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Sketches of Contemporary Authors, Statesmen, &c.-No. VIII.

He could no more; but stooping down
He clasped her to his soul,
And from the honey of her lips
A rapturous kiss he stole :

As hill-deer bound from bugle sound,
Swerved Mhairi from her rest:

It could not be: Oh yes! 'twas he-
She sank on Donald's breast.

What boots to tell what then befell,

Or how, in bridal mirth,

27

Young and old did bound to music's sound,
Beside that simple hearth;

Or how the festal cup was drained
On mountain-side and plain,
To the healths of Mhairi Macintyre
And faithful Donald Bane!

SKETCHES OF CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS, STATESMEN, &c.

No. VIII. THE LATE DUGALD STEWART.

DUGALD STEWART was the only son who survived the age of infancy, of Dr. Matthew Stewart, professor of mathematics in the University of Edinburgh. He was born in the College of Edinburgh, on the 22d of November, 1753, and his health, during the first period of his life, was so feeble and precarious, that it was with more than the ordinary anxiety and solicitude of parents that his infancy was reared. At the age of seven he was sent to the High School, where he distinguished himself by the quickness and accuracy of his apprehension; and where the singular felicity and spirit with which he caught and transfused into his own language the ideas of the classical writers, attracted the particular remarks of his instructers. Having completed the customary course of education at this seminary, he was entered as a student at the College of Edinburgh. In October, 1771, he was deprived of his mother, and he, almost immediately after her death, removed to Glasgow, where Dr. Reid was then teaching those principles of metaphysics which it was the great object of his pupil's life to inculcate and to expand. After attending one course of lectures at this seat of learning, the prosecution of his favorite studies was interrupted by the declining state of his father's health, which' compelled him, in the autumn of the following year, before he had reached the age of nineteen, to undertake the task of teaching the mathematical classes. With what success he was able to fulfil this duty, was sufficiently evinced by the event; for with all Dr. Matthew Stewart's well-merited ce

lebrity, the number of students considerably increased under his son. As soon as he had completed his twentyfirst year, he was appointed assistant and successor to his father, and in this capacity he continued to conduct the mathematical studies in the University, till his father's death, in the year 1785, when he was nominated to the vacant chair. Although this continued, however, to be his ostensible situation in the University, his avocations were more varied. In the year 1778, during which Dr. Adam Ferguson accompanied the commissioners to America, he undertook to supply his place in the moral philosophy class; a labor that was the more overwhelming, as he had for the first time given notice, a short time before his assistance was requested, of his intention to add a course of lectures on astronomy to the two classes which he taught as professor of mathematics. Such was the extraordinary fertility of his mind, and the facility with which it adapted its powers to such inquiries, that although the proposal was made to him and accepted on Thursday, he commenced the course of metaphysics the following Monday, and continued during the whole of the season to think out and arrange in his head in the morning (while walking backwards and forwards in a small garden attached to his father's house in the college,) the matter of the lecture of the day. The ideas with which he had thus stored his mind, he poured forth extempore in the course of the forenoon, with an eloquence and a felicity of illustration surpassing in energy and vivacity (as those who have

heard him have remarked) the more logical and better-digested expositions of his philosophical views, which he used to deliver in his maturer years. The difficulty of speaking for an hour extempore, every day, on a new subject, for five or six months, is not small but when superadded to the mental exertion of teaching also, daily, two classes of mathematics, and of delivering, for the first time, a course of lectures on astronomy, it may justly be considered as a very singular instance of intellectual vigor. To this season he always referred as the most laborious of his life; and such was the exhaustion of the body, from the intense and continued stretch of the mind, that, on his departure for London, at the close of the academical session, it was necessary to lift him into the carriage.

In the summer of 1783 he visited the continent for the first time. On his return from Paris, in the autumn of the same year, he married Helen Bannatine, a daughter of Neil Bannatine, Esq. a merchant in Glasgow.

In the year 1785, during which Dr. Matthew Stewart's death occurred, the health of Dr. Ferguson rendered it expedient for him to discontinue his official labors in the University, and he accordingly effected an exchange of offices with Mr. Stewart, who was transferred to the class of moral philosophy, while Dr. Ferguson retired on the salary of mathematical profes

sor.

In the year 1787, Mr. Stewart was deprived of his wife by death; and, the following summer, he again visited the continent, in company with the late Mr. Ramsay of Barnton. These slight indications of the progress of the ordinary occurrences of human life, must suffice to convey to the reader an idea of the connexion of events up to the period when Mr. Stewart entered on that sphere of action in which he laid the foundation of the great reputation which he acquired as a moralist and a metaphysician. His Writings are before the world, and from them posterity may be safely left to form an estimate of

the excellence of his style of composition-of the extent and variety of his learning and scientific attainments of the singular cultivation and refinement of his mind-of the purity and elegance of his taste-of his warm relish for moral and for natural beauty of his enlightened benevolence to all mankind, and of the generous ardor with which he devoted himself to the improvement of the human species-of all of which, while the English language endures, his works will continue to preserve the indelible evidence. But of one part of his fame no memorial will remain but in the recollection of those who have witnessed his exertions. As a public speaker, he was justly entitled to rank among the very first of his day; and, had an adequate sphere been afforded for the display of his oratorical powers, his merit in this line alone would have sufficed to secure him a lasting reputation. Among those who have attracted the highest admiration in the senate and at the bar, there are still many living who will bear testimony to his extraordinary eloquence. The ease, the grace, and the dignity of his action; the compass and harmony of his voice, its flexibility and variety of intonation, the truth with which its modulation responded to the impulse of his feelings and the sympathetic emotions of his audience; the clear and perspicuous arrangement of his matter; the swelling and uninterrupted flow of his periods; and the rich stores of ornament which he used to borrow from the literature of Greece and of Rome, of France and of England, and to interweave with his spoken thoughts, with the most apposite application,— were perfections not any of them possessed in superior degree by any of the most celebrated orators of the age; nor do I believe that in any of the great speakers of the time (and I have heard them all), they were to an equal extent united. His own opinions were maintained without any overweening partiality; his eloquence came so warm from the heart, was rendered so impressive by the evidence which

it bore of the love of truth, and was so free from all controversial acrimony, that what has been remarked of the purity of purpose which inspired the speeches of Brutus, might justly be applied to all that he spoke and wrote; for he seemed only to wish, without further reference to others than a candid discrimination of their errors rendered necessary, simply and ingenuously to disclose to the world the conclusions to which his reason had led him. In 1790, after being three years a widower, he married Helen d'Arcy Cranstoun, a daughter of the Honorable George Cranstoun, -a union to which he owed much of the subsequent happiness of his life. About this time it would appear to have been that he first began to arrange some of his metaphysical papers with a view to publication. At what period he deliberately set himself to think systematically on these subjects is uncertain. That his mind had been habituated to such reflections from a very early period is sufficiently known. He frequently alluded to the speculations that occupied his boyish and even his infant thoughts; and the success of his logical and metaphysical studies at Edinburgh, and the Essay on Dreaming, which forms part of the first volume of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, composed while a student at the College of Glasgow in 1772, at the age of eighteen, are proofs of the strong natural bias which he possessed for such pursuits. It is probable, however, that he did not follow out the inquiry as a train of thought, or commit many of his ideas to writing, before his appointment in 1785 to the professorship of moral philosophy gave a necessary and steady direction to his investigation of metaphysical truth. In the year 1792 he first appeared before the public as an author, at which time the first volume of the Philosophy of the Human Mind was given to the world. While engaged in this work he had contracted the obligation of writing the Life of Adam Smith, the author of the Wealth of Nations; and very soon after he

The

had disembarrassed himself of his own labors, he fulfilled the task which he had undertaken. In the course of 1793 he published the Outlines of Moral Philosophy. In March 1796 he read before the Royal Society his account of the Life and Writings of Dr. Robertson, and in 1802 that of the Life and Writings of Dr. Reid. By these publications alone he continued to be known as an author, till the appearance of his volume of Philosophical Essays in 1810;-a work to which a melancholy interest attaches in the estimation of his friends, from the knowledge that it was in the devotion of his mind to this occupation that he sought a diversion to his thoughts from the affliction he experienced in the death of his second and youngest son. Although, however, the fruits of his studies were not given to the world, the process of intellectual exertion was unremitted. leading branches of metaphysics had become so familiar to his mind, that the lectures which he delivered very generally extempore, and which varied more or less in the language and matter every year, seemed to cost him little effort; and he was thus left in a great degree at liberty to apply the larger part of his day to the prosecution of his farther speculations. Although he had read more than most of those who are considered learned, his life, as he has himself somewhere remarked, was spent much more in reflecting than in reading; and so unceasing was the activity of his mind, and so strong his disposition to trace all subjects of speculation that were worthy to attract his interest up to their first principles, that all important objects and occurrences furnished fresh matter to his thoughts. The political events of the time suggested many of his inquiries into the principles of political economy;-his reflections on his occasional tours through the country, many of his speculations on the picturesque, the beautiful, and the sublime;-and the study of the characters of his friends and acquaintances, and of remarkable individuals

with whom he happened to be thrown into contact, many of his most profound observations on the sources of the varieties and anomalies of human nature. The year after the death of his son, he relinquished his chair in the university, and removed to Kinneil House, a seat belonging to his grace the Duke of Hamilton, on the banks of the Firth of Forth, about twenty miles from Edinburgh, where he spent the remainder of his days in philosophical retirement. From this place were dated, in succession, the Philosophical Essays in 1810; the second volume of the Philosophy of the Human Mind in 1813; the Preliminary Dissertation to the Encyclopædia; the continuation of the second part of the Philosophy in 1827; and finally, in 1828, the third volume, containing the Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man,-a work which he completed only a few short weeks before his career was to close forever.

Here he continued to be visited by his friends, and by most foreigners who could procure an introduction to his acquaintance, till the month of January 1822, when a stroke of palsy, which nearly deprived him of the power of utterance, in a great measure incapacitated him for the enjoyment of any other society than that of a few intimate friends, in whose company he felt no constraint. This great calamity, which bereaved him of the faculty of speech, of the power of exercise, of the use of his right hand,— which reduced him to a state of almost infantile dependence on those around him, and subjected him ever after to a most abstemious regimen,he bore with the most dignified fortitude and tranquillity. The malady which broke his health and constitution for the rest of his existence, happily impaired neither any of the faculties of his mind, nor the characteristic vigor and activity of his understanding, which enabled him to rise superior to the misfortune. As soon as his strength was sufficiently reestablished, he continued to pursue his studies with his wonted assiduity, to pre

pare his works for the press with the assistance of his daughter as an amanuensis, and to avail himself with cheerful and unabated relish of all the sources of gratification which it was still within his power to enjoy, exhibiting, among some of the heaviest infirmities incident to age, an admirable example of the serene sunset of a well spent life of classical elegance and refinement. In general company his manner bordered on reserve; but it was the comitate condita gravitas, and belonged more to the general weight and authority of his character, than to any reluctance to take his share in the cheerful intercourse of social life. He was ever ready to acknowledge with a smile the happy sallies of wit; and no man had a keener sense of the ludicrous, or laughed more heartily at genuine humor. His deportment and expression were casy and unembarrassed, dignified, elegant, and graceful. His politeness was equally free from all affectation and from all premeditation; it was the spontaneous result of the purity of his own taste, and of a heart warm with all the benevolent affections, and was characterised by a truth and readiness of tact that accommodated his conduct with undeviating propriety to the circumstances of the present moment, and to the relative situation of those to whom he addressed himself. From an early period of life he had frequented the best society both in France and in this country, and he had in a peculiar degree the air of good company. In the society of ladies he appeared to great advantage; and to women of cultivated understanding his conversation was particularly acceptable and pleasing. The immense range of his erudition, the attention he had bestowed on almost every branch of philosophy, his extensive acquaintance with every department of elegant literature, ancient or modern, and the fund of anecdote and information which he had collected in the course of his intercourse with the world, with respect to almost all the eminent men of the day, either in this country or in France, enabled him

to find suitable subjects for the entertainment of the great variety of visiters of all descriptions who at one period frequented his house. In his domestic circle his character appeared in its most amiable light, and by his family he was beloved and venerated almost to adoration. So uniform and sustained was the tone of his manners, and so completely was it the result of the habitual influence of the natural elegance and elevation of his mind on his external demeanor, that when alone with his wife and children, it hardly differed by a shade from that which he maintained in the company of strangers; for although his fondness, and familiarity, and playfulness, were alike engaging and unrestrained, he never lost anything either of his

grace or his dignity. As a writer of the English language,-as a public speaker,-as an original, a profound, and a cautious thinker,-as an expounder of truth,—as an instructer of youth, as an elegant scholar,—as an accomplished gentleman; in the exemplary discharge of the social duties, in uncompromising consistency and rectitude of principle,-in unbending independence, in the warmth and tenderness of his domestic affections, —in sincere and unostentatious piety, in the purity and innocence of his life,-few have excelled him; and, take him for all in all, it will be difficult to find a man who to so many of the perfections has added so few of the imperfections of human nature.

SCEPTIC, go to the Royal Exchange
almost any morning that you please,
and among some score of persons,
whose appearance will not very great-
ly elevate your notions of the dignity
and grace of human nature, you will
see one, whose face and figure
alike baffle your powers of description;
and his whole man and manner make
you instinctively repeat the vulgar
tetrastich,-

"I do not like thee, Doctor Fell,
The reason why, I cannot tell :
The fact itself I feel full well-
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell."

MR. ROTHSCHILD, THE LONDON BANKER.
that of the skin of a
dead frog.
There is a rigidity and tension in the
features, too, which would make you
fancy, if you did not see that that
were not the fact, that some one from
behind was pinching it with a pair of
hot tongs, and that it were either
ashamed or afraid to tell. Eyes are
usually denominated the windows of
the soul; but here you would conclude
that the windows are false ones, or
that there is no soul to look out at
them. There comes not one pencil
of light from the interior, neither is
there one scintillation of that which
comes from without reflected in any
direction. The whole puts you in
mind of "a skin to let ;" and you
wonder why it stands upright, without
at least something within. By and
by another figure comes up to it. It
then steps two paces aside, and the
most inquisitive glance that ever you
saw, and a glance more inquisitive
than you would have thought of, is
drawn slowly out of the erewhile fix-
ed and leaden eye, as if one were
drawing a sword from a scabbard.
The visiting figure, which has the ap-
pearance of coming by accident and

The thing before you stands cold, motionless, and apparently speculationless as the pillar of salt into which the avaricious spouse of the Patriarch was turned; and while you start with wonder at what it can be or mean, you pursue the association, and think upon the fire and brimstone that were rained down. It is a human being of no very Apollo-like form or face. Short, squat, with its shoulders drawn up to its ears, and its hands delved into its breeches-pockets. The hue of its face is a mixture of brickdust and saffron, and the texture seems

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