independence, his ardent feelings, and proud genius, never led him into any licentious or extravagant speculation on political subjects. He never solicited favour; but he was raised, by the liberal discernment of his noble friend and patron, Lord Minto, to a situation that afforded him an opportunity of shewing, that he was as scrupulous and as inflexibly virtuous in the discharge of his public duties, as he was attentive in private life to the duties of morality and religion. It is not easy to convey an idea of the method which Doctor Leyden used in his studies, or to describe the unconquerable ardour with which these were pursued. During his early residence in India, I had a particular opportunity of observing both. When he read a lesson in Persian, a person near him whom he had taught, wrote down each word on a long slip of paper, which was afterwards divided into as many pieces as there were words, and pasted in alphabetical order, under different heads of verbs, nouns, &c. into a blank book, that formed a vocabulary of each day's lesson. All this he had in a few hours instructed a very ignorant native to do, and this man he used in his broad accent to call "one of his mechanical aids." He was so ill at Mysore, soon after his arrival from England, that Mr. Anderson, the Surgeon, who attended him, despaired of his life; but though all his friends endeavoured at this period to prevail upon him to relax in his application to study, it was in vain. He used, when unable to sit upright, to prop himself up with pillows, and continue his translations. One day that I was sitting by his bed-side the Surgeon came in: "I am glad you are here," said Mr. Anderson, addressing himself to me, "you will be able to persuade Leyden to attend to my advice. I have told him before, and I now repeat, that he will die, if he does not leave off his studies and remain quiet." 'Very well, Doctor," exclaimed Leyden, " you have done your duty, but you must now hear me: I cannot be idle; and whether I die or live the wheel must go round to the last :" and he actually continued, under the depression of a fever, and a liver complaint, to study more than ten hours each day. The temper of Doctor Leyden was mild and generous, and be could bear with perfect good humour, raillery on his foibles. When he arrived at Calcutta in 1805, I was most solicitous regarding his reception in the society of the Indian capital. I entreat you, toy dear friend," I said to him the day he landed," to be careful of the. impression you make on your en tering this community; for God's sake learn a little English, and be silent upon literary subjects, except among literary men." "Learn English," he exclaimed, "no.ne. ver: it was trying to learn that language t' at spoilt my Scotch; and as to being silent, I will promise to hold my tongue, if you will make fools hold their's." His memory was most tenacious, and he sometimes loaded it with lumber. When he was at Mysore, an argument occurred upon a point of English history: it was agreed to refer it to Leyden, and, to the astonishment of all parties, he repeated verbatim the whole of an Act of Parliament in the reign of James I. relative to Ireland, which decided the point in dispute. On being asked how he came to charge his memory with such extraordinary matter, he said that several years before, when he was writing on the changes that had taken place in the English language, this Act was one of the documents to which he had referred as a specimen of the stile of that age, and that he had retained every word in his memory. His love of the place of his nativity was a passion in which he had always a pride, and which in India he cherished with the fondest enthusiasm. I once went to see him when he was very ill, and had been confined to his bed for many days; there were several gentlemen in the room: he inquired if I had any news; I told him I had a let. ter from Eskdale; and what are they about in the borders? he asked. A curious circumstance, I replied, is stated in my letter; and I read him a passage which described the conduct of our volunteers on a fire being kindled by mistake at one of the beacons. This letter mentioned that the moment the blaze, which was the signal of invasion, was seen, the Mountaineers hastened to their rendezvous, and those of Leddesdale swam the Ewes river to reach it. They were assembled (though several of their houses were at a distance of six and seven miles) in two hours; and at break of day the party marched into the town of Hawick (a distance of twenty miles from the place of assembly) to the border tune of " Wha dare medd'e wi me?" Leyden's countenance became animated as I proceeded with this detail; and at its close be sprung from his sick bed, and with strange melody, and still stranger gesticulations, sung aloud, "Wha dare meddle wi' me, wha dare meddle wi' me?" Several of those who witnessed this scene looked at him as one that was raving in the delirium of a fever. These anecdotes will display more fully than any description I can give the lesser shades of the character of this extraordinary man. An external manner certainly not agreeable, and a disposition to egotism, were his only defects. How trivial do these appear, at a moment when we are lamenting the loss of such a rare com. bination of virtues, learning, and genius, as were concentrated in the late Doctor Leyden! I am, Sir, your obedient servant, Where sleep the brave on Java's strand, where genius fell, and valour bled. Near |