nod of a
minister, or the shout of a mob. To effect this purpose, he drew largely
on the learning of antiquity, on modern literature, on history, poetry,
and the belles-lettres, on the Schoolmen and on writers of novels,
French, English, and Italian. In mixing up the sparkling julep, that
by its potent operation was to scour away the dregs and feculence and
peccant humours of the body politic, he seemed to stand with his back
to the drawers in a metaphysical dispensary, and to take out of them
whatever ingredients suited his purpose. In this way he had an antidote
for every error, an answer to every folly. The writings of Burke, Hume,
Berkeley, Paley, Lord Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Grotius, Puffendorf, Cicero,
Aristotle, Tacitus, Livy, Sully, Machiavel, Guicciardini, Thuanus, lay
open beside him, and he could instantly lay his hand upon the passage,
and quote them chapter and verse to the clearing up of all difficulties,
and the silencing of all oppugners. Mr. Mackintosh's Lectures were after
all but a kind of philosophical centos. They were profound, brilliant,
new to his hearers; but the profundity, the brilliancy, the novelty were
not his own. He was like Dr. Pangloss (not Voltaire's, but Coleman's)
who speaks only in quotations; and the pith, the marrow of Sir James's
reasoning and rhetoric at that memorable period might be put within
inverted commas. It, however, served its purpose and the loud echo died
away. We remember an excellent man and a sound critic[A] going to hear
one of these elaborate effusions; and on his want of enthusiasm being
accounted for from its not being one of the orator's brilliant days, he
replied, "he did not think a man of genius could speak for two hours
without saying something by which he would have been electrified."
We are only sorry, at this distance of time, for one thing in these
Lectures--the tone and spirit in which they seemed to have been composed
and to be delivered. If all that body of opinions and principles of
which the orator read his recantation was unfounded, and there was an
end of all those views and hopes that pointed to future improvement, it
was not a matter of triumph or exultation to the lecturer or any body
else, to the young or the old, the wise or the foolish; on the contrary,
it was a subject of regret, of slow, reluctant, painful admission--

"Of lamentation loud heard through the rueful air."

The immediate occasion of this sudden and violent change in Sir Ja