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Career. He was a native of Scotland; was educated at Aberdeen, and afterwards studied medicine at Edinburgh; abandoned the profession for the law; held the posts of recorder and admiralty judge under the East India Company; returned to England and was elected to Parliament; afterwards occupied the chair of politics and history in the College at Haylebury.

Publications. His first great work, Vindicia Gallicæ, was published in 1791, in reply to Burke's Reflections, and had the effect of staying for a while the tide that was then rising so high against France and the French Revolution. Subsequently, in 1799, he delivered a course of lectures On the Law of Nature and of Nations, which were the expression of his conversion to the opposite or conservative view. In 1803 he delivered an eloquent speech, afterwards translated into French, in defence of M. Peltier, who was tried for libel against Napoleon and acquitted. He contributed a number of articles to the Edinburgh Review, the most famous of which are those On the Philosophical Genius of Bacon and Locke, On the Authorship of the Eikon Basilike, The Partition of Poland, Madame de Staël's De l'Allemagne, On the Right of Parliamentary Suffrage. He also published a Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, and began The History of England for Lardner's Cabinet Encyclopædia, but did not live to finish it beyond the middle of the third volume. This last work can scarcely be called a history; it is rather a collection of discourses on history. In 1834, after his eath, there appeared a Review of the Causes of the Revolution in 1688, a fragment comprising all that Mackintosh had succeeded in realizing of his favorite project of writing a philosophical history of England.

Estimate of Him.- Mackintosh seems to have been greater as a man than as a writer. At least, no one of his works equals the wonderful reputation that he himself enjoyed among his contemporaries. All his large works are faulty in many respects. His Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy, for instance, is glaringly deficient in its notices of the French and German schools. In the words of Allan Cunningham, "He seemed to want that scientific power of combination without which the brightest materials of history are but as a glittering mass; he was deficient in that patient but vigorous spirit which broods over scattered and unconnected things and brings them into order and beauty." In like manner, Judge Story expressed his impatience at Mackintosh's "want of decision and energy in carrying out his ideas and large designs." The explanation is found in the fascinations of London society and the brilliant rôle played in it by Sir James. In a circle of wits and writers, he was the brightest light. His good nature, his quickness, and his wonderful powers of memory invested him with a charm that fascinated everybody, and tempted him to lead a life of society which prevented him from achieving any results commensurate with his abilities.

WILLIAM HAZLitt, 1778–1830, wrote much on literary and political subjects.

Hazlitt was educated at the Unitarian College, at Hackley. He commenced as an artist, but soon abandoned the brush for the pen. He contributed a number of articles to the periodical press and the Edinburgh Review, and wrote several lectures upon English Poetry, English Comic Writers, The Age of Elizabeth, etc., etc. After his death his literary remains were published by his son, with a sketch of his life, and an essay on his genius, the latter by Bulwer and Talfourd. The miscellaneous works of

Hazlitt were published in Philadelphia, 1848, in 5 vols., to which was added a sixth volume, a reprint of the Life of Napoleon.

In Ilazlitt's writings, merit is strangely jostled by demerit. He has a wide range of sympathy and appreciation, but is subject to blind prejudices. Especially is this defect manifest in his treatment of (then, living authors. He seems incapable of appreciating a writer until he is dead. In the words of Professor Wilson, he reverses the proverb, and thinks a dead ass better than a living lion.

"Hazlitt possessed, in a very eminent degree, what we are inclined to believe the most important requisite for true criticism—a great and natural relish for all the phases of intellectual life and action . . . but . . . there is scarcely a page of Hazlitt which does not betray the influence of strong prejudice, a love of paradoxical views, and a tendency to sacrifice the exact truth of a question to an effective turn of expression."-Tuckerman.

GEORGE CANNING, 1770-1827, was a statesman and Parliamentary leader of great celebrity.

In conjunction with some others, Canning started a satirical journal, The Anti-Jacobin, which was intended to ridicule and discountenance the principles of the French Revolution. The poetry of the Anti-Jacobin was remarkable for the keenness of its wit. One of the pieces contributed by Canning, The Knife-Grinder, a burlesque upon Southey, has been greatly admired. Mr. Canning had a strong propensity for literary pursuits, and would doubtless have made a great figure in the world of letters, had not his talents been put in requisition in the more important science of governing a great empire. His Speeches have been published in 6 vols., 8vo.

THOMAS ERSKINE, 1750-1823, is believed to have been the greatest legal advocate that England has ever produced. "As an advocate in the forum, I hold him to be without an equal in ancient or modern times."-Chief-Justice Campbell.

Erskine's father not being able to give him the advantages of a University education, he entered the navy, and afterwards the army. After spending some years in this way, restless with the consciousness of powers for something better, he finally resolved upon the study of the law. The first case in which he was employed was a political trial for a libel on one of the members of the Cabinet. "Then was exhibited the most remarkable scene ever witnessed in Westminster Hall. It was the debut of a barrister, wholly unpracticed in speaking, before a court crowded with the men of the greatest distinction, belonging to all parties in the state. And I must own that, all the circumstances considered, it was the most wonderful forensic effort of which we have any account in our annals."-Campbell.

Erskine's success was instantaneous, and it never declined. He became Lord HighChancellor, and was raised to the peerage as Baron Erskine. His Speeches, with Me. moir by Lord Brougham, have been published in 4 vols., 8vo. He wrote Armata, a political romance, 2 vols.; also, A View of the Causes and Consequences of the Present War with France (1796), of which forty-eight editions were printed in a few months. "At the bar Erskine shone with peculiar lustre. There the resources of his mind were made apparent by instantaneous bursts of eloquence, combining logic, rhetorical skill, and legal precision, while he triumphed over the passions and prejudices of his hearers, and moulded them to his will,”- Campbell.

LORD HOLLAND, Henry Richard Vassall Fox, (Third) Lord Holland, 1773-1840, was a nephew of the celebrated orator, Charles James Fox.

Lord Holland, educated at Oxford, was a warm supporter of his uncle in Parliament, and a constaut adherent to the Whig party. His chief literary productions were a life of Lope de Vega, and Three Comedies from the Spanish, which have been pronounced excellent. But he is still better known by his Foreign Reminiscences and his Memoirs of the Whig Party, both edited by his son Henry Edward. These two works have been much read and reviewed, and are invaluable as a record of the growth of England and English politics during the first half of the present century.

SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY, 1767-1818, the son of a London jeweller, entered the profession of the law, and attained to great distinction as a barrister and a statesman.

Sir Samuel was regarded by his contemporaries as a most eloquent speaker, and a thoroughly honest man. His Speeches were collected and published in 1820. His Memoirs, partly written by himself, were edited by his sons in 1840. Among his writings are conspicuous the fragment on the Constitutional Power and Duty of Juries, his Observations on the Criminal Law of England, and his Edinburgh Review article on Codification. One of his most celebrated speeches was that on the slave-trade, delivered in the House of Commons in 1806. He was a zealous advocate of the reformation of the English criminal law, and of Catholic Emancipation. His success as a barrister was unequalled in his day.

RT. HON. JOHN SINCLAIR, LL.D., 1754-1835, was born at Thurso Castle, Scotland. He was a member of Parliament for thirty years, from 1780 to 1810, and took a prominent part in public affairs. In 1786 he was made a baronet, and in 1810 Privy Coun cillor. He wrote much on subjects connected with political economy: History of the Public Revenue of the British Empire; Statistical Account of Scotland; Origin of the Board of Agriculture; Blight, Rust, and Mildew; Hints on Longevity; Observations on the Report of the Bullion Committee, etc.

Cobbett.

WILLIAM COBBETT, 1762-1835, was an English political writer of great notoriety. He wrote under the name of Peter Porcupine, and exercised his vocation partly in the United States and partly in England.

After a somewhat chequered career, Cobbett settled in Philadelphia in 1796, and started Peter Porcupine's Gazette, in which he entered with great bitterness and violence into the political questions of the day. Dr. Rush and others prosecuted him for slander, and obtained a verdict against him of $5000. In 1800 Cobbett returned to England and began The Porcupine, which he continued for some time. Subsequently he established the Weekly Register, which he kept up for thirty years. He returned to the United States in 1817, but went back finally to England in 1819, taking with him the bones of the infidel, Tom Paine.

The works of Peter Porcupine (that is the articles written by him in America) were

published in London in 1801, in 12 vols., 8vo. "Cobbett in these volumes has left a picture of the politics and the leading politicians of America, which (with caution) must be studied by all who would understand the party questions with which they were discussed."- Chancellor Kent.

Cobbett wrote also Emigrant's Guide; Poor Man's Friend; Cottage Economy; A Year's Residence in America; An English Grammar; The Woodlands, a treatise on Planting; Parliamentary History of England; and Pamphlets almost innumerable.

Cobbett did not mistake in naming himself "Porcupine." He bristled all over, and against everybody in turns, and was always in hot water. He was prosecuted and fined several times in England for slander, and once he was imprisoned. He was as untruthful as he was ill-natured. "His malevolence and lying are beyond anything."— Jeremy Bentham.

Apart from his moral delinquencies, Cobbett was a writer of great merit. His style is almost universally commended. He was perfect master of that plain, homespun idiom which all understand, and he expressed himself with amazing clearness. “The general characteristics of his style were perspicuity unequalled and inimitable; a homely, muscular vigor, a purity always simple, and a raciness often elegant." -London Times. "The style of Cobbett is the perfection of the rough Saxon English, a model of political writings for the people." He was especially remarkable for his rough common sense, and his powers of sarcasm.

IV.

PHILOSOPHICAL AND SCIENTIFIC WRITERS.

Dugald Stewart.

Dugald Stewart, 1753-1828, was the leading metaphysical writer in Great Britain during all the early part of the present century.

Dugald Stewart was born in Edinburgh, his father being at the time Professor of Mathematics in the University. He entered the HighSchool of Edinburgh at seven, and remained in it until twelve. During the last two years of this time he was under the well-known Alexander Adam. He attended the University from 1765 to 1770, that is, from the age of twelve to the age of sixteen. While there, he had the instructions of John Stevenson in Logic, and of Adam Ferguson on Moral Philosophy. In 1771 he went to Glasgow to study under Dr. Reid. While there he wrote his first work, An Essay on Dreaming, which contained the germs of many of his subsequent speculations. He lived also in the same house with Archibald Alison, author of the Essay on Taste, with whom he contracted a lasting friendship.

In 1772, being then eighteen years old, Stewart began assisting his father in the instruction of the mathematical classes at Edinburgh, and continued in that department, jointly with his father, until 1785.

In 1778, during the temporary absence of Ferguson on a political mission to America, Stewart taught the Moral Philosophy class, in addition to his mathematical classes, and lectured on the subject with great applause. On the resignation of Ferguson, in 1785, Stewart was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy, and continued to fill the chair for twenty-five years. His lectures were greatly admired, and added much to the renown of the University.

In 1806, Stewart received a sinecure office from the Government, worth £300 a year. In 1809, his health failing, Dr. Thomas Brown, at Stewart's request, was appointed, at first to lecture to the class, and afterwards to be a joint Professor, which arrangement continued until Brown's death in 1820. On the death of Brown, Stewart exerted himself in behalf of the appointment of Sir William Hamilton, but was overruled in the matter, and the appointment was given to John Wilson. Stewart's active duties in the University ended in 1810.

In his philosophy, Stewart was a disciple of Reid, and he followed up the reaction which Reid had begun, against the doctrines of Hume and Berkeley. Although not one of the most original or profound thinkers in his department, yet by the elegance of his style, the clearness of statement, and the great compass of his writings, he did more than any man in his day to diffuse an interest in speculations connected with the human mind.

His collected works have been edited by Sir William Hamilton, in 11 vols., 8vo. His principal works are: The Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind; Outlines of Moral Philosophy; The Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers; Lectures on Political Economy; A General View of the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical, and Political Philosophy, since the Revival of Letters; Philosophical Essays; An Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Reid; of William Robertson the historian; and of Adam Smith the political economist.

Stewart, like our own Professor Silliman in another department, had extraordinary powers as a lecturer, amounting almost to fascination. "All the years I remained about Edinburgh I used, as often as I could, to steal into Mr. Stewart's class to hear a lecture, which was always a high treat. I have heard Pitt and Fox deliver some of their most admired speeches, but I never heard anything nearly so eloquent as some of the lectures of Professor Stewart. The taste for the studies which have proved my favorite pursuits, and which will be so to the end of my life, I owe to him."—James Mill.

Thomas Brown.

THOMAS BROWN, M. D., 1778-1820, a distinguished Scotch metaphysician, was the colleague and successor of Dugald Stewart in the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh.

Dr. Brown's first publication, Observations on the Zoonomia of Erasmus Darwin, was written at the age of eighteen, and "exhibited astonishing prematurity of talents." "The perhaps unmatched work of a boy of eighteen years of age." — Mackintosh.

The work which first gave him a world-wide celebrity was a treatise on Cause and Effect. The theory of causation which he introduced, though since generally abandoned as untenable, was presented with such clearness of statement and such wonderful vigor and beauty of style, that it took the public by storm. Critics of all schools

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