not have been made with any idea that it would be rewarded.

As to the defence set up for serving all dynasties and all causes, it cannot apply to any country where public men have the power, out of office, to put down a bad government, as they have in office the power to uphold a good one.

I will conclude with the appreciation of a French friend, who thus summed up many of my own remarks:

"Enfin, chez M. de Talleyrand, l'aménité et la raison remplaçaient le cœur, et la conscience. Avec bien des défauts qui ont terni sa réputation, il avait toutes les qualités qui devaient faire prospérer son ambition. Ses talents qu'il a employés constamment pour son propre avantage, il les a employés presque aussi constamment pour le bien public. Beaucoup attaqué et peu défendu par ses contemporains, il n'en restera pas moins pour la postérité un des hommes les plus aimables de son temps et un des citoyens les plus illustres de son pays."

MACKINTOSH,

THE MAN OF PROMISE.

PART I.

FROM HIS YOUTH TO HIS APPOINTMENT IN INDIA.

Mackintosh's character.-Character of men of his type.-Birth and parentage.-Starts as a physician, fails, and becomes a newspaper writer, and author of a celebrated pamphlet in answer to Burke's "Thoughts on the French Revolution."- -Studies for the bar.-Becomes noted as a public character. violent on the Liberal side.-Becomes acquainted with Mr. Burke.—Modifies his opinions.-Gives lectures on public law, remarkable for their eloquence and their Conservative opinions.-Becomes the advocate of Peltier; makes a great speech, and shortly afterwards accepts an appointment in India.

I.

I STILL remember, amongst the memorable events of my early youth, an invitation to meet Sir James Mackintosh at dinner; and the eager and respectful attention with which this honoured guest was received. I still re

member also my anxiety to learn the especial talents, or remarkable works, for which Sir James was distinguished, and the unsatisfactory replies which all my questions elicited. He was a writer, but many had written better; he was a speaker, but many had spoken better; he was a philosopher, but many had done far more for philosophy; and yet, though it was difficult to fix on any one thing in which he was first-rate, it was generally maintained that he was a first-rate man. There is, indeed, a class amongst mankind, a body numerous in all literary societies, who are far less valued for any precise thing they have done than according to a vague notion of what they are capable

of doing. Mackintosh may be taken as a type of this class; not that he passed his life in the learned inactivity to which the resident members of our own universities sometimes consign their intellectual powers, but which more frequently characterizes the tranquil scholars, whose erudition is the boast of some small German or Italian city.

But though mixing in the action of a great and stirring community, a lawyer, an author, a member of parliament, Mackintosh never arrived at the eminence in law, in letters, or in politics, that satisfied the expectations of those who, living in his society, were impressed by his intellect and astonished at his acquirements.

If I were to sum up in a few words the characteristics of the persons who thus promise more than they ever perform, I should say that their powers of comprehension are greater than their powers either of creation or exposition; and that their energy, though capable of being roused occasionally to great exertions, can rarely be relied on for any continued effort.

They collect, sometimes in rather a sauntering manner, an immense store of varied information. But it is only by fits and starts that they are able to use it with effect, and at their happiest moments they rarely attain the simple grace and the natural vigour which give beauty and life to composition. Their deficiencies are inherent in their nature, and are never therefore entirely overcome. They have not in their minds the immortal spark of genius, but the faculty of comprehending genius may give them, in a certain degree, the power of imitating it; whilst ambition, interest, and necessity, will at times stimulate them to extraordinary exertions. As writers, they usually want originality, ease, and power; as men of action, tact, firmness, and decision. The works in which they most succeed are usually short, and written under temporary excitement; as statesmen, they at times attract attention and win applause, but rarely obtain authority or take and keep the lead in public affairs. In society, however, the mere faculty of remembering and comprehending a variety of things is quite sufficient to obtain a consider

able reputation; whilst the world, when indulgent, often estimates the power of a man's abilities by some transient and ephemeral display of them.

I will now turn from these general observations to sec how far they are exemplified in the history of the person whose name is before me; a person who advanced to the very frontier of those lands which it was not given to him to enter; and who is not only a favourable specimen of his class, but who, as belonging to that class, represents in many respects a great portion of the public during that memorable period of our annals, which extends from the French Revolution of 1789 to the English Reform Bill in 1830.

II.

The father of Sir James was a Scotch country gentleman, who, having a small hereditary property, which he could neither part with nor live upon, entered the army early, and passed his life almost entirely with his regiment. Young Mackintosh was born on the 24th of October, 1765, in the county of Inverness, and was sent as soon as he could be to a school at Fortrose; where he fell in with two books which had a permanent influence on his future career. These books were Plutarch's Lives" and the "Roman History," books which, by making him ambitious of public honours, rendered his existence a perpetual struggle between that which he desired to be and that for which he was best suited. At Aberdeen, then, where he was sent on quitting Fortrose, he was alike remarkable for his zeal in politics, and his love for metaphysics-that is, for his alternate coquetry between an active and a meditative life. At Edinburgh, also, where he subsequently went to study medicine, it was the same thing. In the evening he would go now and then to a "spouting" club and make speeches, while the greater part of his mornings was spent in poetical lucubrations. To the medical profession he paid little attention, till all of a sudden necessity aroused him. He then applied himself, with a start, to that which he was obliged to know; but his diligence was not of that resolute and steady kind which insures success as the consequence of a certain

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period of application; and after rushing into the novelties of the Brunonian System, which promised knowledge. with little labour, and then, rushing back again, he resolved on taking his countrymen's short road to fortune, and set out for England. His journey, however, did not answer. He got a wife, but no patients; and on the failure of his attempts to establish himself at Salisbury and at Weymouth, retired to Brussels--ill, wearied, and disgusted. The Low Countries were at that time the theatre of a struggle between the Emperor Joseph and his subjects; the general convulsion which shortly afterwards took place throughout Europe was preparing, and the agitation of men's minds was excessive. These exciting scenes called the disappointed physician back to the more alluring study of politics; and to this short visit to the Continent he owed a knowledge of its opinions and its public men, which first served him as the correspondent of a newspaper, The Oracle; and, subsequently, furnished him with materials for a pamphlet which in an instant placed him in the situation he so long occupied as one of the most promising men of his day. This celebrated pamphlet, published in 1791, and known under the name of "Vindicia Gallica," whether we consider the circumstances under which it appeared, the opponent whom it combated, or the ability of the composition itself, merited all the attention it received, and was the more successful because it gave just the answer to Burke which Burke himself would have given to his own Reflections.

Thus, the club of Saint James', the cloister of Trinity

Brunonian System.-Medical doctrines first broached by Dr. John Brown, in his "Elementæ Medicine," in 1780. He imagined that the body was endowed with a certain quantity of excitability, and that every external agent acted as a stimulant on this property of excitability. Health consisted in a just proportion of stimulation, but when this was carried too far, exhaustion, or direct debility, was the consequence, and when not far enough, indirect debility. The diseases which he supposed to arise from one or other of those two states were classed into two orders, the sthenic and the asthenic. Brown was considered no great prophet in his own country, but he exercised considerable influence on the medical doctrines of the Italian schools, which to this day are somewhat tinctured with Brunonianism.