under the guardianship of her relations, the Blacketts of Northumberland. "Yet Mary, the younger, with no advantage but that of living with an aunt of superior understanding and great worth, though much uneducated, and having only one year of the Edinburgh boarding-school, soon had her mind enlarged and her talents improved by some instruction, and the conversation of those who frequented us, insomuch that in not more than one year after our marriage, she appeared not only without any seeming defect in her education, but like a person of high endowments. Indeed the quickness of her parts and the extent of her understanding were surprising, and her talent both in speaking and writing, and in delicacy of taste, truly as admirable as any woman I ever knew. Add to this that she was noble and generous in the highest degree, compassionate even to weakness, and, if her friends were in distress, totally forgetful and negligent of herself. I do not think it is possible I could derive greater satisfaction from any circumstance in human life than I did from the high approbation which was given to my choice by the very superior men who were my closest and most discerning friends, such as Ferguson, Robertson, Blair, and Bannatine, not merely by words, but by the open, respectful, and confidential manner in which they conversed with her." But almost from the commencement of their married life, a cloud fell upon their hearthstone which all his energy and joyousness of disposition could not remove. His children died in early youth, and, the last of them dying in 1777, left him desolate for the remainder of his thirty years' pilgrimage. Community of grief, however, only bound him the more to the bereaved mother; and the editor excellently remarks on this, "that while his memoranda record continued visits and receptions of strangers, they bear no trace of his being addicted in later life to the social convivialities where males only can be present; for his faithful partner, Mary, is his almost constant companion, whether his visits be to a ducal mansion in London, or to the quiet manse of some old companion. Meantime, with Hume, and Robertson, and Blair, the even current of his life flowed on, and we must refer to the volume itself for elaborate characters of these his chosen friends. Some anecdotes, however, of David, we cannot pass over, which bring the historian of England before us with remarkable skill. "He was a man," he says, "of great knowledge, and of a social and benevolent temper, and truly the best-natured man in the world." "He was branded with the title of Atheist, on account of the many attacks on revealed religion that are to be found in his philosophical works, and in many places of his History-the last of which are still more objectionable than the first, which a friendly critic might call only sceptical. Apropos of this, when Mr Robert Adam, the celebrated architect, and his brother, lived in Edinburgh with their mother, an aunt of Dr Robertson's, and a very respectable woman, she said to her son, 'I shall be glad to see any of your companions to dinner, but I hope you will never bring the Atheist here to disturb my peace.' But Robert soon fell on a method to reconcile her to him, for he introduced him under another name, or concealed it carefully from her. When the company parted, she said to her son, 'I must confess that you bring very agreeable companions about you, but the large jolly man who sat next me is the most agreeable of them all.' This was the very Atheist,' said he, mother, that you was so much afraid of.' 'Well,' says she, 'you may bring him here as much as you please, for he's the most innocent, agreeable, facetious man I ever met with.' This was truly the case with him; for though he had much learning and a fine taste, and was professedly a sceptic, though by no means an atheist, he had the greatest simplicity of mind and manners with the utmost facility and benevolence of temper temper of any man I ever knew. His conversation was truly irresistible, for while it was enlightened, it was naïve almost to puerility. "I was one of those who never believed that David Hume's sceptical principles had laid fast hold on his mind, but thought that his books proceeded rather from affectation of superiority and pride of understanding and love of vainglory. I was confirmed in this opinion, after his death, by what the Honourable Patrick Boyle, one of his most intimate friends, told me many years ago at my house in Musselburgh, where he used to come and dine the first Sunday of every GeneGlasgow, ceased to be Lord High Comral Assembly, after his brother, Lord missioner. When we were talking of David, Mrs Carlyle asked Mr Boyle if he thought David Hume was as great an unbeliever as the world took him to be? He answered, that the world judged from his books, as they had a right to do; but he thought otherwise, who had known him all his life, and mentioned the following incident: When David and he were both in London, at the period when David's mother died, Mr Boyle, hearing of it, soon after went into his apartment for they lodged in the same house-when he found him in the deepest affliction and in a flood of tears. After the usual topics of condolence, Mr Boyle said to him, 'My friend, you owe this uncommon grief to your having thrown off the principles of religion; for if you had not, you would have been consoled by the firm belief that the good lady, who was not only the best of mothers, but the most pious of Christians, was now completely happy in the realms of the just.' To which David replied, Though I threw out my speculations to entertain and employ the learned and metaphysical world, yet in other things I do not think so differently from the rest of mankind as you may imagine.' To this my wife was a witness. This conversation took place the year after David died, when Dr Hill, who was to preach, had gone to a room to look over his notes. "At this period, when he first lived in Edinburgh, and was writing his History of England, his circumstances were narrow, and he accepted the office of Librarian to the Faculty of Advocates, worth £40 per annum. But it was not for the salary that he accepted this employment, but that he might have easy access to the books in that celebrated library; for, to my certain knowledge, he gave every farthing of the salary to families in distress. Of a piece with this temper was his curiosity and credulity, which were without bounds, a specimen of which shall be afterwards given when I come down to Militia and the Poker. His economy was strict, as he loved independency; and yet he was able at that time to give suppers to his friends in his small lodging in the Canongate. He took much to the company of the younger clergy, not from a wish to bring them over to his opinions, for he never attempted to overturn any man's principles, but they best understood his notions, and could furnish him with literary conversation. Robertson and John Home and Bannatine and I lived all in the country, and came only periodically to the town. Blair and Jardine both lived in it, and suppers being the only fashionable meal at that time, we dined where we best could, and by cadies assembled our friends to meet us in a tavern by nine o'clock; and a fine time it was when we could collect David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Lord Elibank, and Drs Blair and Jardine, on an hour's warning." "As Mr Hume's circumstances improved he enlarged his mode of living, and instead of the roasted hen and minced collops, and a bottle of punch, he gave both elegant dinners and suppers, and the best claret, and, which was best of all, he furnished the entertainment with the most instructive and pleasing conversation, for he assembled whosoever were most knowing and agreeable among either the laity or clergy. This he always did, but still more unsparingly when he became what he called rich. For innocent mirth and agreeable raillery I never knew his match. Jardine, who sometimes bore hard upon him-for he had much drollery and wit, though but little learning-never could overturn his temper. Lord Elibank resembled David in his talent for collecting agreeable companions together, and had a house in town for several winters chiefly for that purpose. "David, who delighted in what the French call plaisanterie, with the aid of Miss Nancy Ord, one of the Chief Baron's daughters, contrived and executed one that gave him very great delight. As the New Town was making its progress westward, he built a house in the south west corner of St Andrew Square. The street leading south to Princes Street had not yet got its name affixed, but they got a workman early one morning to paint on the corner-stone of David's house "St Davd's Street," where it remains to this day. Whether David's pleasantry as recorded in the next anecdote was equally agreeable to the subject of it, we are not told. Probably the reference to the great master of Roman eloquence may have neutralised the hint it seems to convey of some degree of stiffness, and perhaps ostentation, in the minister's pulpit minis trations. "Being at Gilmerton, where David Hume was on a visit, Sir David Kinloch made him go to Athlestaneford church, where I preached for John Home. When we met before dinner, 'What did you mean,' says he to me, 'by treating John's congregation to-day with one of Cicero's academics? I did not think that such heathen morality would have passed in East Lothian."" At this time elocution was so highly valued, irrespective of the facts or reasonings it conveyed, that a depreciation of doctrine was perhaps an additional compliment to the mode of delivery. Dr Blair, who appears to our inflamed palates so wairsh and unseasoned, was considered the model of all the requirements of a Christian orator. Yet, like the man who could only jump very high in his native parish, Blair's eminence as a speaker was limited to the Church. The readier tongue of Carlyle enables him to enjoy the incident of a foolish lay elder in the Assembly, who offered Blair a thousand pounds to teach him the art of speaking in public. "As Blair was Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, he thought he was the most likely person to comply with his request; but he had not observed that Dr Blair never spoke in public himself, but from the pulpit, from which he might have gathered that the knowledge of rhetoric is different from the practice." Accepting, therefore, the Ciceronian part of St David's criticism, Carlyle gives us another anecdote of the great historian and the charming dramatist, which shows that "pleasantry" was not confined to one side. "At the Poker Club, when everybody wondered what could have made a clerk of Sir William Forbes run away with £900-I know that very well,' says John Home to David; for when he was taken, there was found in his pocket your Philosophical Works and Boston's Fourfold State of Man.” The Poker Club, instituted in ridicule of the more puritanic brethren, might furnish excellent quotations, illustrative of the wit and freedom of our Scottish society, but space warns us to hurry on. Journeys to England, residences in Harrowgate, alternating with ecclesiastical schemes and orations, fill up the remainder of the work with unflagging spirit. But, at last, we find the effect of "years, that bring the philosophic mind;" and a short extract, which we take from the editor's Supplementary Chapter, "shuts up the story of the days' of that gay and sparkling fellowship, in a letter to Sir John Macpherson. This gentleman had risen to be Governor of British India, in succession to Warren Hastings, and was now come home. The date is 1796. "Now for an account of your old friends, which, if you saw Ferguson as he passed, which I think you did, I might spare. "To begin with Robertson, whom you shall see no more; in one word, he appeared more respectable when he was dying than ever he did even when living. He was calm and collected, and even placid, and even gay. My poor wife had a desire to see him, and went on purpose, but when she saw him from a window, leaning on his daughter, with his tottering frame, and directing the gar dener how to dress some flower-beds, her sensibility threw her into a paroxysm of grief; she fled up-stairs to Mrs Russell and could not see him. His house, for three weeks before he died, was really an anticipation of heaven. "Dr Blair is as well as possible. Preaching every Sunday with increasing applause, and frisking more with the whole world than ever he did in his youngest days, no symptom of frailty about him; and though he was huffed at not having an offer of the principality, he is happy in being resorted to as the head of the University. "John Home is in very good health and spirits, and has had the comfort, for two or three winters, of having Major Home, his brother-in-law, a very sensible man, in the house with him, which makes him less dependent on stranger company, which, in advanced years, is not so easy to be found, nor endured when it is found. "With respect to myself, I have had many warnings within these three years, but on the whole, as I have only fits of illness, and no disease, I am sliding softly on to old age, without any remarkable infirmity or failure, and can, upon occasions, preach like a son of thunder (I wish I were the Bold Thunder for a week or or two) against the vile levelling Jacobins, whom I abhor. My wife, your old friend, has been better than usual this winter, and is strong in metaphysicks, and ethicks, and (can) almost repeat all Ferguson's last book of Lectures, which do him infinite honour. I say, of that book, that if Reid is the Aristotle, Ferguson is the Plato of Scotch philosophers; and the Faculty of Arts of Edinburgh have adopted my phrase." The abruptness of the conclusion of the Autobiography deprives us of a picture of the times after 1770, but the loss is partly supplied by the recollections with which the old man eloquent breaks through the thread of his narrative, and carries us considerably beyond that date. Taking, however, the finished portion of the work, we believe that the social and public life of any equal period never had so graphic a chronicler be fore. No national change, we have already remarked, was ever more complete than that which occurred during Carlyle's lifetime, although, from the steadiness of its progress, its power and rapidity almost escaped observation. But in looking back from the terminus we reach in 1805, we can estimate the strength and vigour of the engine which carried us all the way from 1722, without any accident to wheel or boiler. We have seen the mode of travelling up to 1775, and got our first view of modern locomotion in the introduction of post-chaises, and the commencement of turnpike roads. Wretched streets traversed the most picturesque and dirtiest town in Europe; and the meanest of wynds and alleys were the residences of the learned and noble. The habits of the people had become a proverb for all that was anti-saponaceous and coarse. But towards the end of the work we see notices of the rising on the opposite ridge from the city of the Stuarts, of a new and splendid capital, which furnished fitting homes for the polished gentry and accomplished poets, philosophers, and historians, who seemed to be subdued by the spirit of the houses they dwelt in, and could not continue to practise in Queen Street or St Andrew Square, the convivialities and excesses which found a congenial locus in the purlieus of the Grassmarket or the Flesher's Close. Architecture, no less than the other faithfully cultivated arts, softens the manners, and will not permit people to persist in being barbarous. Contemporaneously with the growth of the New Town, the savage joviality which had characterised the Old disappeared. Tavern life was extinguished by the size of the apartments at home; and a country minister would pause a good while before he sent a 26 cady" to summon the Moderator of the Assembly, two or three of the Judges, and the Principal of the University, to meet him at a hotelsupper on half-an-hour's notice. Yet this was common eighty years ago, as recorded in this volume. Keligious and party spirit also ran so high that the Kirk, though divided against itself, found an ample superfluity of hate to bestow on Dissent and Episcopalianism. The adherents of that old communion felt their recent fall embittered by the insults of their successful rivals, and revenged themselves by cherishing a romantic sort of Jacobitism among their flocks, which so alarmed the Government that it would not permit the raising of a Scotch militia, believing that the majority of the people were disaffected, if not disloyal. "For it must be observed," says Carlyle, "that when Presbytery was re-established at the Revolution, after the reign of Episcopacy for 29 years, more than two-thirds of the people of the country, and most part of the gentry, were Episcopals; the restoration of Presbytery by King William being chiefly owing to the Duke of Argyle, Marchmont, Stair, and other leading nobles who had suffered under Charles and James, and who had promoted the Revolution with all their interest and power." This work, though latest published, forms, in fact, the commencement of the series of biographic and anecdotic reminiscences of the last century with which our own day is enriched. The admirable Recollections of Lord Cockburn begin nearly where Carlyle leaves off. Sir Walter Scott was thirty-three at Carlyle's death, and the wondrous strain is carried on till the gentle ripple of the Tweed sounded on that September morning into his dying room, in 1832. In many respects, the earlier revelations are superior to the rest. In personal interest, we cannot, of course, place them on a par with the records of the man who would be acknowledged the greatest of modern poets, if he were not undoubtedly the greatest of English novelists; but as a reproduction of a distinct individuality we hold them not to be inferior even to the masterpiece of Lockhart. Following no master, moulding himself on no model, the charm of these pages is their originality. They are not Boswellian, nor Johnsonian, nor Colley Cibberish, nor traceable to any source. Yet in their liveliness of description, sly touches of satire, and vigorous analysis of character, combined with the naturalness of incident and surprising variety of interest deduced from ordinary adventure, we are constantly reminded of Gil Blas. INDEX TO VOL. LXXXVIII. Abbéville, the flint-implements found About, M., his work on the temporal 423. Andersen, Hans, the fables and allegories Angelico, the frescoes of, in San Marco, Anglo-Indian army, the, proposed changes Arbuthnot, Mr, evidence of, on civil Aristotle, as an illustration of the alleged Armstrong gun, experiments with the, Art, a national, what its characteristics ARTHUR, KING, AND HIS ROUnd Table, ARY SCHEFFER, 572. Aytoun, professor, his defence of Claver- Bagrathion, general, during the Russian Balloon, parallel between a, and the 260. Barclay de Tolly, general, in the Russian Belooch horse, the, during the pursuit of Berbera, sketches at, 26 et seq. Beschu de Champsavin, M. le, account Bombay army, state, &c. of the, 696. Bosco, general, the defeat of, at Melazzo, Bothwell brig, ferocity of the Covenant- Boutourlin's history of the Russian cam- Branwhite, Mr, the paintings of, 73. Brittany, connection of the Arthurian Brown of Priesthill, the case of, and Browning's Aurora Leigh, remarks on, 40, 42. Budget, conduct of the ministry on the, 123. Burgoyne, Sir J., on the defences of Burton, lieutenant, expedition into Afri- Byron, account of Peel by, 257. Asylum, the right of, in the Papal States, Canning, notices of, in connection with 402. Ayeen Akbery, the, 554. Peel, 260 et seq. passim-formation of |