Mr. Kennedy was a great patronizer of almost every new pill, powder, drop, elixir, and embrocation that was announced in the newspapers. If he chanced to read an advertisement setting forth the wonderful cures effected by these nostrums, he directly fancied that he discovered in himself, or in some one over whom he had influence or authority, symptoms of the various maladies against which these powerful batteries were levelled; and forthwith the party must be put under their operation, I need scarcely say with no advantage, and sometimes with serious injury. Perhaps one of the most harmless of his medical whims was the use of the patent metallic tractors, which made a great but short-lived noise at the commencement of the present century. So fully persuaded was Mr. Kennedy of their universal efficiency, that he purchased two pairs. (The price was considerable; I forget whether one guinea or five.) He invited all the poor to come to his hall, and be operated upon by these infallible instruments of good; and kept two persons constantly employed in applying them. Nervous people fancied they found benefit; poor people really found benefit, from having their wants brought under the notice of those who were able and inclined to relieve them; but some, who were labouring under real disease, were thus diverted from the use of proper remedies, until their maladies had become doubly intractable, if not altogether incurable. Mr. Kennedy was also a great reader of medical books, and very fond of picking up, and acting upon, a smattering of chemistry or medicine. I recollect once, when going to London, being commissioned to procure for him, at Apothecaries' Hall, "an ounce or two of bismuth."

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I requested a medical gentleman, at whose house I was visiting, to procure it for me: he smiled, and said, "Why your practice must be very extensive; I do not think I have had as much in my shop since I commenced." I told him that it was not for my own use, but was a commission from a friend, and was probably wanted for some experiment. Indeed it was; a few weeks afterwards, Mr. Kennedy was alarmingly ill. Happening to meet the surgeon who attended him, I inquired after him, and was told he had almost brought himself to death, by the ignorant and altogether unnecessary, and, therefore, improper use of a powerful drug, called bismuth.

Mr. Kennedy's fickle disposition was exercised on politics. I must confess myself so little of a politician, that I scarcely know one side from the other; and when I knew Mr. Kennedy, I was too young to enter at all into the matter. I only know that I have heard him talk loudly, by the hour together, about king and parliament, and the rights of the people, and the impolicy of the measures adopted, and the one only thing that could save the nation; but what it was all about I have no clear recollection; only I know that I have heard my uncle say, that in the course of seven years he had veered to every point of the political compass, and for the time being was equally zealous for each. He was, at one time, ardently favourable to the French Revolution, and at another, as eager an advocate for the war commenced by Great Britain in opposition to it.

Mr. Kennedy was fond of speculating in money affairs, and was, on several occasions, duped by persons or companies that professed to have de

vised some infallible plan for turning every thing to gold. Mr. Kennedy was not naturally a mercenary man; but his numerous expensive whims, during a series of years, had seriously injured his property, and led him eagerly to grasp at any thing that seemed to promise to reinstate him in his former comfortable circumstances. It will be concluded, by those who know any thing of life, that the expedient proved worse than the original difficulty. Happily, the estate could not be alienated from Mrs. Kennedy and her children, but it was clogged and impaired in every possible way; and I believe that, for years, while keeping up the appearance of wealth and gentility, that family knew straits to which the careful, prudent tradesman, or labouring man, is a stranger.

Among the many schemes eagerly adopted by this lover of novelty, he was one of the earliest and most zealous advocates of phrenology. As soon as it was broached, he received it, not with the spirit of candid examination and patient inquiry, but as a matter of absolute, universal, and infallible certainty, and fully expected that this science (for so he boldly denominated it, when at most it could but be regarded, by sober people, as a matter of interesting inquiry) was to work a most beneficial change on the face of society. He gravely said to my uncle that it would effectually guard us against imposition, and especially against admitting improper persons into our houses as domestics or friends, or in any family connexion; and that in all transactions of importance, he should think himself perfectly justified in claiming to examine the protuberances of the person in whom he was about to confide. He was exceedingly anxious to

make proselytes to this system: and, as he was repeatedly outvoted in his attempt to introduce to the reading society with which he and my uncle were connected, all publications treating on that subject, he purchased two sets at his own expense, gained over the secretary of the institution, and, through his instrumentality, put them in circulation through the society; allowing twice as many days for perusal as would have been assigned to any other books of the same size.

As to religion-I hope and believe that Mr. Kennedy was a good man, but here his native eccentricity was most unhappily displayed. He was one of whom it might justly be said, "Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel." In the course of his religious career, he touched at the various points of pharisaical rigidity and antinomian latitudinarianism: at one time, he maintained that human effort was every thing; at another, that by the absolute sovereignty of Divine grace, it was rendered absolutely needless. At one time, he was the eager partisan of some one of the various departments of pious labour, for the sake of which he neglected and deprecated all the rest; all funds, all exertions, not devoted to his favourite object, he considered misapplied. At another time, he thought all human efforts presumptuous interferences with the Divine purpose: if it pleased God to convert children, He could do so without parental instruction and discipline; if sinners were elected to salvation, they would be saved without ministers, missionaries, Bibles, tracts, and schools. It was in vain to argue with him that God had made it our duty to exercise the means, and that, though the efficacious blessing was at his own

sovereign disposal, it was usually bestowed on a diligent and humble employment of the appointed instrumentality; that though, doubtless, Omnipotence could carry on its own work without human effort, yet since that was, in mercy and condescension, employed, the honour ought to be earnestly desired, and the opportunity thankfully embraced, of being workers together with God. I cannot recollect his answers to these and similar arguments; but I know that, somehow or other, he contrived to reject them all. Of several popular preachers, very different in their scale of theological sentiments, and in their method of preaching, it might be said in succession, that at one time he would have plucked out his eyes for them; at another, that he regarded them as ignorant, misguided men, blind leaders of the blind.

He read a popular and able work on the covetousness and worldly-mindedness of Christian professors. He pronounced it the best book that ever was written; that it ought to be circulated universally, and its principles carried out to their widest extent and minutest details. In less than a year another book came out on the opposite side of the question; then that book was the very best, and the former was grossly erroneous. Equally versatile were his religious feelings; sometimes he laboured under most distressing apprehensions about his eternal salvation, lest he should not be among the elect. In vain was he urged to lay hold on the express and general invitations and promises of the gospel, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," Matt. xi. 28; "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth," Isa. xlv. 22; "Be