You saw the greatest warrior of the age-conqueror of Italy, humbler of Germany, terror of the North-saw him account all his matchless victories poor, compared with the triumph you are now in a condition to win-saw him condemn the fickleness of fortune, while, in despite of her, he could pronounce his memorable boast:'I shall go down to posterity with my code in my hand.' You have vanquished him in the field; strive now to rival him in the sacred arts of peace! The lustre of the regency will be eclipsed by the more solid and enduring splendour of the reign. The praise which false courtiers feigned for our Edwards and Harrys, the Justinians of that day, will be the just tribute of the wise and good to that monarch under whose sway so mighty an undertaking shall be accomplished. Of a truth, the holders of sceptres are most chiefly to be envied for that they bestow the power of thus conquering and ruling. It was the boast of Augustus-it formed part of the glare in which the prejudices of his earlier years were lost-that he found Rome of brick, and left it of marble; a praise not unworthy of a great prince, and to which the present also has its claims. But how much nobler will be the sovereign's boast, when he shall have it to say that he found law dear and left it cheap; found it a sealed book, left it a living letter; found it the patrimony of the rich, left it the inheritance of the poor; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression, left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence."

It is recorded that Brougham wrote the peroration of his concluding speech for the defence of Queen Caroline no fewer than fifteen times over; yet it is not very impressive.

Robert Mudie,32 a native of Forfarshire, was a self-educated man and a very industrious writer. He was for some time connected with the London press, and was the author of about ninety volumes on a variety of subjects. Among these may be named his Picture of Men and Things in London; Modern Athens, a Sketch of Edinburgh Society; The British Naturalist; The Feathered Tribes of Great Britain, and a series of volumes on the heavens, the earth, the sea, and the air; Man, physical, moral, social, and intellectual. Although somewhat deficient in taste, Mudie was an able and vigorous writer. His imaginative and elaborative faculties were of a high order, and he could throw animation and light into the driest subjects.

Mr. George Combe 33 was by profession a Writer to the Signet in

32 Born in 1777; died in 1842.

33 Born in 1788, died in 1858.

Edinburgh, but he devoted much of his time and energy to philosophical and literary pursuits. He was a man highly respected by all who knew him, and by his writings has attained a wide reputation. He became a popular expounder of the doctrines of phrenology, which he enforced in a clear and vigorous style.

His chief works are:-1. Essays on Phrenology, published in 1819; 2. The Constitution of Man, 1828; 3. System of Phrenology, 1836; 4. Phrenology applied to Painting and Sculpture; 5. Notes on the United States of America, in three volumes, 1841; 6. Pamphlets on The Relation between Science and Religion, on Capital Punishments, on National Education, The Currency Question, etc.

He was a man of great intellectual powers and exceptional abilities. All his writings are well worth reading, even apart from his special doctrines of phrenology. His Constitution of Man has been exceedingly popular, and has passed through many editionshundreds of thousands of it having been sold. I have known several of his followers who almost worshipped him, and placed the most implicit faith in the doctrines of the Constitution of Man. There is no doubt that his writings have had a considerable influence among certain classes of the people.

The interesting life of Hugh Miller, the self-taught man of science and genius, was admirably narrated by himself in his Schools and Schoolmasters. He was a native of Cromarty, born in 1802, and died in 1856. For the last sixteen years of his life he was editor of The Witness, a twice-a-week paper. He was a geologist, and a man of great literary talents; very few excel him as a popular expositor of geology. He had a wide command of expressive and appropriate language, and his imaginative and elaborative powers were of a high order. His descriptions of geological strata and fossil remains are illumined by a vividness of realisation as yet unmatched in this branch of literature.

His works are:-1. Scenes and Legends in the North of Scotland, or the Traditional History of Cromarty; 2. The Old Red Sandstone, which appeared in 1841; 3. First Impressions of England and its People, 1847; 4. Footprints of the Creator, 1850; 5. My Schools and Schoolmasters, an Autobiography, 1854; 6. The Testimony of the Rocks: 7. The Cruise of the Betsey, 1858; 8. Sketch-Book of Popular Geology, being a series of Lectures delivered before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh; and 9, two volumes of essays, being a selection of his articles from the file of The Witness.

His writings were popular, and many editions have been issued. The following quotation is taken from an article reprinted from The Witness on "A Five-pound Qualification" (franchise), and it exemplifies a feature of his style which he often employs effectively, touching on some striking phase of a different subject to give point to the one that he intended to discuss. The article has also a special interest at the present time.

"When, owing to some deep-seated cause, the general level of a country is heightened by sudden upheaval, not only is its area. extended by an apparent recession of the sea, but the outline of its coasts is also very much changed. In places where the land is flat and low, and the water shallow, it receives accessions of great tracts of new country; whereas in other places, where high table lands sink suddenly into the sea and the water is deep, it is restricted to near its old limits. In Scotland, for instance, that last upheaval which laid dry the old coast line added many a rich acre to the links of the Forth and the Carse of Gowrie, and gave to the country the sites of most of its sea-port towns, such as Leith and Greenock, Musselburgh, Stonehaven, and Inverness; whereas along the rocky shores of Aberdeen and Banff, and especially in Caithness and Orkney, it did little more, save here and there in a narrow inlet, than reduce by some two or three fathoms the depth of the sea at the foot of the cliffs. It left the old boundaries just what they had been. The extension of area which took place in consequence of the upheaval was partial and local, though in the aggregate it added not a little to the general value of the country; and this particular character was altogether a result of the previous form of the surface. We have witnessed something similar in the effects of those great upheavals which occasionally take place in the political world. The Reform Bill effected a wonderful upheaval of this kind. It raised over the sea-level, in certain districts, vast tracts that had been previously submerged, while in other districts it left the old limits unchanged. The high lands of Toryism received no new accession, while those of Liberalism it greatly enlarged. By elevating the longburied heads of the people above water in the character of ten-pound franchise holders, it strengthened the trading interests or, to carry out our parallel, gave new standing-room to the trading towns; while the agricultural interests, located, if we may so speak, on the high table-lands of the country, remained no broader or stronger than they had been before. And so, in the great struggle which ensued

between the two interests, the agricultural one went down, and free trade won the day. Party, in general, was not a little affected by this great upheaval. The new accessions were chiefly accessions made to the cause of Liberalism in general; but it did quite as little for hereditary Whigism as for hereditary Toryism; and either party feel, when in office, that it has had but the effect of making their position more precarious and less desirable than of old. . . It has thrown them up nearer than of old to the chill line of perpetual ice and snow, and exposed them to the dangers of treacherous landslips, and sudden avalanches.

'What, let us ask, would be the effect of a still further upheaval of the political area, that would place the ten-pound franchise in the position of a second old coast line, by raising a widely-spread fivepound franchise out of it? To what regions of parties would such an upheaval add new breadth? In what regions would it leave the present limits unchanged? What would be its effect, for instance, on the various parties in Edinburgh ?" This was written in the winter of 1856.

In 1850, a work entitled The Theory of Human Progression, and Natural Probability of a Reign of Justice, was published anonymously, and dedicated to Victor Cousin, the well-known Eclectic philosopher: and in the dedication it was enounced that "the truth I endeavour to inculcate is, that credence rules the world, that credence determines the condition and fixes the destiny of nations, that true credence must ever entail with it a correct and beneficial system of society, while false credence must ever be accompanied by despotism, anarchy, and wrong that before a nation can change its condition it must change its credence; that change of credence will of necessity be accompanied sooner or later by change of condition; and, consequently, that true credence, or, in other words, knowledge, is the only means by which man can work out his well-being and ameliorate his condition on the globe." The author, who thus described the object of his work, was Mr. Patrick E. Dove, a warm-hearted and patriotic Scotsman, who died in Australia in 1879.

The work is one of the class now ranked under the term of sociology. It is an able and well-reasoned effort, and though not often referred to directly, still it has had a marked influence forming several political theories and views of political phenomena since current in this country. Mr. Dove was gifted with a vigorous mind, of a philosophic and scientific cast, and keen and generous

sympathies. The principles and ideas of his work are clearly conceived and fairly elaborated.

It consists of four chapters, the first of which treats on the elements of human progression-the matters involved in political science, liberty, and property; the mode in which men have made laws; the combination of knowledge and reason, and the use and operation of this combination. In the second chapter he expounds his theory of man's intellectual progression, and treats of the order of the sciences-their growth, their processes, their dependence, evolution, and present position; the character and position of political science; the province and object of political economy; the foundation of political society; socialism and communism; and many other points. In the third chapter he advances his theory of man's practical progression, and presents an outline of the argument, that there is a natural probability in favour of the reign of justice; and in support of this view he reasons from the order of knowledge and science-natural truth, which becomes divine truth, and from the influence of Christianity; and illustrates at some length from the practical applications of science. The fourth chapter presents an historical sketch-an attempt to apprehend the sentiments of the human mind which have ruled society, and to appreciate the psychological development of man through historic manifestations. This was of itself a great and very difficult undertaking, and notwithstanding his grasp of principles, and his fine analytic and critical faculties, it is the crudest and the weakest part of his work.

In an appendix he presents a classification of the sciences; and though his work has defects, it is a remarkable effort. I am not aware if Mr. Dove was one of Sir W. Hamilton's students, but I find unmistakeable traces of the influence of his psychology in The Theory of Human Progression.

As a specimen of his style, and the interest of the subject, I shall give a quotation touching land:-"The question, then, is, upon what terms, or according to what system, must the earth be possessed by the successive generations that succeed each other on the surface of the globe? The conditions given are-First, that the earth is the common property of the race; second, that whatever an individual produces by his own labour is the private property of that individual, and he may dispose of it as he pleases, provided he does not interfere with his fellows; third, the earth is the perpetual common property of the race, and each succeeding generation has a full