Biog. -) WALKING STEWART. He was a man of very extraordinary genius. He has and expressed the union of benignity with philosophic habits of thought. In such health had his pedestrian exercises preserved him, connected with his abstemious mode of living, that, though he must at that time have been considerably above forty, he did not look older than twentyeight; at least the face which remained upon my recollection for some years was that of a young man. Nearly ten years afterwards I became acquainted with him. During the interval, I had picked up one of his works in Bristol -viz., his "Travels to discover the Source of Moral Mo.. tion," the second volume of which is entitled, "The Apocalypse of Nature." I had been greatly impressed by the sound and original views which, in the first volume, he had taken of the national characters throughout Europe. In particular, he was the first, and, so far as I know, the only writer who had noticed the profound error of ascribing a phlegmatic character to the English nation. "English phlegm" is the constant expression of authors, when contrasting the English with the French. Now, the truth is, that, beyond that of all other nations, it has a substratum of profound passion: and if we are to recur to the old doctrine of temperaments, the English character must be classed, not under the phlegmatic, but under the melancholic, temperament; and the French under the sanguine. The character of a nation may be judged of, in this particular, by examining its idiomatic language. The French, in whom the lower forms of passion are constantly bubbling up from the shallow and superficial character of their feelings, have appropriated all the phrases of passion to the service of trivial and ordinary life: and hence they have no language of passion for the service of poetry, or of occasions really demanding it: for it has been already enfeebled by continual association with cases of an unim passioned order. But a character of deeper passion has a perpetual standard in itself, by which, as by an instinct, it tries all cases, and rejects the language of passion as disproportionate and ludicrous where it is not fully justified. "Ah Heavens!" or 66 Oh my God!" are exclamations, with us, so exclusively reserved for cases of profound interest, that, on hearing a woman even (i. e., a person of the sex most easily excited) utter such words, we look round, expecting to see her child in some situation of danger. But in France, "Ah Ciel!" and "Oh mon Dieu!” are uttered by every woman if a mouse does but run across the floor. The ignorant and the thoughtless, however, will continue to class the English character under the phlegmatic temperament, whilst the philosopher will perceive that it is the exact polar antithesis to a phlegmatic character. In this conclusion, though otherwise expressed and illustrated, Walking Stewart's view of the English character will be found to terminate: and his opinion is especially valuable-first, and chiefly, because he was a philosopher; secondly, because his acquaintance with man, civilised and uncivilised, under all national distinctions, was absolutely unrivalled. Meantime, this and others of his opinions were expressed in language that, if literally construed, would often appear insane or absurd. The truth is, his long intercourse with foreign nations had given something of a hybrid tincture to his diction; in some of his works, for instance, he uses the French word hélas! uniformly for the English alas! and apparently with no consciousness of his mistake. He had also this singularity about him, that he was everlastingly metaphysicising against metaphysics. To me, who was buried in metaphysical reveries from my earliest days, this was not likely to be an attraction, any more than the vicious structure of his diction was likely to please my scholar-like taste. All grounds of disgust, however, gave way before my sense of his powerful merits; and, as I have said, I sought his acquaintance. Coming up to London from Oxford about 1807 or 1808, I made inquiries about him; and found that he usually read the papers at a coffee-room in Piccadilly: understanding that he was poor, it struck me that he might not wis! . to receive visits at his lodgings, and therefore I sought him at the coffee-room. Here I took the liberty of introducing myself to him. He received me courteously, and invited me to his rooms, which at that time were in Sherrard Street, Golden Square -a street already memorable to me. I was much struck with the eloquence of his conversation; and afterwards I found that Mr Wordsworth, himself the most eloquent of men in conversation, had been equally struck, when he had met him at Paris between the years 1790 and 1792, during the early storms of the French Revolution. In Sherrard Street I visited him repeatedly, and took notes of the conversations I had with him on various subjects. These I must have somewhere or other; and I wish I could introduce them here, as they would interest the reader. Occasionally, in these conversations, as in his books, he introduced a few notices of his private history: in particular, I remember his telling me that in the East Indies he had been a prisoner of Hyder's; that he had escaped with some difficulty; and that, in the service of one of the native princes as secretary or interpreter, he had accumulated a small fortune. This must have been too small, I fear, at that time to allow him even a philosopher's comforts: for some part of it, invested in the French funds, had been confiscated. I was grieved to see a man of so much ability, of gentlemanly manners and refined habits, and with the infirmity of deafness, suffering under such obvious priva tions; and I once took the liberty, on a fit occasion presenting itself, of requesting that he would allow me to send him some books which he had been casually regretting that he did not possess for I was at that time in the heyday of my worldly prosperity. This offer, however, he declined with firmness and dignity, though not unkindly. And I now mention it, because I have seen him charged in print with a selfish regard to his own pecuniary interest. On the contrary, he appeared to me a very liberal and generous man: and I well remember that, whilst on his own part he refused to accept of anything, he compelled me to receive as presents all the books which he published during my acquaintance with him. Two of these, corrected with his own hand-viz., the "Lyre of Apollo," and the "Sophiometer "I have lately found amongst other books left in London; and others he forwarded to me in Westmoreland. In 1809 I saw him often. In the spring of that year I happened to be in London; and Wordsworth's tract on the Convention of Cintra being at that time in the printer's hands, I superintended the publication of it; and, at Wordsworth's request, I added a long note on Spanish affairs, which is printed in the Appendix. The opinions I expressed in this note on the Spanish character, at that time much calumniated on the retreat to Corunna, then fresh in the public mind, above all, the contempt I expressed for the superstition in respect to the French military prowess-a superstition so dishonouring to ourselves, and so mischievous in its results-which was then at its height, and which gave way, in fact, only to the campaigns of 1814 and 1815, fell in, as it happened, with Mr Stewart's political creed in those points where at that time it met with most opposition. In 1812 it was, I think, that I saw him for the last time: and, by the way, on the day of my |