reply, to hunt down the game of intellect with eagerness and to push an advantage, to cover a retreat, to give and take "And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.” It is no wonder that this sort of friendly intellectual gainA CALO is Sir James's greatest pleasure, for it is his pecuar has not many equals, and scarcely any superior in a fir indolent for an author; too unimpassioned for an orator society he is just vain enough to be pleased with immed tion, good-humoured enough to listen with patience to others, great coolness and self-possession, fluent, communicative, ani a manner equally free from violence and insipidity. Few ca can be started, on which he is not qualified to appear to advantage as the gentleman and scholar. If there is some tinge of pe. it is carried off by great affability of address and variety of ing and interesting topics. There is scarce an author that not read; a period of history that he is not conversant w celebrated name of which he has not a number of anec „ates relate; an intricate question that he is not prepared to enter apon in a popular or scientific manner. If an opinion in an as metaphysical author is referred to, he is probably abse a repeat the passage by heart, can tell the side of the page on whah be met with, can trace it back through various descents to las Hobbes, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, to a place in se oscure folio of the School-men or a note in one of the commentakse en Aristotle or Plato, and thus give you in a few moments space, and without any effort or previous notice, a chronologien, talan the progress of the human mind in that particular branch of quiry. There is something, we think, perfecty admiradan delightful in an exhibition of this kind, and which is equs creditable to the speaker and gratifying to the hearer but th kind of talent was of no use in India: the intellectual wares, which the Chief Judge delighted to make a display, were in request there. He languished after the friends and the se had left behind, and wrote over incessantly for books tr land One that was sent him at this time was an E. Principles of Human Action; and the way in which he that dry, tough, metaphysical choke-pear, showed the dearth of inte.lectual intercourse in which he lived, and the craving in his mind after those studies which had once been his pride, and to which he still turned for consolation in his remote solitude.Perhaps to another, the novelty of the scene, the differences of mind and manners might have atoned for a want of social and literary agrémens: but Sir James is one of those who see nature through the spectacles of books. He might like to read an account of India; but India itself with its burning, shining face would be a mere blank, an endless waste to him. To persons of this class of mind things must be translated into words, visible images into abstract propositions to meet their refined apprehensions, and they have no more to say to a matter-of-fact staring them in the face without a label in its mouth, than they would to a hippopotamus! -We may add, before we quit this point, that we cannot conceive of any two persons more different in colloquial talents, in which they both excel, than Sir James Mackintosh and Mr. Coleridge. They have nearly an equal range of reading and of topics of conversation but in the mind of the one we see nothing but fixtures, in the other every thing is fluid. The ideas of the one are as formal and tangible, as those of the other are shadowy and evanescent. Sir James Mackintosh walks over the ground, Mr. Coleridge is always flying off from it. The first knows all that has been said upon a subject; the last has something to say that was never said before. If the one deals too much in learned common-places, the other teems with idle fancies. The one has a good deal of the caput mortuum of genius, the other is all volatile salt. The conversation of Sir James Mackintosh has the effect of reading a wellwritten book, that of his friend is like hearing a bewildered dream. The one is an Encyclopedia of knowledge, the other is a succession of Sybilline Leaves! As an author, Sir James Mackintosh may claim the foremost rank among those who pride themselves on artificial ornaments and acquired learning, or who write what may be termed a composite style. His Vindicia Gallicie is a work of great labour, great ingenuity, great brilliancy, and great vigour. It is a little too antithetical in the structure of its periods, too dogmatical in the announcement of its opinions. Sir James has, we believe, rejected |