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 "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 wish 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

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 evening, 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 philosophie 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