particular, I remember that, in one or more of the pamphlets 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 upon.

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 alternativethat 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

Stewart, the only man of nature* that ever appeared in the world."

By this time I am afraid the reader begins to suspect that he was crazy: and certainly, when I consider everything, he must have been crazy when the wind was at NNE; for who but Walking Stewart ever dated his books by a computation drawn-not from the creation, not from the flood, not from Nabonassar, or ab urbe conditâ, not from the Hegira-but from themselves, from their own day of publication, as constituting the one great era in the history of man by the side of which all other eras were frivolous and impertinent? Thus, in a work of his, given to me in 1812, and probably published in that year, I find him incidentally recording of himself that he was at that time "arrived at the age of sixty-three, with a firm state of health acquired by temperance, and a peace of mind almost independent of the vices of mankind-because my knowledge of life has enabled me to place my happiness beyond the reach or contact of other men's follies and passions, by avoiding all family connections, and all ambitious pursuits of profit, fame, or power." On reading this passage, I was anxious to ascertain its date; but this, on turning to the title-page, I found thus mysteriously expressed: "In the 7000th year of Astronomical History, and the first day of Intellectual Life or Moral World, from the era of this work." Another slight indication of craziness appeared in a notion which obstinately haunted his mind, that all the kings and rulers of the earth would

* In Bath he was surnamed the "Child of Nature;" which arose from his contrasting, on every occasion, the existing man of our present experience with the ideal or Stewartian man that might be expected to emerge in some myriads of ages-to which latter man he gave the name of the Child of Nature.

confederate in every age against his works, and would hunt them out for extermination as keenly as Herod did the innocents of Bethlehem. On this consideration, fearing that they might be intercepted by the long arms of these wicked princes before they could reach that remote Stewartian man or his precursor to whom they were mainly addressed, he recommended to all those who might be impressed with a sense of their importance to bury a copy or copies of each work, properly secured from damp, &c., at a depth of seven or eight feet below the surface of the earth; and on their death-beds to communicate the knowledge of this fact to some confidential friends, who, in their turn, were to send down the tradition to some discreet persons of the next generation; and thus, if the truth was not to be dispersed for many ages, yet the knowledge that here and there the truth lay buried on this and that continent, in secret spots on Mount Caucasus-in the sands of Biledulgerid—and in hiding-places amongst the forests of America, and was to rise again in some distant age, and to vegetate and fructify for the universal benefit of man,this knowledge at least was to be whispered down from generation to generation; and, in defiance of a myriad of kings crusading against him, Walking Stewart was to stretch out the influence of his writings through a long series of Xaμπadnpogos* to that child of nature whom he saw dimly through a vista of many centuries. If this were

* “λapτadnpogos :”-Lamp or torch bearers, the several parties to an obscure Grecian game. The essential point known to us moderns is, that, in running, they passed on to each other a lighted torch, under what conditions, beyond that of keeping the torch burning, is very imperfectly explained. But already this feature of the game, without further details, qualifies the partakers in it to represent symbolically those who, from generation to generation, pass onwards the traditions of gathering knowledge.