The History of British India, by JAMES MILL (1773-1836), is by far the ablest work on our Indian empire. It was published in 1817-18 in five volumes. This work led to the author being employed in conducting the correspondence of the East India Company. Mr Mill was a man of acute and vigorous mind. He was a native of Logie Pert, near Montrose, and soon rose above his originally humble station by the force of his talents. He contributed to the leading reviews, co-operated with Jeremy Bentham and other zealous reformers, and also took a high position as an original thinker and metaphysician. Mr Mill's History has been continued to the close of the government of Lord W. Bentinck in 1835, by Mr Horace H. Wilson, the work now forming nine volumes, 1848.

BIOGRAPHERS.

After the death of Cowper in 1800, every poetical reader was anxious to learn the personal history and misfortunes of a poet who had afforded such exquisite glimpses of his own life and habits, and the amiable traits of whose character shone so conspicuously in his verse. His letters and manuscripts were placed at the disposal of Hayley, whose talents as a poet were then greatly overrated, but who had personally known Cowper. Accordingly, in 1803–4, appeared The Life and Posthumous Works of William Cowper, three volumes quarto. The work was a valuable contribution to English biography. The inimitable letters of Cowper were themselves a treasure beyond price; and Hayley's prose, though often poor enough, was better than his poetry. What the 'hermit of Eartham' left undone has since been supplied by Southey, who in 1835 gave the world an edition of Cowper in fifteen volumes, about three of which are filled with a life and notes. The lives of both Hayley and Southey are written in the style of Mason's memoir, letters being freely interspersed throughout the narrative. Of a similar description, but not to be compared with these in point of interest or execution, is the life of Dr Beattie, by Sir William Forbes, published in 1806, in two volumes.

In the same year LORD HOLLAND published an Account of the Life and Writings of Lope Felix de Vega, the celebrated Spanish dramatist. De Vega was one of the most fertile writers upon record: his miscellaneous works fill twenty-two quarto volumes, and his dramas twenty-five volumes. He died in 1635, aged seventy-three. His fame has been eclipsed by abler Spanish writers, but De Vega gave a great impulse to the literature of his nation, and is considered the parent of the continental drama. The amiable and accomplished nobleman who recorded the life of this Spanish prodigy has himself paid the debt of nature; he died at Holland House, October 23, 1840, aged sixty-seven. Lord

Holland House was but another name for refined hospitality and social freedom, in which men of all shades of opinion participated. As a literary man, the noble lord has left few or no memorials that will survive; but he will long be remembered as a generous-hearted English nobleman, who, with princely munificence and varied accomplishments, ever felt a strong interest in the welfare of the great mass of the people; who was an intrepid advocate of popular rights in the most difficult and trying times; and who, amidst all his courtesy and hospitality, held fast his integrity and consistency to the last.

The Life of Nelson, by Southey, published in two small volumes-since compressed into one-in 1813, rose into instant and universal favour, and may be considered as one of our standard popular biographies. Its merit consists in the clearness and beautiful simplicity of its style, and its lucid arrangement of facts, omitting all that is unimportant or strictly technical. The substance of this Life was originally an article in the Quarterly Review; Mr Murray, the publisher, gave Southey £100 to enlarge the essay, and publish it in a separate form with his name, and this sum he handsomely doubled. Southey afterwards published a Life of Wesley, the celebrated founder of the Methodists, in which he evinces a minute acquaintance with the religious controversies and publications of that period, joined to the art of the biographer, in giving prominence and effect to his delineations. His sketches of field-preaching and lay-preachers present some curious and interesting pictures of human nature under strong excitement. The same author contributed a series of lives of British admirals to the Cabinet Cyclopædia, edited by Dr Lardner.

The most valuable historical biography of this period is the Life of John Knox, by DR THOMAS M'CRIE (1772-1835), a Scottish minister. Dr M'Crie had a warm sympathy with the sentiments and opinions of his hero; and on every point of his history he possessed the most complete information. He devoted himself to his task as to a great Christian duty, and not only gave a complete account of the principal events of Knox's life, his sentiments, writings, and exertions in the cause of religion and liberty,' but illustrated, with masterly ability, the whole contemporaneous history of Scotland. Men may differ as to the views taken by Dr M'Crie of some of those subjects, but there can be no variety of opinion as to the talents and learning he displayed. His life of Knox was first published in 1813, and has passed through six editions. Following up his historical and theological retrospect, the same author afterwards published a Life of Andrew Melville, but the subject is less interesting than that of his first biography. He wrote also memoirs of Veitch and Brysson-Scottish ministers and supporters of the Covenant-and histories of the Reformation in Italy and in Spain. Dr M'Crie published, in 1817, a series of papers in the Edinburgh Christian Instructor, containing a vindication of the Covenanters from the distorted view which he believed Sir Walter Scott to have given of them in his tale of Old Mortality. Sir Walter replied anonymously, by reviewing his own work in the Quarterly Review! There were faults and absurdities on the side both of the Covenanters and the Royalists, but the cavalier predilections of the great novelist certainly led him to look with more regard on the latter-heartless and cruel as they were-than on the poor persecuted peasants.

The general demand for biographical composition tempted some of our most popular original writers to embark in this delightful department of literature. Southey, as we have seen, was early in the field; and his more distinguished poetical contemporaries, Scott, Moore, and Campbell, also joined. The first, besides his admirable memoirs of Dryden and Swift, prefixed to their works, contributed a series of lives of the English novelists to an edition of their works published by Ballantyne, which he executed with great taste, candour, and discrimination. He afterwards undertook a Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, which was at first intended as a counterpart to Southey's Life of Nelson, but ultimately swelled out into nine volumes. The hurried composition of this work, and the habits of the author, accustomed to the dazzling creations of fiction, rather than the sober plodding of historical inquiry and calm investigation, led to many errors and imperfections. It abounds in striking and eloquent passages; the battles of Napoleon are described with great clearness and animation; and the view taken of his character and talents is, on the whole, just and impartial, very different from the manner in which Scott had alluded to Napoleon in his Vision of Don Roderick. The great diffuseness of the style, however, and the want of philosophical analysis, render the Life of Napoleon more a brilliant chronicle of scenes and events than a historical memoir worthy the genius of its author. The friends of Sir Walter attributed his mental disease in great measure to the labour entailed upon him by this Life of Napoleon. A Life of Napoleon, in four volumes, 1828, was published by WILLIAM HAZLITT, the essayist and critic (1778–1830), but it is a partial and prejudiced work.

MR MOORE published a Life of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1825; Notices of the Life of Lord Byron, 1830; and Memoirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 1831. The last has little interest. The Life of Byron, by its intimate connection with recent events and living persons, was a duty of very delicate and difficult performance. This was further increased by the freedom and licentiousness of the poet's opinions and conduct, and by the versatility or mobility of his mind, which changed with every passing impulse and impression. As well,' says Mr Moore, from the precipitance with which he gave way to every impulse, as from the passion he had for recording his own impressions, all those heterogeneous thoughts, fantasies, and desires that, in other men's minds, "come like shadows, so depart," were by him fixed and embodied as they presented themselves, and at once taking a shape cognizable by public opinion, either in his actions or his words, in the hasty letter of the moment, or the poem for all time, laid open such a range of vulnerable points before his judges, as no one individual ever before, of himself, presented.' Byron left ample materials for his biographer. His absence from England, and his desire to keep the minds of the English public for ever occupied about him -if not with his merits, with his faults; if not in applauding, in blaming him,' led him to maintain a regular correspondence with Mr Moore and his publisher Mr Murray. He also kept a journal, and recorded memoranda of his opinions, his reading, &c., something in the style of Burns. His letters are rich and varied, but too often display an affectation of wit and smartness, and a still worse ambition of appearing more profligate than he was in reality. Byron had written memoirs of his own life, which he presented to Moore, who sold the manuscript to Murray, the publisher, for 2000 guineas.

The friends of the noble poet became alarmed on account of the disclosures said to have been made in the memoir, and offered to advance the money paid for the manuscript, in order that Lady Byron and the rest of the family might have an opportunity of deciding whether the work should be published or suppressed. The result was, that the manuscript was destroyed by Mr Wilmot Horton and Colonel Doyle, as the representatives of Mrs Leigh, Byron's half-sister. Moore repaid the 2000 guineas to Murray, and the latter engaged him to write the Life of Byron, contributing a great mass of materials, and ultimately giving no less than £4870 for the Life-(Quarterly Review, 1853). Moore was, strictly speaking, not justified in destroying the manuscript which Byron had intrusted him with as a vindication of his name and honour. He might have expunged the objectionable passages. But it is urged in his defence, that while part of the work never could have been published, all that was valuable or interesting to the public was included in the journals and memorandum-books. Mr Moore's Notices are written with taste and modesty, and in very pure and unaffected English. As an editor he preserved too much of what was worthless and unimportant; as a biographer he was too indulgent to the faults of his hero; yet who could have wished a friend to dwell on the errors of Byron?

MR CAMPBELL, besides the biographies in his Specimens of the Poets, published a Life of Mrs Siddons, the distinguished actress, and a Life of Petrarch. The latter is homely and earnest, though on a romantic and fanciful subject. There is a reality about Campbell's biographies quite distinct from what might be expected to emanate from the imaginative poet, but he was too indolent to be exact.

Amongst other additions to our standard biography may be mentioned the Life of Lord Clive, by SIR JOHN MALCOLM; and the Life of Lord Clarendon, by MR T. H. LISTER. The Life of Sir Walter Raleigh, by MR PATRICK FRASER TYTLER (published in one volume in the Edinburgh Cabinet Library), is also valuable for its able defence of that adventurous and interesting personage, and for its careful digest of state-papers and contemporaneous events. Free access to all public documents and libraries is now easily obtained, and there is no lack of desire on the part of authors to prosecute, or of the public to reward these researches. A Life of Lord William Russell, by LORD JOHN RUSSELL, is enriched with information from the family papers at Woburn Abbey; and from a similarly authentic_private source, LORD NUGENT wrote Memoirs of Hampden. The Diaries and Journals of Evelyn and Pepys, so illustrative of the court and society during the seventeenth century, have already been noticed. To these we may add the Memoirs of Colonel Hutchinson, written by his wife, Mrs Lucy Hutchinson, and first published in 1806. Colonel Hutchinson was governor of Nottingham Castle during the period of the Civil Wars. He was one of the best of the Puritans, and his devoted wife has done ample justice to his character and memory in her charming domestic narrative. Another work of the same description, published from family papers in 1822, is Memoirs of the Lives and Characters of the Right Hon. George Baillie of Jerviswood, and of Lady Grisell Baillie, written by their daughter, Lady Murray of Stanhope. These memoirs refer to a later period than that of the Commonwealth, and illustrate Scottish history. George Baillie-whose father had fallen a victim to the vindictive tyranny of the government of Charles II.—was a Presbyterian and Covenanter, but neither gloomy nor morose. He held office

While the most careful investigation is directed towards our classic authors-Shakspeare, Milton, Spenser, Chaucer, &c., forming each the subject of numerous memoirs-scarcely a person of the least note has been suffered to depart without the honours of biography. The present century has amply atoned for any want of curiosity on the part of former generations, and there is some danger that this taste or passion may be carried too far. Memoirs of persons of quality-of wits, dramatists, artists, and actors, appear every season. Authors have become as familiar to us as our personal associates. Shy, retired men like Charles Lamb, and dreamy recluses like Wordsworth, have been portrayed in all their strength and weakness. We have lives of Shelley, of Keats, Hazlitt, Hannah More, Mrs Hemans, Mrs Maclean (L. E. L.), of James Smith (one of the authors of The Rejected Addresses), of Monk Lewis, Hayley, and many authors of less distinction. In this influx of biographies worthless materials are often elevated for a day, and the gratification of a prurient curiosity or idle love of gossip is more aimed at than literary excellence or sound instruction. The error, however, is one on the right side. Better,' says the traditional maxim of English law, that nine guilty men should escape than that one innocent man should suffer'-and better, perhaps, that nine useless lives should be written than that one valuable one should be neglected. The chaff is easily winnowed from the wheat; and even in the memoirs of comparatively insignificant persons, some precious truth, some lesson of dear-bought experience, may be found treasured up for a life beyond life.' In what may be termed professional biography, facts and principles not known to the general reader are often conveyed. In lives like those of Sir Samuel Romilly, Mr Wilberforce, Mr Francis Horner, and Jeremy Bentham, new light is thrown on the characters of public men, and on the motives and sources of public events. Statesmen, lawyers, and philosophers both act and are acted upon by the age in which they live, and, to be useful, their biography should be copious. In the life of Sir Humphry Davy by his brother, and of James Watt by M. Arago, we have many interesting facts connected with the progress of scientific discovery and improvement; and in the lives of Curran, Grattan, and Sir James Mackintosh (each in two volumes), by their sons, the public history of the country is illustrated. Sir John Barrow's lives of Howe and Anson are excellent specimens of naval biography; and we have also lengthy memoirs of Lord St Vincent, Lord Collingwood, Sir Thomas Munro, Sir John Moore, Sir David Baird, Lord Exmouth, Lord Keppel, &c. On the subject of biography in general, we quote with pleasure an observation of Mr Carlyle:

'If an individual is really of consequence enough to have his life and character recorded for public remembrance, we have always been of opinion that the public ought to be made acquainted with all the inward springs and relations of his character. How did the world and man's life, from his particular position, represent themselves to his mind? How did co-existing circumstances modify him from

We have enumerated the most original biographical works of this period, but a complete list of all the memoirs, historical and literary, that have appeared would fill pages. Two general biographical dictionaries have also been published; one in ten volumes quarto, published between the years 1799 and 1815 by Dr Aikin; and another in thirty-two volumes octavo, re-edited, with great additions, between 1812 and 1816 by Mr Alexander Chalmers. An excellent epitome was published in 1828, in two large volumes, by John Gorton. A general biographical dictionary by the Rev. H. I. Rose, editor of the Encyclopædia Metropolitana—who died in 1838, aged fifty-seven-has been published in twelve volumes. In Lardner's Cyclopædia, Murray's Family Library, and the publications of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, are some valuable short biographies by authors of established reputation. The Lives of the Scottish Poets have been published by Mr David Irving, and a Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen by Mr Robert Chambers, in four volumes octavo. A more extended and complete general biographical dictionary is still a desideratum.

METAPHYSICAL WRITERS.

We have no profound original metaphysician in this period, but some rich and elegant commentators. PROFESSOR DUGALD STEWART expounded and illustrated the views of his distinguished teacher, Dr Reid; and by his essays and treatises, no less than by his lectures, gave additional grace and popularity to the system. Mr Stewart was the son of Dr Matthew Stewart, professor of mathematics in the University of Edinburgh, and was born in the college buildings, November 22, 1753. At the early age of nineteen he undertook to teach his father's mathematical classes, and in two years was appointed his assistant and successor. A more congenial opening occurred for him in 1780, when Dr Adam Fergusson retired from the moral philosophy chair. Stewart was appointed his successor, and continued to discharge the duties of the office till 1810, when Dr Thomas Brown was conjoined with him as colleague. The latter years of his life were spent in literary retirement at Kinneil House, on the banks of the Firth of Forth, about twenty miles from Edinburgh. His political friends, when in office in 1806, created for him the sinecure office of Gazette writer for Scotland, with a salary of £600 per annum. Mr Stewart died in Edinburgh on the 11th of June 1828. No lecturer was ever more popular than Dugald Stewart-his taste, dignity, and eloquence rendered him both fascinating and impressive. His writings are marked by the same characteristics, and can be read with pleasure even by those who have no great partiality for the metaphysical studies in which he excelled. They consist of Philosophy of the Human Mind, one volume of which was published in 1792, a second in 1813, and

a provident arrangement, which we cannot but admire the more the more attentively we examine it, accommodated our emotions to our means, making our love most ardent where our wish of giving happiness might be most effectual, and less gradually and less in proportion to our diminished means. From the affection of the mother for her new-born infant, which has been rendered the strongest of all affections, because it was to arise in circumstances where affection would be most needed, to that general philanthropy which extends itself to the remotest stranger on spots of the earth which we never are to visit, and which we as little think of ever visiting as of exploring any of the distant planets of our system, there is a scale of benevolent desire which corresponds with the necessities to be relieved, and our power of relieving them, or with the happiness to be afforded, and our power of affording happiness. How many opportunities have we of giving delight to those who live in our domestic circle, which would be lost before we could diffuse it to those who are distant from us! Our love, therefore, our desire of giving happiness, our pleasure in having given it, are stronger within the limits of this sphere of daily and hourly intercourse than beyond it. Of those who are beyond this sphere, the individuals most familiar to us are those whose happiness we must always know better how to promote than the happiness of strangers, with whose particular habits and inclinations we are little if at all acquainted. Our love, and the desire of general happiness which attends it, are therefore, by the concurrence of many constitutional tendencies of our nature in fostering the generous wish, stronger as felt for an intimate friend than for one who is scarcely known to us. If there be an exception to this gradual scale of importance according to intimacy, it must be in the case of one who is absolutely a stranger-a foreigner who comes among a people with whose general manners he is perhaps unacquainted, and who has no friend to whose attention he can lay claim from any prior intimacy. In this case, indeed, it is evident that our benevolence might be more usefully directed to one who is absolutely unknown, than to many who are better known by us, that live in our very neighbourhood, in the enjoyment of domestic loves and friendships of their own. Accordingly we find, that by a provision which might be termed singular-if we did not think of the universal bounty and wisdom of God-a modification of our general regard has been prepared in the sympathetic tendencies of our nature for this case also. There is a species of affection to which the stranger gives birth merely as being a stranger. He is received and sheltered by our hospitality almost with the zeal with which our friendship delights to receive one with whom we have lived in cordial union, whose virtues we know and revere, and whose kindness has been to us no small part of the happiness of our life.

Is it possible to perceive this general proportion of our desire of giving happiness, in its various degrees, to the means which we possess, in various circumstances of affording it, without admiration of an arrangement so simple in the principles from which it flows, and at the same time so effectual-an arrangement which exhibits proofs of goodness in our very wants, of wisdom in our very weaknesses, by the adaptation of these to each other, and by the ready resources which want and weakness find in these affections which everywhere surround them, like the presence and protection of God

himself?

Men

fill us with remorse when we oppress a single human being; with a pure delight when we have been able to give one comfort! love, friendship, beneficence, sources of a pleasure that is inexhaustible! are unhappy only because they refuse to listen to your voice; and, ye divine authors of so many blessings! what gratitude do those blessings demand! If all which was given to man had been a mere instinct, that led beings, overwhelmed with wants and evils, to lend to each other a reciprocal support, this might have been sufficient to bring the miserable near to the miserable; but it is only a goodness, infinite as yours, which could have formed the design of assembling us together by the attraction of love, and of diffusing, through the great associations which cover the earth, that vital warmth which renders society eternal by rendering it delightful.'

The Discourse on Ethical Philosophy-already alluded to-by SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, and his review of Madame de Staël's Germany in the Edinburgh Review, unfold some interesting speculations on moral science. He agrees with Butler, Stewart, and the most eminent preceding moralists, in admitting the supremacy of the moral sentiments; but he proceeds a step further in the analysis of them. He attempts to explain the origin and growth of the moral faculty, or principle, derived from Hartley's Theory of Association, and insists repeatedly on the value of utility, or beneficial tendency, as the great test or criterion of moral action. Some of the positions in Mackintosh's Discourse were combated with unnecessary and unphilosophical asperity by JAMES MILL, author of an able Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, 1829, in an anonymous Fragment on Mackintosh. Mill was a bold and original thinker, but somewhat coarse and dogmatical. In 1830 DR JOHN ABERCROMBIE (1781-1844) published Inquiries Concerning the Intellectual Powers and the Investigation of Truth-a popular metaphysical work, directed chiefly against materialism. The same author published The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings, 1833, and some medical treatises.

None of these writers viewed mind in connection with organisation, but this mode of inquiry has been pursued by Dr Gall and his followers, with results which are popular with a considerable portion of the public, both in this country and in America. The leading doctrines of Gall are, that the brain is the organ of the mind, that various portions of the encephalon are the organs of various faculties of the mind, and that volume or size of the whole brain and its various parts is, other circumstances being its various faculties in individuals. This system is equal, the measure of the powers of the mind and founded upon observation-that is to say, it was quality, or in an abnormal condition, were accompanied by superior intellect and force of character; also that, in a vast number of instances which were accurately noticed, a large development of a special part of the brain was accompanied by an unusual demonstration of a certain mental character, and never by the opposite. From these demonstrations the fundamental character of the various faculties was sought to be eliminated. The system is well known under the name of Phrenology; and it has been expounded and enforced, in clear and admirable English, by the late MR GEORGE COMPE (1788-1858). Mr Combe was a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, but strongly attached to literary and philosophical pursuits. He was much respected by his fellow-citizens, and was known over all Europe and America for his speculations on mental science, the criminal law, the currency, &c.

observed that large brains, unless when of inferior