son well," said Burke. He was in all respects a finished man, a scholar, a philosopher, a gentleman, and, with a little practise, he would have become a consummate statesman. All the graces of the heart, all the endowments of the mind, were his in perfection. But human sorrowing is too limited, too hedged in by the interruptions of society, and the calls of life, for the greatness of such a loss. I could almost exclaim, with Cornelia, when she bewailed Pompey, (you know that fine passage in Lucan)

Turpe mori post te solo non posse dolore.'"

It is a remarkable circumstance that William Burke, whom parental idolatry had sketched as a being of the rarest perfections both of genius and understanding, was not a man of extraordinary powers. He was a truly sensible man, well read in the literature of a gentleman; but by no means entitled to such superlative panegyric. By his early death, therefore, Burke was spared the agony of seeing his son fall off from the promise of his youth, and the lofty and sanguine hopes of

his father. Such a disappointment would have been too much for a man of Burke's exquisite sensibility, and it would have inflicted upon him a species of sorrow, equally acute, and not softened by the tenderness and affection with which we mourn for those that are dear to us.

Mackintosh was as ungenially planted at Bombay, to the Recordership of which he went out in 1803, as Lord Erskine on the Chancery Bench, or Curran at the Rolls. A constitutional indolence, the master-vice of those who have arduous duties cast upon them, and important interests to protect, as well as an inaptitude for law in its confined and municipal sense, made him slow, dubious, and timid. In this respect he differed from Eldon, who hesitated from having too much law in his memory, and from being perplexed amongst too great a variety of analogies. The causes, therefore, particularly those in equity, were tediously protracted, and these delays, in a country, the jurisprudence of which recognizes it as a sacred maxim, that speedy injustice is better than tardy justice, were severely felt, and bitterly complained of.

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Nor did Sir James feel himself quite easy the society of the settlement. The European inhabitants were generally either civil servants of the Company, officers in the army, or commercial residents. They were unread and unscholarlike beings, and addicted, as all petty circles are, where the intellect is not in high cultivation, to those local gossipings, without which they could scarcely support the burthen of existence. Against these, Mackintosh waged unrelenting war; but the blockheads in all places are a powerful faction, and they had ultimately the best of it.

This made him fretful and impatient of his exile, and he reminded those who exhorted him to remain in the country till he had acquired a comfortable competency, of the feelings expressed by an eminent Roman, who was then in banishment, in reply to an exhortatory letter from Cicero, advising him to be patient, and to endure the inconveniences of exile with resignation. "You," said he, "are giving me these admonitions, not amidst the mountains of Thrace, but amidst the social delights and philosophical intercourses of Rome; how easy is it to give advice

to tolerate calamities, with which you are not yourself visited." It is certain, however, that Bombay, which is the worst of all our settlements in the East Indies, was far from being a pleasant residence to a man who had been so distinguished a member of the literary circles of the metropolis.

They used to tell an absurd anecdote of Mackintosh's occasional forgetfulness of the ordinary usages of the world, in which, it must be confessed, he was at all times a most inexpert student. Upon his first arrival at Bombay, Jonathan Duncan, the then governor, a quiet amiable man, and fearful to excess of giving offence, wishing to show the new judge every attention that was due to his station, and there being no house ready for the reception of Sir James and Lady Mackintosh, offered them the accommodation of his own garden-house in the island for a few days, till they could find a habitation to their own liking. Sir James accepted the polite offer, and the family took possession of Mr. Duncan's delightful villa. Months and months elapsed; but, the tenants found themselves so comfortable,

that they never dreamed of removing. After they had remained there a twelvemonth, with as much tranquillity as if they had been the absolute proprietors of the mansion, Mr. Duncan, who was himself desirous of inhabiting it, thinking that the recorder, through some mistake, had conceived it to be his own property, resolved to give him some intimation that it was not so; and in order, therefore, to exercise some act of ownership, he sent a man with orders to dig up a sack of potatoes in the garden, for the use of his own table. The man was seen by Lady Mackintosh from the veranda, who, convinced that he was purloining her vegetables, sent a posse of servants after him, to take away the potatoes, and turn out the trespasser. Mr. Duncan now thought that it was time to act with less delicacy or reserve. He wrote a note, accordingly, to Sir James and Lady Mackintosh, very politely assuring them, that the house and garden were his own property, and not that of Sir James or his lady. The hint was taken, and Jonathan re-entered into possession. There can be no doubt that the circumstance arose from pure mistake. Sir James