be it from weakness, as you say, have marked his whole reign. Amidst all the Queen's alleged gallantries, it was a happy thing for France that there was no mistress-the curse of former reigns.

There were no public vices to call forth patriotic indignation. Why, then, should the English patriot, or the French patriot, descend from the cause of nations to private morals?

"You talk of Burke's sensibility being scared at the homely miseries of the vulgar.' I think his whole life has shown the contrary. As to myself, I have often felt myself moved at the sight of an old wife gathering cinders. Had I, in the year of famine, seen the poor Highlanders asking bread at your grandmother's door I would, with you, have divided with them my oaten or barleycake. But not to mention this, I am afraid it is an intellectual illusion, not an illusion of the heart, which leads to regret general miseries, which you do not witness. You will never persuade me that a man who can callously contemplate individual suffering, especially in high rank, which enhances the suffering in proportion, can feel for any other distress. If the sufferings of eminent individuals do not move us, we will never feel for the sufferings of a whole people. In feeling for a people, we always picture out individuals to our imagination. It is the eternal law of sympathy. A man would drown himself in a hogshead of wine; his feelings may be refined and elevated by a bottle.

Cleopatra was certainly a more immoral woman than her worst enemies dare to pronounce the Queen of France. I never, however, read the picture given by Horace, of her magnanimity, without feeling my face flushed, and my eyes sparkling.

'Ausa et jacentem visere regiam
Vultu sereno, fortis et asperas
Tractare serpentes, ut atrum

Corpore combiberet venenum,-
'Deliberata morte ferocior:
Sævis Liburnis scilicet invidens,
Privata deduci superbo

Non humilis mulier triumpho.' By the way, let it be remembered that the homely miseries of the vulgar, and all that rant, is likewise to be found in Paine."

For the next year or two, Mackintosh, who never liked the medical pro

fession, and whose ambition was awakened by the brilliant success of his work, was engaged in keeping terms and in the preparatory studies for the bar. Some little property which became his on his father's death, he sold, and in this way got a few hundred pounds. In 1795, he was called to the bar-he now supported himself by and for the daily newspapers. writing in the periodical publications, think that this-which, could the details be given with any approach to accuracy, would be far the most interesting period of his life-is treated with less attention than it deserves by his son. Some of his articles in the Monthly Review were pointed outhe reviewed Gibbon's Miscellaneous

Works"

We

Roscoe's Lorenzo de Medicis"-" Burke's Letter to the Duke of Bedford;" and also his "Thoughts on a Regicide Peace"-he reviewed "Erskine's View of the Causes and Consequences of the War." The reader who has not the opportunity of referring to the interminable series of the Monthly Review, will find extracts from these reviews, many of them written in Sir James's best style, in the notice of his life to which we have before referred.

The review of Burke's Regicide Peace led to an invitation to Beaconsfield, where Sir James passed a few days during the last Christmas of Burke's life. No mention is made of the visit in any of Sir James's journals; but they were days of which he often spoke as the most interesting of his life. In "the diary of a man of literature" (Mr. Green's) is the following record of a conversation with Sir James:-

"Passed the last Christmas [of Mr. Burke's life] with Burke at Beaconsfield, and described, in glowing terms, the astonishing effusions of his mind in conversation; perfectly free from all taint of affectation; would enter, with cordial glee, into the sports of children, rolling about with them on the carpet, and pouring out, in his gambols, the sublimest images, mingled with the most wretched puns; anticipated his approaching dissolution with due solemnity, but perfect composure; minutely and accurately in

formed, to a wonderful exactness, with respect to every fact relative to the French revolution. Burke said of Fox, with a deep sigh, He is made to be loved.' Fox said of Burke, that Mackintosh would have praised him too highly, had that been possible, but that it was not in the power of man to do justice to his various and transcendent merits; declared he would set his hand to every part of the Preliminary Discourse on the Law of Nature and Nations,' except the account of Liberty, a subject which he considered as purely practical, and incapable of strict definition.

"Of Gibbon, Mackintosh neatly remarked, that he might have been cut out of a corner of Burke's mind without his missing it. Spoke highly of Johnson's prompt and vigorous powers in conversation; and, on this ground, of Boswell's Life' of him. Burke, he said, agreed with him, and affirmed that this work was a greater monument to Johnson's fame than all his writings put together. Condemned democracy as the most monstrous of all governments, because it is impossible at once to act and to control, and, consequently, the sovereign power, in such a constitution, must be left without any check whatever; regarded that form of government as best which placed the efficient sovereignty in the hands of the natural aristocracy of a country, subjecting them, in its exercise, to the control of the people at large. Descanted largely in praise of our plan of representation, by which, uncouth and anomalous as it may in many instances appear, and indeed, on that very account, such various and diversified interests became proxied in the House of Commons. Our democracy, he acutely remarked, was powerful, but concealed, to prevent popular violence; our monarchy prominent and ostensible, to provoke perpetual jealousy."

In the following year Mackintosh lost his wife. We cannot but make room for a sentence from a letter of his written at the time :

"I was guided in my choice only by the blind affection of my youth. I found an intelligent companion, and a tender friend, a prudent monitress, the most faithful of wives, and a mother as tender as children ever had the misfortune to lose. I met a woman who, by the tender management of my weaknesses, gradually

corrected the most pernicious of them. She became prudent from affection; and though of the most generous nature, she was taught economy and frugality by her love for me. During the most critical period of my life, she preserved order in my affairs, from the care of which she relieved me. She gently reclaimed me from dissipation; she propped my weak and irresolute nature; she urged my indolence to all the exertions that have been useful or creditable to me, and she was perpetually at hand to admonish my heedlessness and improvidence. To her I owe whatever I am; to her whatever I shall be. In her solicitude for my interest, she never for a moment forgot my feelings or my character. Even in her occasional resentment, for which I but too often gave her cause, (would to God I could recall those moments,) she had no sullenness or acrimony. Her feelings were warm and impetuous; but she was placable, tender, and constant. Such was she whom I have lost; and I have lost her when her excellent natural sense was rapidly improving, after eight years of struggle and distress had bound us fast together, and moulded our tempers to each other; when a knowledge of her worth had refined my youthful love into friendship, before age had deprived it of much of its original ardour. I lost her, alas! (the choice of my youth, and the partner of my misfortunes,) at a moment when I had the prospect of her sharing my better days.”—vol. 1, pp. 96–7.

Mackintosh was left a widower with three infant daughters. In the course of the next year he again married. In this year and the next he delivered his lectures on the law of nature and nations. Of these the introductory lecture alone was published. In his lectures the author of the Vindicia Gallica exhibited more than the eloquence of that remarkable work; and with that eloquence he also exhibited, what is apparent in every one of his earlier works

the same spirit of advocacy. In both are found the same application and overstatement of such general principles as seem most applicable to the purpose immediately in hand; expressed with that kind of fervour which is evidence of the sincerity of the speaker, but the exaggeration of which ought to place

both speaker and hearer on their guard. The atrocities which had been acted in the interval by his clients might have well startled an advocate of firmer attachment to what was unreasonably called his party, than Sir James Mackintosh ever felt or professed, and even in the earlier work it is not probable that he would have found much to regret, when he was led to think of the securities which states must provide for the education of their subjects, except perhaps his hazardous prediction-which late events however seem verifying—that “church power, (unless some revolution, auspicious to priestcraft, should replunge Europe in ignorance) will not certainly survive the nineteenth century." We shall not so soon after having expressed our opinion on the question of the Established Church, (see our first article on Coleridge,) advert to the subject again; but we confess that even in these days of pressure from without, our fears for the very existence of the establishment, arise chiefly from faults and defects within the church, which it is monstrous should remain uncorrected. The abuse of patronage—we mean of that patronage which, being in the hands of private individuals, becomes a marketable commodity is the greatest evil. It increases, to an extent of which the country is little aware, the probabilities -in the case of curates-of a life, all the best years of which are passed in the service of the public, being allowed to close in neglect, which could not be permitted, had the minister, whom we leave to starve, been the humblest servant in an office. We are far from thinking either that an equality of income, or any thing approaching to it among the clergy, would be desirable; far from thinking that even the service of half a life, in a particular parish, should be regarded as giving the parishioners the slightest claim of right to designate the individual, who has so served, as their future rector; but in earnest anxiety for the church, and for its continuing influence, we do ask, should such claims be altogether disregarded, and by every one? Is it possible that they can be

disregarded, and those to whom the destinies of the church are confided, be guiltless? We will not risque weakening the effect of what we say, by pointing to individual cases of griev ance, although at the very moment in which we write, we know a case in which a clergyman served as curate in the same parish for nineteen years; when a vacancy occurred by the death of the rector, it was thought not unlikely that he might obtain the appointment; but it was found that the advowson, which was private property, had been some time before sold; and the new patron appointed himself to the vacant benefice. But we are forgetting Mackintosh and his prediction. Before the French church was destroyed by the revolutionists, it had become-though not utterly uselessyet in reference to the purposes for which it had been endowed, in all things faithless to its trust. The question is not now of its doctrine or its discipline; but a church, the endowments of which were made the means of providing for declared infidels, seems to have little claim on the sympathies which Burke sought successfully to awaken. The individual sufferersmany of them men, whose piety would have been an ornament to any community-were, to the honour of England, received among us with the most generous hospitality; but we will only ask our readers to call to mind the infidel writers for half a century before, and to mention a single person who did not, under one pretence or another, receive some part of the church property? Things have not, at any time, approached this state with us; but when we speculate on the destruction or the preservation of church property, it would be madness not to feel, in this our day, that no property is safe-call it that of the landlord or the churchfrom an examination of whether the trusts are fulfilled, which, either expressly or impliedly, are annexed to the possession of property. We live in the full conviction, that the lesson given and received by our peasantry, on the subject of church property, will not be applied to that description of

a kind of philosophical centos. They were profound, brilliant, new to his hearers; but the profundity, the brilliancy, the novelty, were not his own. He was like Doctor Pangloss, (not Voltaire's, but Coleman's,) who speaks only in quotations; and the pith, the marrow of Sir James's reasoning and rhetoric at that memorable period might be put within inverted commas. It, however, served his purpose, and the loud echo died away. We remember an excellent man and a sound critic going to hear one of these elaborate effusions; and on his want of enthusiasm being accounted for from its not being one of the orator's brilliant days, he replied, he did not think a man of genius could speak for two hours without saying something by which he would have been electrified.'"-Hazlitt's Spirit of the Age, pp. 215-19.

The success of Mackintosh at the bar was doubtful; it was greater, how ever, than has been allowed. We shall, before we close our notices of his life, give some extracts from a letter of Mr. Basil Montagu to the editor, which we have read with as much interest as any thing in the book, which gives an account of his first circuits, but shall, for the present, pass to the mention of his speech in the case of Peltier. It was his first remarkable speech. We have read it with greater admiration than any other of Mackintosh's works, and perhaps are confusing the recollections of the time in which we first read it; and when it is probable that the splendour of its style would make a greater impression on us than at present,then we say that no other line of defence would have the slightest chance of obtaining a verdict for the defendant. In fact, the libel could not have been successfully defended; and the wide extent of subjects which Mackintosh's defence embraced, gave Peltier his only chance of escape. There is no pleasing a convicted man. Peltier, who gave Mackintosh five guineas as his fee, and thought like others, that lawyers are overpaid, felt that his fine gold had utterly perished, and "in his broken English complained that the fellow had sacrificed him to show off in praise of Napoleon." Peltier was the hired agent of the Bourbons; his offence was publishing an ode in which the

assassination of Buonaparte was recommended. The question being once determined that the case was cognizable before our tribunals, and the fact of publication being fixed upon defendant, we cannot conceive any topics so likely to draw the attention of the jury from the true question which they had to determine, and which must have been determined against the defendant, as those on which Mackintosh insisted. The speech was translated into French by Madame de Stael.

In the Law Magazine are some anecdotes of Mackintosh which are amusing enough. Perhaps it would be unreasonable to expect to find them in the biography by his son: still they are worth preserving. The epigram, as we may call it, of Parr against Sir James, when the trial and conviction of Quigley, an Irish priest in the rebellion of 1798, was mentioned, has been often told; but it has so much odd pleasantry that it is worth repeating. We give it in the words of the Law Magazine, in an article supplied by an old pupil of Mackintosh, and to which the editor of the magazine, has added some entertaining notes. "Mackintosh, who had strongly repudiated the conduct of Quigley, was several times interrupted by Parr's saying emphatically, in the intervals of smoking-He might have been worse.' At length he called on the doctor to explain how Quigley could have been worse. This was exactly what Parr wanted. Accordingly, having laid down his pipe, with deliberate composure he replied" I'll tell you, Jemmy, Quigley was an Irishman-he might have been a Scotchman; he was a priest-he might have been a lawyer; he was a traitor-he might have been an apostate.' The doctor then exultingly resumed his pipe, amid a roar of applause at this unexpected sally." Among the stories collected in the Law Magazine, is one which tells of his learning on circuit the addition of three children to his family. Mr. Adair, the author of The Clubs of London, is vouched for the narration. "He says that Mackintosh was on circuit when news of the birth of one of the children arrived; upon which the regular congratulations were of