that the congregation might be edified, it was necessary that some
brother having the gift of interpretation should expound the invaluable
jargon. His oracles were of high import; but they were traced on
leaves and flung loose to the wind. So negligent was he of the arts of
selection, distribution, and compression, that to persons who formed
their judgment of him from his works in their undigested state he seemed
to be the least systematic of all philosophers. The truth is, that
his opinions formed a system, which, whether sound or unsound, is more
exact, more entire, and more consistent with itself than any other. Yet
to superficial readers of his works in their original form, and indeed
to all readers of those works who did not bring great industry and great
acuteness to the study, he seemed to be a man of a quick and ingenious
but ill-regulated mind,--who saw truth only by glimpses,--who threw
out many striking hints, but who had never thought of combining his
doctrines in one harmonious whole.

M. Dumont was admirably qualified to supply what was wanting in Mr
Bentham. In the qualities in which the French writers surpass those
of all other nations--neatness, clearness, precision, condensation--he
surpassed all French writers. If M. Dumont had never been born, Mr
Bentham would still have been a very great man. But he would have been
great to himself alone. The fertility of his mind would have resembled
the fertility of those vast American wildernesses in which blossoms and
decays a rich but unprofitable vegetation, "wherewith the reaper filleth
not his hand, neither he that bindeth up the sheaves his bosom." It
would have been with his discoveries as it has been with the "Century
of Inventions." His speculations on laws would have been of no more
practical use than Lord Worcester's speculations on steam-engines. Some
generations hence, perhaps, when legislation had found its Watt, an
antiquarian might have published to the world the curious fact that, in
the reign of George the Third, there had been a man called Bentham, who
had given hints of many discoveries made since his time, and who had
really, for his age, taken a most philosophical view of the principles
of jurisprudence.

Many persons have attempted to interpret between this powerful mind and
the public. But, in our opinion, M. Dumont alone has succeeded. It is
remarkable that, in foreign countries, where Mr Bentham's works are
known solely through the medi