seems at last to have brought on a confirmed purpose than to give effect to the enlightened and thoroughly diseased habit of uncharitable- and deliberate will of the community. To ness, and misanthropic anticipations of cor- enforce these doctrines his whole life was ruption and misery throughout the civilised devoted; and though not permitted to comworld. The indiscreet revelations of the work plete either of the great works he had proto which we have alluded have now brought jected, he was enabled to finish detached to light instances, not only of intemperate portions of each, sufficient not only fully to abuse of men of the highest intellect and develope his principles, but to give a clear most unquestioned purity, but such predic- view of the whole design, and to put it in the tions of evil from what the rest of the world power of any succeeding artist to proceed has been contented to receive as improve- with the execution. Look now upon the other ments, and such suggestions of intolerant and side of the parallel. Tyrannical Remedies, as no man would believe could proceed from a cultivated intellect of the present age-if the early history of this particular intellect had not indicated an inherent aptitude for all extreme opinions, -and prepared us for the usual conversion of one extreme into another.

Mr. Coleridge, too, was an early and most ardent admirer of the French Revolution; but the fruits of that admiration in him were, not a reasoned and statesmanlike apology for some of its faults and excesses, but a resolution to advance the regeneration of mankind at a still quicker rate, by setting before their eyes the pattern of a yet more exquisite form of society! And accordingly, when a fullgrown man, he actually gave into, if he did not originate, the scheme of what he and his friends called a Pantisocracy-a form of society in which there was to be neither law nor government, neither priest, judge, nor magistrate-in which all property was to be in common, and every man left to act upon his own sense of duty and affection!

And it is worth while to mark here also, and in respect merely of consistency and ultimate authority with mankind, the advantage which a sober and well-regulated understanding will always have over one which claims to be above ordinances; and trusting either to an erroneous opinion of its own strength, or even to a true sense of it, gives itself up to its first strong impression, and sets at defiance all other reason and authority. Sir James Mackintosh had, in his youth, as This fact is enough:-And whether he afmuch ambition and as much consciousness of terwards passed through the stages of a Jacopower as Mr. Coleridge could have: But the bin, which he seems to deny-or a hotheaded utmost extent of his early aberrations (in his Moravian, which he seems to admit,-is really Vindicia Gallica) was an over estimate of the of no consequence. The character of his unprobabilities of good from a revolution of derstanding is settled with all reasonable men: violence; and a much greater under-estimate As well as the authority that is due to the of the mischiefs with which such experiments anti-reform and anti-toleration maxims which are sure to be attended, and the value of set- he seems to have spent his latter years in tled institutions and long familiar forms. Yet, venting. Till we saw this posthumous publithough in his philanthropic enthusiasm he did cation, we had, to be sure, no conception of miscalculate the relative value of these op- the extent to which these compensating maxposite forces (and speedily admitted and rec-ims were carried; and we now think that few tified the error), he never for an instant dis-of the Conservatives (who were not originally puted the existence of both elements in the Pantisocratists) will venture to adopt them. equation, or affected to throw a doubt upon Not only is the Reform Bill denounced as the any of the great principles on which civil so- spawn of mere wickedness, injustice, and ciety reposes. On the contrary, in his earliest ignorance; and the reformed House of Comas well as his latest writings, he pointed mons as "low, vulgar, meddling, and sneering steadily to the great institutions of Property at every thing noble and refined," but the and Marriage, and to the necessary authority wise and the good, we are assured, will, in of Law and Religion, as essential to the being every country, "speedily become disgusted of a state, and the well-being of any human with the Representative form of government, society. It followed, therefore, that when brutalized as it is by the predominance of dedisappointed in his too sanguine expectations mocracy, in England, France, and Belgium!" from the French Revolution, he had nothing And then the remedy is, that they will recur to retract in the substance and scope of his to a new, though, we confess, not very comopinions; and merely tempering their an- prehensible form, of "Pure Monarchy, in nouncement, with the gravity and caution of which the reason of the people shall become maturer years, he gave them out again in his efficient in the apparent Will of the King!" later days to the world, with the accumulated Moreover, he is for a total dissolution of the authority of a whole life of consistency and union with Ireland, and its erection into a sepastudy. At no period of that life, did he fail rate and independent kingdom. He is against to assert the right of the people to political Negro emancipation-sees no use in reducing and religious freedom; and to the protection taxation and designates Malthus' demonof just and equal laws, enacted by representa-tration of a mere matter of fact by a redundant tives truly chosen by themselves: And he accumulation of evidence, by the polite and never uttered a syllable that could be con- appropriate appellation of "a lie;" and represtrued into an approval, or even an acquies- sents it as more disgraceful and abominable cence in persecution and intolerance; or in than any thing that the weakness and wickthe maintenance of authority for any otheredness of man have ever before given birth to.

We fear we have already transgressed our just limits. But before concluding, we wish to say a word on a notion which we find pretty generally entertained, that Sir James Macktosh did not sufficiently turn to profit the talent which was committed to him; and did much less than, with his gifts and opportunities, he ought to have done. He himselt seems, no doubt, to have been occasionally of that opinion; and yet we cannot but think it in a great degree erroneous. If he had not. in early life, conceived the ambitious design of executing two great works,-one on the principles of Morals and Legislation, and one on English History; or had not let it be understood, for many years before his death, that he was actually employed on the latter, we do not imagine that, with all the knowledge his friends had (and all the world now hast of his qualifications, any one would have thought of visiting his memory with such a reproach.

Such as his temperance and candour are in secution. We are sure we treat Mr. Coleridge politics, they are also in religion; and recom-with all possible respect when we say, that mended and excused by the same flagrant his name can lend no more plausibility to abcontradiction to his early tenets. Whether he surdities like these, than the far greater names ever was a proper Moravian or not we care of Bacon or Hobbes could do to the belief in not to inquire. It is admitted, and even stated sympathetic medicines, or in churchyard apsomewhat boastingly in this book, that he was paritions. a bold Dissenter from the church. He thanks heaven, indeed, that he had gone much farther than the Unitarians!" And to make his boldness still more engaging, he had gone these lengths, not only against the authority of our Doctors, but against the clear and admitted doctrine and teaching of the Apostles themselves! "What care Ï,' I said, for the Platonisms of John, or the Rabbinisms of Paul? My conscience revolts?—That was the ground of my Unitarianism." And by and by, this infallible and oracular person does not hesitate to declare, that others, indeed, may do as they choose, but he, for his part, can never allow that Unitarians are Christians! and, giving no credit for "revolting consciences" to any one but himself, charges all Dissenters in the lump with hating the Church much more than they love religion-is furious against the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and Catholic Emancipation, and at last actually, and in good set terms, denies that any Dissenter has a right to toleration! and, in perfect consistency, maintains that it is the duty of the magistrate to stop héresy and schism by persecution-if he only has reason to think that in this way the evil may be arrested; adding, by way of example, that he would be ready "to ship off-any where," any missionaries who might attempt to disturb the undoubting Lutheranism of certain exemplary Norwegians, whom he takes under his special protection.

We are tempted to say more. But we desist; and shall pursue this parallel no farther. Perhaps we have already been betrayed into feelings and expressions that may be objected

to.

We should be sorry if this could be done justly. But we do not question Mr. Coleridge's sincerity. We admit, too, that he was a man of much poetical sensibility, and had visions of intellectual sublimity, and glimpses of comprehensive truths, which he could neither reduce into order nor combine into system. But out of poetry and metaphysics, we think he was nothing; and eminently disqualified, not only by the defects, but by the best parts of his genius, as well as by his temper and habits, for forming any sound judgment on the business and affairs of our actual world. And yet it is for his preposterous judgments on such subjects that his memory is now held in affected reverence by those who laughed at him, all through his life, for what gave him his only true claim to admiration! and who now magnify his genius, for no other purpose but to give them an opportunity to quote, as of grave authority, his mere delirations, on reform, dissent, and toleration-his cheering predictions of the approaching millennium of pure monarchy-or his demonstrations of the absolute harmlessness of taxation, and the sacred duty of all sorts of efficient per

We know of no code of morality which makes it imperative on every man of extraordinary talent or learning to write a large book:-and could readily point to instances where such persons have gone with unquestioned honour to their graves, without leaving any such memorial-and been judged to have acted up to the last article of their duty, merely by enlightening society by their lives and conversation, and discharging with ability and integrity the offices of magistracy or legis lation, to which they may have been called But looking even to the sort of debt which may be thought to have been contracted by the announcement of these works, we cannot but think that the public has received a very respectable dividend-and, being at the best but a gratuitous creditor-ought not now to withhold a thankful discharge and acquittar ce The discourse on Ethical Philosophy is ful payment, we conceive, of one moiety of the first engagement,—and we are persuaded will be so received by all who can judge of its value; and though the other moiety, which relates to Legislation, has not yet been tendered in form, there is reason to believe that there are assets in the hands of the executors from which this also may soon be liquidated That great subject was certainly fully treated of in the Lectures of 1799-and as it appears from some citations in these Memoirs, that, though for the most part delivered extempore. various notes and manuscripts relating to them have been preserved, we think it not unlikely that, with due diligence, the outline at leas and main features of that interesting disqus tion may still be recovered. On the bill a History, too, it cannot be denied that a large payment has been made to account-and as it was only due for the period of the Revolu tion, any shortcoming that may appear upo

eriod.

But, in truth, there never was any such ebt or engagement on the part of Sir James: And the public was, and continues, the only lebtor on the transaction, for whatever it may have received of service or instruction at his hand. We have expressed elsewhere our estimate of the greatness of this debt; and of he value especially of the Histories he has eft behind him. We have, to be sure, since seen some sneering remarks on the dulness and uselessness of these works; and an attempt made to hold them up to ridicule, under the appellation of Philosophical histories. We are not aware that such a name was ever applied to them by their author or their admirers. But if they really deserve it, we are at a loss to conceive how it should be taken for a name of reproach; and it will scarcely be pretended that their execution is such as to justify its application in the way of derision. We do not perceive, indeed, that this is pretended; and, strange as it may appear, the objection seems really to be, rather to the kind of writing in general, than to the defects of its execution in this particular instance--the objector having a singular notion that history should consist of narrative only; and that nothing can be so tiresome and useless as any addition of explanation or remark.

at score, may be fairly held as compensated in the history of the world for the last two y the voluntary advances of value to a much hundred years? above all, what useful lessons reater extent, though referring to an earlier could be learned, for people or for rulers, from a mere series of events presented in detail, without any other information as to their causes or consequences, than might be inferred from the sequence in which they appeared? To us it appears that a mere record of the different places of the stars, and their successive changes of position, would be as good a system of Astronomy, as such a set of annals would be of History; and that it would be about as reasonable to sneer at Newton and La Place for seeking to supersede the honest old star-gazers, by their philosophical histories of the heavens, as to speak in the same tone, of what Voltaire and Montesquieu and Mackintosh have attempted to do for our lower world. We have named these three, as having attended more peculiarly, and more impartially, than any others, at least in modern times, to this highest part of their duty. But, in truth, all eminent historians have attended to it-from the time of Thucydides downwards;-the ancients putting the necessary explanations more frequently into the shape of imaginary orations and the moderns into that of remark and dissertation. The very first, perhaps, of Hume's many excellences consists in these philosophical summaries of the reasons and considerations by which he supposes parties to have been actuated in great political movements; which are more completely abstracted from the mere story, and very frequently less careful and complete, than the parallel explanations of Sir James Mackintosh. For, with all his unrivalled sagacity, it is true, as Sir James has himself somewhere remarked, that Hume was too little of an antiquary to be always able to estimate the effect of motives in distant ages; and by referring too confidently to the principles of human nature as developed in our own times, has often represented our ancestors as more reasonable, and much more argumentative, than they really were.

We have no longer room to expose, as it deserves, the strange misconceptions of the objects and uses of history, which we humbly conceive to be implied in such an opinion; and shall therefore content ourselves with asking, whether any man really imagines that the modern history of any considerable State, with its complicated system of foreign relations, and the play of its domestic parties, could be written in the manner of Herodotus? —or be made intelligible (much less instructive) by the naked recital of transactions and occurrences? These, in fact, are but the crude materials from which history should be constructed; the mere alphabet out of which its lessons are afterwards to be spelled. If every reader had indeed the talents of an accomplished Historian,—that knowledge of human nature, that large acquaintance with all collateral facts, and that force of understanding which are implied in such a name-and, at the same time, that leisure and love for the subject which would be necessary for this particular application of such gifts, the mere detail of facts, if full and impartial, might be sufficient for his purposes. But to every other class of readers, we will venture to say, that one half of such a history would be an insoluble enigma; and the other half the source of the most gross misconceptions.

Without some explanation of the views and motives of the prime agents in great transactions of the origin and state of opposite interests and opinions in large bodies of the people -and of their tendencies respectively to ascendency or decline-what intelligible account could be given of any thing worth knowing

That there may be, and have often been, abuses of this best part of history, is a reason only for valuing more highly what is exempt from such abuses; and those who feel most veneration and gratitude for the lights afforded by a truly philosophical historian, will be sure to look with most aversion on a counterfeit. No one, we suppose, will stand up for the introduction of ignorant conjecture, shallow dogmatism, mawkish morality, or factious injustice into the pages of history-or deny that the shortest and simplest annals are greatly preferable to such a perversion. As to political partiality, however, it is a great mistake to suppose that it could be in any degree excluded by confining history to a mere chronicle of facts-the truth being, that it is chiefly in the statement of facts that this partiality displays itself; and that it is more frequently exposed to detection than assisted, by the arguments and explanations, which are supposed to be its best resources. We shall not resume what we have said in another place as to the merit of the Histories which are now in ques