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could not misrepresent, nor exaggerate. In questions of passion and party, he stated facts as they were, and reasoned fairly upon them, placing his happiness and pride in equitable discrimination. Very fond of talking, he heard patiently, and, not averse to intellectual display, did not forget that others might have the same

inclination as himself.

Till subdued by age and illness, his conversation was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human being I ever had the good fortune to be acquainted with. His memory (vast and prodigious as it was) he so managed as to make it a source of pleasure and instruction, rather than that dreadful engine of colloquial oppression into which it is sometimes erected. He remembered things, words, thoughts, dates, and everything that was wanted. His language was beautiful, and might have gone from the fireside to the press; but though his ideas were always clothed in beautiful language, the clothes were sometimes too big for the body, and common thoughts were dressed in better and larger apparel than they deserved. He certainly had this fault, but it was not one of frequent commission.

Curran, the master of the rolls, said to Mr. Grattan, "You would be the greatest man of your age, Grattan, if you would buy a few yards of red tape, and tie up your bills and papers." This was the fault or misfortune of Sir James Mackintosh; he never knew the use of red tape, and was utterly unfit for the common business of life. That a guinea represented a quantity of shillings, and that it would barter for a quantity of cloth, he was well aware; but the accurate number of the baser coin, or the just measurement of the manufactured article, to which he was entitled for his gold, he could never learn, and it was impossible to teach him. Hence his life was often an example of the ancient and melancholy struggle of genius with the difficulties of existence.

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He had very little science, and no great knowledge of physics. His notions of his early pursuit-the study of medicine were imperfect and antiquated, and he was but an indifferent classical scholar, for the Greek language has never crossed the Tweed in any great force. In history the whole stream of time was open before him; he had looked into every moral and metaphysical question from Plato to Paley, and had waded through morasses of international law, where the step of no living man could follow him.

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A high merit in Sir James Mackintosh was his real and unaffected philanthropy. He did not make the improvement of the great mass of mankind an engine of popularity, and a steppingstone to power, but he had a genuine love of human happiness.

Whatever might assuage the angry passions, and arrange the conflicting interests of nations; whatever could promote peace, increase knowledge, extend commerce, diminish crime, and encourage industry; whatever could exalt human character, and could enlarge human understanding-struck at once at his heart, and roused all his faculties. I have seen him in a moment when this spirit came upon him-like a great ship of war-cut his cable, and spread his enormous canvass, and launch into a wide sea of reasoning eloquence.

THE CURSE OF WAR.

A second great object which I hope will be impressed upon the mind of this royal lady is a rooted horror of war-an earnest and passionate desire to keep her people in a state of profound peace. The greatest curse which can be entailed upon mankind is a state of war. All the atrocious crimes committed in years of peace-all that is spent in peace by the secret corruptions, or by the thoughtless extravagance of nations, are mere trifles compared with the gigantic evils which stalk over the world in a state of war. God is forgotten in war-every principle of Christian charity trampled upon-human labor destroyed-human industry extinguished; you see the son and the husband and the brother dying miserably in distant lands-you see the waste of human affections you see the breaking of human hearts-you hear the shrieks of widows and children after the battle-and you walk over the mangled bodies of the wounded calling for death. I would say to that royal child, worship God, by loving peace-it is not your humanity to pity a beggar by giving him food or raiment-I can do that; that is the charity of the humble and the unknown-widen you your heart for the more expanded miseries of mankind-pity the mothers of the peasantry who see their sons torn away from their families-pity your poor subjects crowded into hospitals, and calling in their last breath upon their distant country and their young queen-pity the stupid, frantic folly of human beings who are always ready to tear each other to pieces, and to deluge the earth with each other's blood; this is your extended humanity-and this the great field of your compassion. Extinguish in your heart the fiendish love of military glory, from which your sex does not necessarily exempt you, and to which the wickedness of flatterers may urge you. Say upon your death-bed, "I have made few orphans in my reign-I have

made few widows-my object has been peace. I have used all the weight of my character, and all the power of my situation, to check the irascible passions of mankind, and to turn them to the arts of honest industry: this has been the Christianity of my throne, and this the Gospel of my sceptre; in this way I have strove to worship my Redeemer and my Judge."

From a Letter to the Queen on her accession to the throne.

Of his keen wit, and of the manner in which he "did up" authors, the following is a fine specimen. It is the very shortest review in the whole eighty-five volumes of the "Edinburgh Review," and I give it entire. It is a notice of the "Anniversary Sermon of the Royal Humane Society, by W. Langford, D.D."

An accident which happened to the gentleman engaged in reviewing this Sermon proves, in the most striking manner, the importance of this charity for restoring to life persons in whom the vital power is suspended. He was discovered, with Dr. Langford's discourse lying open before him, in a state of the most profound sleep; from which he could not, by any means, be awakened for a great length of time. By attending, however, to the rules prescribed by the Humane Society, flinging in the smoke of tobacco, applying hot flannels, and carefully removing the discourse itself to a great distance, the critic was restored to his disconsolate brothers.

The only account he could give of himself was that he remembers reading on, regularly, till he came to the following pathetic description of a drowned tradesman; beyond which he recollects nothing.

"But to the individual himself, as a man, let us add the interruption to all the temporal business in which his interest was engaged. To him indeed, now apparently lost, the world is as nothing: but it seldom happens, that man can live for himself alone: society parcels out its concerns in various connections; and from one head issue waters which run down in many channels. The spring being suddenly cut off, what confusion must follow in the streams which have flowed from its source? It may be, that all the expectations reasonably raised of approaching prosperity, to those who have embarked in the same occupation, may at once disappear; and the important interchange of commercial faith be broken off before it could be brought to any advantageous conclusion."

This extract will suffice for the style of the sermon. The charity itself is above all praise.

The following extract from "Peter Plymley's Letters" is a fine specimen of his inimitable wit in ridiculing the idea, then prevalent, that a conspiracy, headed by the pope, had been formed against the Protestant religion:

CONSPIRACY OF THE POPE.

The pope has not landed-nor are there any curates sent out after him-nor has he been hid at St. Albans by the Dowager Lady Spencer-nor dined privately at Holland House-nor been seen near Dropmore. If these fears exist (which I do not believe), they exist only in the mind of the chancellor of the exchequer [the late Mr. Spencer Perceval]; they emanate from his zeal for the Protestant interest; and though they reflect the highest honor upon the delicate irritability of his faith, must certainly be considered as more ambiguous proofs of the sanity and vigor of his understanding. By this time, however, the best-informed clergy in the neighborhood of the metropolis are convinced that the rumor is without foundation: and though the pope is probably hovering about our coast in a fishing-smack, it is most likely he will fall a prey to the vigilance of the cruisers: and it is certain he has not yet polluted the Protestantism of our soil. Exactly in the same manner the story of the wooden gods seized at Charing Cross, by an order from the Foreign Office, turns out to be without the shadow of a foundation: instead of the angels and archangels mentioned by the informer, nothing was discovered but a wooden image of Lord Mulgrave going down to Chatham as a head-piece for the Spanker gun-vessel: it was an exact resemblance of his lordship in his military uniform; and therefore as little like a god as can well be imagined.

In a similar vein he holds up, in a manner highly ludicrous and amusing, the fears entertained by England of a French invasion. He is arguing that, notwithstanding these fears, the British rulers neglected the obvious means of self-defence against

THE FRENCH INVASION.

As for the spirit of the peasantry in making a gallant defence behind hedgerows, and through plate-racks and hencoops, highly as I think of their bravery, I do not know any nation in Europe so likely to be struck with panic as the English; and this from their total unacquaintance with sciences of war. Old wheat and beans blazing for twenty miles round; cart mares shot; sows of Lord Somerville's breed running wild over the country; the minister of the parish wounded sorely in his hinder parts; Mrs. Plymley in fits; all these scenes of war an Austrian or a Russian

has seen three or four times over: but it is now three centuries since an English pig has fallen in a fair battle upon English ground, or a farm-house been rifled, or a clergyman's wife been subjected to any other proposals of love than the connubial endearments of her sleek and orthodox mate. The old edition of Plutarch's Lives, which lies in the corner of your parlor window, has contributed to work you up to the most romantic expectations of our Roman behavior. You are persuaded that Lord Amherst will defend Kew Bridge like Cocles; that some maid of honor will break away from her captivity and swim over the Thames; that the Duke of York will burn his capitulating hand; and little Mr. Sturges Bourne give forty years' purchase for Moulsham Hall while the French are encamped upon it. I hope we shall witness all this, if the French do come; but in the mean time I am so enchanted with the ordinary English behavior of these invaluable persons, that I earnestly pray no opportunity may be given them for Roman valor, and for those very un-Roman pensions which they would all, of course, take especial care to claim in consequence.

In a speech delivered in Taunton, in 1831, he thus ridicules the attempt of the lords to stop the

PROGRESS OF REFORM.

I do not mean to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the lords to stop the progress of reform reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of Sidmouth, and of the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824 there set in a great flood upon that town-the tide rose to an incredible height -the waves rushed in upon the houses-and everything was threatened with destruction. In the midst of this sublime storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, and squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused. Mrs. Partington's spirit was up; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest.

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