distant, eternally-rooted hills. Jeffrey once said that he verily believed, if Forsythe were brought up at the last day, and sentenced upon the most unquestionable evidence, he would move an arrest of judgment, that some other matter, of which he had never been accused, was left undiscussed, and proceed to show how he could have defended himself had that been laid to his charge.

Every man has a right to urge his peculiar views where his interest is at stake; but few have the power; and this renders it necessary that there should be in Courts of Justice a body of men who may be employed to say for the litigant what he himself would, if he could. Most lawyers of much practice acquire, from the habit of urging, not their own opinions and belief, but those of their clients, a comparative indifference to the merits or success of a cause for its own sake:their great object is to maintain their own character for ability. Forsythe, if report wrong him not, carries this coolness a step farther. He is said to square the excellence of his written papers most rigidly by the amount of his fee; and on occasion, when one of our most distinguished lawyers, hurried away by the interest of a cause he was pleading, was expatiating in the triumphant consciousness of enforc ing powerful arguments in a strain of overpowering eloquence, Forsythe pulled him by the gown;-"Tut! man, you've spaken enough for two guineas !"

Indeed, one of the most marked characteristics of Forsythe seems to be a numbness of emotion. In early life he published a work upon ethics, strongly indicative of this. No allowance is made there for those feelings which alternately link and repel men-no sense shown of their beauty. According to him, intellect is to prescribe and regulate all our actions; the duties of life are mapped out like the lines upon a chart; and the whole system is angular and dry as they. As with all writers upon this subject who refuse to allow value to our emotions, his acuteness degenerates into ingenious absurdity. There is something grotesque about his moral doctrines. Like himself, they are strong and coarse.

We are inclined to attribute to his want of susceptibility to enthusiasm the inconsistency of his political career. He was, at an earlier period, one of the "Friends of the People"-one of the delegates who met at Edinburgh. On a late occasion, he was one of the five hundred who signed an anti-reform petition in that city. And we believe that he acted honestly and conscientiously on both occasions. He was examined on the trial of Muir, and the temper of the evidence which he then delivered, together with the details of the proceedings in Convention which escaped from himself and some of the other witnesses, indicate the nature of his conduct while in that body. It appears to have been, like the whole of his after life, passionless and reflected. Unlike his hot-headed companions, he never seems to have dropped an unguarded word. Now, political opinion regards the expediency of an action or line of conduct; it does not deal, like the mathematical or physical sciences, with absolute facts. The data upon which its conclusions rest, are to be sought in past or contemporary history, the vague and contradictory character of which is well known. Opposed political systems are distinct enough in

their breadth and generality; but their lines of demarcation, the points where they break off and separate from each other, are indefinite as the horizon at sea. The mind that goes puzzling about external niceties instead of grasping the mass-not so much with intellect as a deep enduring love is never steady. None but he whose heart bounds at the thought of freedom, as of a bride, is able to fight for long years the losing battle of liberty. None but a man of deep impassioned will is able to steer steadily the helm of state. This element was totally wanting in Forsythe's composition. His mind, delighting to puzzle among details, had no power of grasping the cause to which he attached himself in its bold outline. It was not wedded to his heart or imagination. Wearied and baffled by the enduring success of the other party, he unconsciously began to coquet with their principles, and finding them susceptible of being defended, (all that a mind of his cast requires,) he gradually became their

convert.

The vehemence with which he has of late advocated the political creed of his later years, may seem opposed to this view of his character. He has published, without any possible prospect of remuneration, a political treatise, in which he evolves ingeniously and felicitously his own views, and gives shrewd and plausible guesses at the future state of Europe: and he has been among the foremost and hottest opponents of all the late concessions to the growing spirit of liberalism. We believe him to be in earnest. It is only towards the woman he weds in his old age that a man is uxorious.

We might expatiate at greater length upon the peculiarities of this lawyer, without throwing any additional light on his character; hard, rough, and impenetrable he is, and must remain a riddle. Before his accession to office robbed the Parliament House of the Lord Advocate, that subtle and restless spirit seemed to have no greater pleasure in its hours of relaxation than the study of Forsythe. It was beautiful to see him in conversation circling round and round in search of an inlet that might admit him to a glance at the inner mechanism of that strange mind, and finding none. It was like a humming-bird quivering in its rapid flashing flight round some rough rock. Where he was baffled, there can be no shame in admitting that we are considerably at fault.

One trait is deserving of notice. Cold and inaccessible to the rest of the world, he doats upon his family. How often do we meet with this anomaly in the world! The most luscious honey is found in the cavities of the hard and gnarled oak.

LIVING LITERARY CHARACTERS, NO. IX.

The Earl of Mulgrave.

(With an engraved Likeness.)

EVERY era has some peculiar mania, which affixes its character as much as ever did the metals to their fabled ages. The mania of the present day is that of explaining all things:" for every why we have a wherefore." All the mysteries of the external world are laid bare by our travellers, and those of the internal by our philosophers. We insist on discovering the course of the Niger, and the fountains of the Nile; and in like manner affect to trace the current of our thoughts, and lay bare the origin of our feelings. For ourselves, we are free to confess, that we are glad that the North-west passage is not yet discovered, and that the human heart has some emotions whose springs are yet unfathomed. Now, if there be one feeling more than another a mystery to those who share it not, it is that desire of fame which takes a literary shape. How strange must it seem to one who enters neither into the writer's joy, so beautifully expressed by Byron in Tasso's apostrophe to his Jerusalem :

Which liveth in the glorious air called praise,
When words make breath immortal."

How strange to such a one must appear the author's toil and the author's hope! He would be inclined to say, of writing a book, what a lady said of cheap soup, "Very good for the poor." To individuals of this stamp, Lord Normanby's works must be so many moral problems. Belonging to a rank, and at a period of life, where pleasure is most easily obtained, and vanity most readily gratified-and perhaps of all gratifications the succès de societé is the most intoxicating, because it is immediate-the Author now before us might well have been content with enjoyment and indolence. But every species of talent carries with it the necessity of exertion. Like the fabled bird of the east, whose wing never rests, action is its existence. If, as Voltaire says, amusement is a duty, we ought, at least, to be grateful to those who enable us to fulfil that duty; and books both are, and are hourly becoming more so, the great source of amusement to all classes. The branch of literature to which Lord Normanby's works belong, ought to have full justice done to its merits. "Only a novel" is a phrase of ancient criticism, which is rapidly passing into antiquity and the "Gentleman's Magazine." We cannot but admit the importance of pages where thousands and thousands daily seek their accustomed relaxation: and the ideas we imbibe unconsciously are often our most influential ones. We must also admit the talent required for their production. There are" Grant but as many sorts of mind as moss" Sept.-VOL. XXXII. NO. CXXIX.

S