doctrine--that the powers of the human mind must be
developed in the education of thought and sense in the study of moral
opinion, not arts and science." Again, at p. 225 of his Sophiometer,
he says:--"The paramount thought that dwells in my mind incessantly is
a question I put to myself--whether, in the event of my personal
dissolution by death, I have communicated all the discoveries my
unique mind possesses in the great master-science of man and nature."
In the next page he determines that he _has_, with the exception of
one truth,--viz. "the latent energy, physical and moral, of human
nature as existing in the British people." But here he was surely
accusing himself without ground; for to my knowledge he has not failed
in any one of his numerous works to insist upon this theme at least a
billion of times. Another instance of his magnificent self-estimation
is--that in the title pages of several of his works he announces
himself as "John Stewart, the only man of nature[45] that ever
appeared in the world."

[Footnote 45: In Bath he was surnamed "the Child of Nature;"--which
arose from his contrasting on every occasion the existing man of our
present experience with the ideal or Stewartian man that might be
expected to emerge in some myriads of ages, to which latter man he
gave the name of the Child of Nature.]

By this time I am afraid the reader begins to suspect that he was
crazy; and certainly, when I consider every thing, he must have been
crazy when the wind was at N.N.E.; for who but Walking Stewart ever
dated his books by a computation drawn--not from the creation, not
from the flood, not from Nabonassar, or _ab urbe condita_, not from
the Hegira--but from themselves, from their own day of publication, as
constituting the one great aera in the history of man by the side of
which all other aeras were frivolous and impertinent? Thus, in a work
of his given to me in 1812 and probably published in that year, I find
him incidentally recording of himself that he was at that time
"arrived at the age of sixty-three, with a firm state of health
acquired by temperance, and a peace of mind almost independent of the
vices of mankind--because my knowledge of life has enabled me to place
my happiness beyond the reach or contact of other men's follies and
passions, by avoiding all family connexions and all ambitious pursuits
of profit, fame, or power." On reading this passage I was anxious to
ascertain its date; but this,