parting with him, I had an amusing proof, in my own experience, of that sort of ubiquity ascribed to him by a witty writer in the "London Magazine." I met him and shook hands with him under Somerset House, telling him that I should leave town that evening for Westmoreland. Thence I went, by the very shortest road (i. e., through Moor Street, Soho-for I am learned in many quarters of London), towards a point which necessarily led me through Tottenham Court Road: I stopped nowhere, and walked fast; yet so it was, that in Tottenham Court Road I was not overtaken by (that was comprehensible), but overtook, Walking Stewart. Certainly, as the above writer alleges, there must have been three Walking Stewarts in London. He seemed nowise surprised at this himself, but explained to me, that somewhere or other in the neighbourhood of Tottenham Court Road there was a little theatre, at which there was dancing, and occasionally good singing, between which and a neighbouring coffee-house he sometimes divided his evenings. Singing, it seems, he could hear in spite of his deafness. In this street I took my final leave of him; it turned out such; and anticipating at the time that it would, I looked after his white hat at the moment it was disappearing, and exclaimed, "Farewell, thou half-crazy and most eloquent of men! I shall never see thy face again." At that moment, I did not intend to visit London again for some years: as it happened, I was there for a short time in 1814; and then I heard, to my great satisfaction, that Walking Stewart had recovered a considerable sum (about £14,000, I believe) from the East India Company; and, from the abstract given in the "London Magazine" of the memoir by his relation, I have since learned that he applied this money most wisely to the purchase of an annuity, and that he "persisted in living"

too long for the peace of an annuity office. So fare all companies, East and West, and all annuity-offices, that stand opposed in interest to philosophers! In 1814, however, to my great regret, I did not see him; for I was then taking a great deal of opium, and never could contrive to issue to the light of day soon enough for a morning-call upon a philosopher of such early hours; and in the even ing, I concluded that he would be generally abroad, from what he had formerly communicated to me of his own habits. It seems, however, that he afterwards held conversaziones at his own rooms, and did not stir out to theatres quite so much. From a brother of mine, who at one time occupied rooms in the same house with him, I learned that, in other respects, he did not deviate in his prosperity from the philosophic tenor of his former life. He abated nothing of his peripatetic exercises; and repaired duly in the morning, as he had done in former years, to St James's Park, where he sat in trance-like reverie amongst the cows, inhaling their balmy breath and pursuing his philosophic speculations. He had also purchased an organ, or more than one, with which he solaced his solitude, and beguiled himself of uneasy thoughts, if he ever had any.

The works of Walking Stewart must be read with some indulgence; the titles are generally too lofty and pretending, and somewhat extravagant; the composition is lax and unprecise, as I have before said; and the doctrines are occasionally very bold, incautiously stated, and too hardy and high-toned for the nervous effeminacy of many modern moralists. But Walking Stewart was a man who thought nobly of human nature: he wrote, therefore, at times, in the spirit and with the indignation of an ancient prophet against the oppressors and destroyers of the time. In

particular, I remember that, in one or more of the pain phlets which I received from him at Grasmere, he expressed himself in such terms on the subject of Tyrannicide (distinguishing the cases in which it was and was not lawful) as seemed to Wordsworth and myself every way worthy of a philosopher; but, from the way in which that subject was treated in the House of Commons, where it was at that time occasionally introduced, it was plain that his doctrine was not fitted for the luxurious and relaxed morals of the age. Like all men who think nobly of human nature, Walking Stewart thought of it hopefully. In some respects his hopes were wisely grounded; in others, they rested too much upon certain metaphysical speculations which are untenable, and which satisfied himself only, because his researches in that track had been purely selforiginated and self-disciplined. He relied upon his own native strength of mind; but, in questions which the wisdom and philosophy of every age, building successively upon each other, have not been able to settle, no mind, however strong, is entitled to build wholly upon itself In many things he shocked the religious sense-especially as it exists in unphilosophic minds: he held a sort of rude and unscientific Spinosism; and he expressed it coarsely, and in the way most likely to give offence. And indeed there can be no stronger proof of the utter obscurity in which his works have slumbered, than that they should all have escaped prosecution. He also allowed himself to look too lightly and indulgently on the afflicting spectacle of female prostitution as it exists in London and in all great cities. This was the only point on which I was disposed to quarrel with him; for I could not but view it as a greater reproach to human nature than the slave-trade, or any sight of wretchedness that the sun looks down upor.

I often told him so; and that I was at a loss to guess how a philosopher could allow himself to view it simply as part of the equipage of civil life, and not less reasonably making part of the establishment and furniture of a great city as policeoffices, lamp-lighting, or newspapers. Waiving, however, this one instance of something like compliance with the brutal spirit of the world, on all other subjects he was eminently unworldly, child-like, simple-minded, and upright. He would flatter no man: even when addressing nations, it is almost laughable to see how invariably he prefaces his counsels with such plain truths, uttered in a manner so offensive as must have defeated his purpose, if it had otherwise any chance of being accomplished. For instance, in addressing America, he begins thus:—" People of America! since your separation from the mother-country, your moral character has degenerated in the energy of thought and sense; produced by the absence of your association and intercourse with British officers and merchants: you have no moral discernment to distinguish between the protective power of England and the destructive power of France." And his letter to the Irish nation opens in this agreeable and conciliatory manner:- People of Ireland! I address you as a true philosopher of nature, foreseeing the perpetual misery your irreflective character, and total absence of moral discernment, are preparing for," &c. The second sentence begins thus: "You are sacrilegiously arresting the arm of your parent kingdom, fighting the cause of man and nature, when the triumph of the fiend of French policeterror would be your own instant extirpation." And the letter closes thus: "I see but one awful alternative— that Ireland will be a perpetual moral volcano, threatening the destruction of the world, if the education and in struction of thought and sense shall not be able to gene

rate the faculty of moral discernment among a very numerous class of the population, who detest the civic calm as sailors the natural calm, and make civic rights on which they cannot reason a pretext for feuds which they delight in." As he spoke freely and boldly to others, so he spoke loftily of himself. At p. 313 of the "Harp of Apollo," on making a comparison of himself with Socrates (in which he naturally gives the preference to himself), he styles the "Harp," &c., "this unparalleled work of human energy." At p. 315, he calls it "this stupendous work;" and lower down, on the same page, he says, "I was turned

out of school, at the age of fifteen, for a dunce or blockhead, because I would not stuff into my memory all the nonsense of erudition and learning; and if future ages should discover the unparalleled energies of genius in this work, it will prove my most important doctrine—that the powers of the human mind must be developed in the education of thought and sense in the study of moral opinion, not arts and science." Again, at p. 225 of his "Sophiometer," he says, "The paramount thought that dwells in my mind incessantly is a question I put to myself—whether, in the event of my personal dissolution by death, I have communicated all the discoveries my unique mind possesses in the great master-science of man and nature." In the next page, he determines that he has, with the exception of one truth-viz., "the latent energy, physical and moral, of human nature as existing in the British people." But here he was surely accusing himself without ground; for, to my knowledge, he has not failed, in any one of his numerous works, to insist upon this theme at least a billion of times. Another instance of his magnificent self-estimation is, that in the title-pages of several of his works he announces himself as "John