SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. church; and on either hand was a small closet or box, with steps leading up to a grated partition, at which the penitent might kneel, and, concealed from observation, pour into the ear of the confessor the consciousness of crimes that lay heavy at his heart. "You observe it?" said the Italian. "I do," replied the Englishman: "it is the same which the assassin had passed into, and I think it one of the most gloomy spots I ever beheld: the view of it is enough to strike a criminal with despair." "We in Italy are not so apt to despair," replied the Italian smilingly. Well, but what of this confessional?" inquired the Englishman. "The assassin entered it." "He has no relation with what I am about to mention," said the Italian: "but I wish you to mark the place, because some very extraordinary circumstances belong to it." "What are they?" said the Englishman. "It is now several years since the confession which is connected with them was made at that very confessional," added the Italian : "the view of it, and the sight of the assassin, with your surprise at the liberty which is allowed him, led me to a recollection of the story. When you return to the hotel I will communicate it to you, if you have no pleasanter mode of engaging your time." "After I have taken another view of this solemn edifice," replied the Englishman, "and particularly of the confessional you have pointed to my notice." While the Englishman glanced his eye over the high roofs and along the solemn perspectives of the Santa del Pianto, he perceived the figure of the assassin stealing from the confessional across the choir, and, shocked on again beholding him, he turned his eyes and hastily quitted the church. The friends then separated, and the Englishman soon after returning to his hotel, received the volume. He read as follows. The Italian. SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, M.D., LL.D., born near Inverness, 1765, and educated at King's College, Aberdeen, was recorder of Bombay, 1804-1811, was M.P. for Nairn, 1813, and for Knaresborough, Yorkshire, 1818, 20, 26, 30, '31; Lord-Rector of the University of Glasgow, 1822, 23, Professor of Law and General Politics in the East Indian College of Haileybury, 1818-1824, Commissioner for Indian Affairs, 1830, died 1832. He was the author of Vindicia Gallica: Defence of the French Revolution, etc., Lond., 1791, 4to; A Discourse on the Study of the 285 Law of Nature and Nations, etc., Lond., 1799, 8vo; The Trial of Jean Peltier, for a Libel against Napoleon Buonaparte, etc., Lond., 1803, 8vo; Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy, chiefly during the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries, Edin., 1830, 4to (from Encyc. Brit.); History of England, B.C. 55 to A.D. 1572, Lond., 1830-32, 3 vols. 12mo (Lardner's Cab. Cyc.); History of the Revolution in England in 1688. etc., Lond., 1834, 4to; Life of Sir Thomas More, Lond., 1844, fp. 8vo (from Lives of British Statesmen in Lardner's Cab. Cyc.). See his Tracts and Speeches, 1787-1831, Lond., 1840, 8vo (25 copies privately printed), and his Miscellaneous Works, Lond., 1846, 3 vols. 8vo, and 1854, 3 vols. fp. 8vo, also in 1 vol. 8vo, 1850 and 1851. See also Memoirs of his Life, Edited by his Son, R. J. Mackintosh, Lond., 1835, 2 vols. 8vo, 2d edit., 1836, 2 vols. 8vo. | "His range of study and speculation was nearly as large as that of Bacon; and there were, in fact, but few branches of learning with which he was not familiar. But in any attempt at delineating his intellectual character, it is necessary to bear in mind that his mastery was in mental philosophy, not merely in its metaphysical departments, but in its still more important application to conduct and affairs, and in their higher branches of politics and legislation, which derive their proofs and principles from history, and give authority to its lessons in return. Upon all these subjects ho was probably the most learned man of his age." -LORD JEFFREY: Mackintosh's Life, vol. ii. chap. viii. "Till subdued by age and illness, his conversation was more brilliant and instructive than that of any human being I ever had the good fortune to be acquainted. His memory (vast and prodigious as it was) he so managed as to make it a that dreadful engine of colloquial oppression into source of pleasure and instruction, rather than which it is sometimes erected."-REV. SYDNEY SMITH: Mackintosh's Life, vol. ii. chap. viii., and Smith's Works, iii, 434. "Whatever was valuable in the compositions of Sir James Mackintosh was the ripe fruit of study versation.... You never saw his opinions in the making, still rude, still inconsistent, and requiring to be fashioned by thought and discussion. They came forth like the pillars of that temple in which no sound of axes or hammers was heard, finished, rounded, and exactly suited to their places." -LORD MACAULAY: Edin. Rev., Ixi. 269, and his Essays. and of meditation. It was the same with his con THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. Ger tlemen, the French Revolution-1 must pause after I have uttered words which present such an overwhelming idea. But I have not now to engage in an enterprise so far beyond my force as that of examining and judging that tremendous revolution. I have only to consider the character of the factions which it must have left behind it. The French Revolution began with great and fatal errors. These errors produced atrocious crimes. A mild and feeble monarchy was succeeded by bloody anarchy, which very shortly gave birth to military despotism. France, in a few years, described the whole circle of human society. All this was in the order of nature. When every principle of authority and civil discipline,-when every principle which enables some men to command and disposes others to obey, was extirpated from the mind by atrocious theories and still more atrocious examples,-when every old institution was trampled down with contumely, and every new institution covered in its cradle with blood,-when the principle of property itself, the sheet-anchor of society, was annihilated,-when in the persons of the new possessors, whom the poverty of language obliges us to call proprietors, it was contaminated in its source by robbery and murder, and became separated from the education and the manners, from the general presumption of superior knowledge and more scrupulous probity which form its only liberal titles to respect,-when the people were taught to despise every thing old, and compelled to detest every thing new, there remained only one principle strong enough to hold society together,-a principle utterly incompatible, indeed, with liberty, and unfriendly to civilization itself,-a tyrannical and barbarous principle, but, in that miserable condition of human affairs, a refuge from still more intolerable evils:-I mean the principle of military power, which gains strength from that confusion and bloodshed in which all the other elements of society are dissolved, and which, in these terrible extremities, is the cement that preserves it from total destruction. Under such circumstances Buonaparte usurped the supreme power in France:-I say usurped, because an illegal assumption of power is an usurpation. But usurpation, in its strongest moral sense, is scarcely applicable to a period of lawless and savage anarchy. The guilt of military usurpation, in truth. belongs to the authors of those confusions which sooner or later give birth to such an usurpation. Thus, to use the words of the historian, "by recent as well as all ancient example, it became evident that illegal violence, with whatever pretences it may be covered, and whatever object it may pursue, must inevitably end at last in the arbitrary and despotic government of a single person." [Hume: Hist. of England, vol. vii. p. 220.] But though the government of Buonaparte has silenced the Revolutionary factions, it has not and it cannot have extinguished them. No human power could re-impress upon the minds of men all those sentiments and opinions which the sophistry and an archy of fourteen years had obliterated. A faction must exist, which breathes the spirit of the Ode now before you. Defence of Jean Peltier. SIR THOMAS MORE. The letters and narratives of Erasmus diffused the story of his friend's fate [executed by Henry VIII.] throughout Europe. Cardinal Pole bewailed it with elegance and feeling. It filled Italy, then the most cultivated portion of Europe, with horror. Paulo Jovio called Henry "a Phalaris," though we shall in vain look in the story of Phalaris, or of any other real or legendary tyrant, for a victim worthy of being compared to More. The English ministers throughout Europe were regarded with averted eyes as the agents of a monster. At Venice, Henry, after this deed, was deemed capable of any crimes: he was believed there to have murdered Catherine, and to be about to murder his daughter Mary. The Catholic zeal of Spain, and the resentment of the Spanish people against the oppression of Catherine, quickened their sympathy with More, and aggravated their detestation of Henry. Mason, the envoy at Valladolid, thought every pure Latin phrase too weak for More, and describes him by one [Ter maximus ille Morus] as contrary to the rules of that language as "thrice greatest" would be to those of ours. When intelligence of his death was brought to the Emperor Charles V. he sent for Sir T. Elliot, the English ambassador, and said to him, "My lord ambassador, we understand that the king your master has put his wise counsellor, Sir Thomas More, to death." Elliot, abashed, made answer that he understood nothing thereof. "Well," said the Emperor, "it is too true; and this we will say, that if we had been master of such a servant, we should rather have lost the best city in our dominions than have lost such a worthy counsellor ;"-" which matter," says Roper, in the concluding words of his beautiful narrative, was by Sir T. Elliot told to myself, my wife, to Mr. Clement and his wife, and to Mr. Heywood [Heron?] and his wife." Of all men nearly perfect, Sir Thomas More had, perhaps, the clearest marks of individual character. His peculiarities, though distinguishing from all others, were yet withheld from growing into moral faults. It is not enough to say of him that he was unaffected, that he was natural, that he was simple: so the larger part of truly great men have been. But there is something homespun in More which is common to him with scarcely any other, and which gives to all his faculties and qualities the appearance of being the native growth of the soil. The homeliness of his ISAAC DISRAELI. pleasantry purifies it from show. He walks on the scaffold clad only in his household goodness. The unrefined benignity with which he ruled his patriarchal dwelling at Chelsea enabled him to look on the axe without being disturbed by feeling hatred for the tyrant. This quality bound together his genius and learning, his eloquence and fame, with his homely and daily duties, bestowing a genuineness on all his good qualities, a dignity on the most ordinary offices of life, and an accessible familiarity on the virtues of a hero and a martyr, which silences every suspicion that his excellences were magnified. He thus simply performed great acts, and uttered great thoughts, because they were familiar to his great soul. The charm of this inborn and homebred character seems as if it would have been taken off by polish. It is this household character which relieves our notion of him from vagueness, and divests perfection of that generality and coldness to which the attempt to paint a perfect man is so liable. It will naturally, and very strongly, excite the regret of the good in every age, that the life of this best of men should have been in the power of one who has been rarely surpassed in wickedness. But the execrable Henry was the means of drawing forth the magnanimity, the fortitude, and the meekness of More. Had Henry been a just and merciful monarch, we should not have known the degree of excellence to which human nature is capable of ascending. Catholics ought to see in More that mildness and candour are the true ornaments of all modes of faith. Protestants ought to be taught humility and charity from this instance of the wisest and best of men falling into, what they deem, the most fatal errors. All men, in the fierce contests of contending factions, should, from such an example, learn the wisdom to fear lest in their most hated antagonist they may strike down a Sir Thomas More: for assuredly virtue is not so narrow as to be confined to any party; and we have in the case of More a signal example that the nearest approach to perfect excellence does not exempt men from inistakes which we may justly deem mischievous. It is a pregnant proof that we should beware of hating men for their opinions, or of adopting their doctrines because we love and venerate their virtues. Life of Sir Thomas More. ISAAC DISRAELI, the son of a Venetian merchant of Jewish extraction, and the father of the Rt. Hon. Benjamin Disraeli, raised to the peerage as Earl 287 of Beaconsfield, 1876, was born at Enfield, near London, 1766, and died 1848. Works: Poetical Epistle on the Abuse of Satire, Lond., 1789; A Defence of Poetry, with a Specimen of a New Version of Telemachus, 1790, 4to; Curiosities of Literature, First Series, vol. i., 1791, 8vo, ii., 1793, 8vo, iii., 1817, 8vo; Second Series, 1823, 3 vols. 8vo; First and Second Series, 1839, r. 8vo, 1845, 6 vols. 12mo, 1851, r. 8vo, 1854, r. 8vo; 14th edit., with a View of his Character and Writings by his Son (the Earl of Beaconsfield), 1849, 3 vols. 8vo, 1870, 3 vols. p. 8vo; A Dissertation on Anecdote, 1793, 8vo; Essay on the Manners and Genius of the Literary Character, 1795, 8vo; Miscellanies, or Literary Recreations, 1796, 8vo: Vaurien, or Sketches of the Times, a Philosophical Novel, 1797, 2 vols. p. 8vo; Romances, consisting of a Persian, a Roman, and an Arcadian Romance, 1799, 8vo, 1807, 8vo; Literary Miscellanies, including a Dissertation on Anecdotes, 1801, 12mo; Narrative Poems, 1803, 4to; Flim Flams, or, The Life and Errors of my Uncle, and the Amours of my Aunt, 1805, 3 vols. 12mo, 2d edit., 1806; Despotism, or, The Fall of the Jesuits, a Novel, 1811, 2 vols. sm. 8vo; Calamities of Authors, 1812, 2 vols. p. 8vo; with Quarrels of Authors, Edited by his Son, 1870, p. 8vo; Quarrels of Authors, 1814, 3 vols. p. 8vo, with Calamities of Authors, Edited by his Son, 1870, p. 8vo; Inquiry into the Liter ary and Political Character of King James I., 1816, p. 8vo; Illustrations of the Literary Character, 1816, 8vo, 2d edit., 1818, 8vo, 3d edit., 1822, 2 vols. p. 8vo, 5th edit., 1839, sm. 8vo, Edited by his Son, 1870, p. 8vo; The History of Psyche (1823), 4to; Commentaries on the Life and Reign of King Charles I., 1828-31, 5 vols. 8vo, 2d edit., Edited by his Son, 1850, 2 vols. 8vo; Eliot, Hampden, and Pym, 1832, 8vo; Genius of Judaism, 1833, p. 8vo; The Illustrator Illustrated, 1838, 8vo (an answer to Bolton Corney's New Curiosities of Literature, or D'Israeli Illustrated, 1838, p. 8vo. 2d edit., 1839); Amenities of Literature, 1841, 3 vols. 8vo, 2d edit., 1842, 3 vols. 8vo, Edited by his Son, 1870, p. 8vo. See also Miscellanies of Literature: containing Literary Miscellanies, Quarrels of Authors, Calamities of Authors, Character of James the First, and The Literary Character, 1840, r. 8vo. "He is one of the most learned, intelligent, lively, and agreeable authors of our era; he has composed a series of works, which while they shed abundance of light on the character and condition of literary men, and show us the state of genius readers of the best romances."-ALLAN CUNNINGin this land, have all the attractions for general HAM: Biog, and Crit. Hist. of the Lit. of the Last Fifty Years, 1853. "That most entertaining and searching writer,"men of fashion" of another stamp, who, in D'Israeli, whose works in general I have read oftener than perhaps those of any other English author whatever."-LORD BYRON. THE PHILOSOPHY OF PROVERBS. In antique furniture we sometimes discover a convenience which long disuse had made us unacquainted with, and are surprised by the aptness which we did not suspect was concealed in its solid forms. We have found the labour of the workman to have been as admirable as the material itself, which is still resisting the mouldering touch of time among those modern inventions, elegant and unsubstantial, which, often put together with unseasoned wood, are apt to warp and fly into pieces when brought into use. We have found how strength consists in the selection of materials, and that, whenever the substitute is not better than the original, we are losing something in that test of experience which all things derive from duration. the days of Elizabeth, James, and Charles, were great collectors of them; would appeal to them in their conversations, and enforce them in their learned or their statesman-like correspondence. Few, perhaps, even now, suspect that these neglected fragments of wisdom, which exist among all nations, still offer many interesting objects for the studies of the philosopher and the historian; and for men of the world still open an extensive school of human life and manners. The home-spun adages, and the rusty "sayed-saws," which remain in the mouths of the people, are adapted to their capacities and their humours. Easily remembered, and readily applied, these are the philosophy of the vulgar, and often more sound than that of their masters. Who ever would learn what the people think, and how they feel, must not reject even these as insignificant. The proverbs of the street and of the market, true to nature, and lasting only because they are true, are records that the populace at Athens and at Rome were the same people as at Paris and at London, and as they had before been in the city of Jerusalem. 66 Be this as it may. I shall not unreasonably await for the artists of our novelties to retrogade into massive greatness, although I cannot avoid reminding them how often they revive the forgotten things of past Proverbs existed before books. The Spantimes. It is well known that many of our iards date the origin of their refranes que dicen novelties were in use by our ancestors. In || las viejas tras el fuego, “ sayings of old wives the history of the human mind there is, in- by their firesides," before the existence of deed, a sort of antique furniture which I any writings in their language, from the collect, not merely for their antiquity, but circumstance that these are in the old for the sound condition in which I still find romance or rudest vulgar idiom. The most them, and the compactness which they still ancient poem in the Edda, "the sublime show. Centuries have not worm-eaten their speech of Odin," abounds with ancient provsolidity and the utility and delightfulness erbs, strikingly descriptive of the ancient which they still afford make them look as Scandinavians. Undoubtedly proverbs in fresh and as ingenious as any of our patent the earliest ages long served as the unwritinventions. ten language of morality, and even of the earliest arts; like the oral traditions of the Jews, they floated down from age to age on the lips of successive generations. The name of the first sage who sanctioned the saying would in time be forgotten, while the opinion, the metaphor, or the expression, remained, consecrated into a proverb. Such was the origin of those memorable sentences by which men learnt to think and to speak appositely: they were precepts which no man could contradict, at a time when authority was valued more than opinion, and experience preferred to novelty. The proverbs of a father became the inheri tance of a son; the mistress of a family perpetuated hers through her household; the workman condensed some traditional secret of his craft into a proverbial expression. When countries are not yet populous, and property has not yet produced great inequalities in its ranks, every day will show them how the drunkard and the glutton By the title of the present article the reader has anticipated the nature of the old furniture to which I allude. I propose to give what, in the style of our times, may be called The Philosophy of Proverbs.-a topic which seems virgin. The art of reading proverbs has not, indeed, always been acquired even by some of their admirers; but my observations, like their subjects, must be versatile and unconnected; and I must bespeak indulgence for an attempt to illustrate a very curious branch of literature, rather not understood than quite forgotten. Proverbs have long been in disuse. "A man of fashion," observes Lord Chesterfield, "never has recourse to proverbs and vulgar aphorisms;" and, since the time his lordship so solemnly interdicted their use, they appear to have withered away under the ban of his anathemas. His lordship was little conversant with the history of proverbs, and would unquestionably have smiled on those JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. WOMEN IN POLITICS. 289 come to poverty, and drowsiness clothes a JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, man with rags." At such a period he who sixth President of the United States, 1825gave counsel gave wealth. Some difficulty has occurrel in the defini-1829, born at Braintree, Massachusetts, 1767, tion. Proverbs must be distinguished from died at Washington, D. C., 1848, occupied proverbial phrases, and from sententious many important public posts, for accounts maxims; but as proverbs have many faces, of which we refer to the work from which from their miscellaneous nature, the class the extract following is taken,-Memoir of itself scarcely admits of any definition. the Life of John Quincy Adams, by Josiah When Johnson defined a proverb to be "a Quincy, LL.D., Boston, 1858, 8vo short sentence frequently repeated by the people," this definition would not include the most curious ones, which have not always circulated among the populace, nor even belong to them; nor does it designate the vital qualities of a proverb. The pithy quaintness of Old Howell has admirably described the ingredients of an exquisite proverb to be sense, shortness, and salt. A proverb is distinguished from a maxim or an apophthegm by that brevity which condenses a thought or a metaphor, where one thing is said and another is to be applied. This often produces wit, and that quick pungency which excites surprise, but strikes with conviction; this gives it an epigram matic turn. George Herbert entitled the small collection which he formed "Jacula Prudentium," Darts or Javelins: something hurled and striking deeply: a characteristic of a proverb which possibly Herbert may have borrowed from a remarkable passage in Plato's dialogue of "Protagoras, or the Sophists." Proverbs have ceased to be studied or employed in conversation since the time we have derived our knowledge from books; but in a philosophical age they appear to offer infinite subjects for speculative curiosity. Originating in various eras, these memorials of manners, of events, and of modes of thinking, for historical as well as for moral purposes, still retain a strong hold on our attention. The collected knowledge of successive ages, and of different people, must always enter into some part of our own. Truth and nature can never be obsolete. Proverbs embrace the wide sphere of Curiosities of Literature, vol. iii.: The One of the topics agitated during this debate [June 16 to July 7, 1838] arose upon a speech of Mr. Howard, of Maryland. Among the petitions against the annexation of Texas were many signed by women. On these Mr. Howard said, he always felt a regret when petitions thus signed were presented to the house, relating to political subjects. He thought these fomales could have a sufficient field for the exercise of their influence in the discharge of their duties to their fathers, their husbands, or their children, cheering the domestic circle, and shedding over it the mild radiance of the social virtues, instead of rushing into the fierce struggles of political life. considered it discreditable, not only to their political section of country, but also to the national character. Ho Mr. Adams immediately entered into long and animated defence of the right of petition by women; in the course of which he asked whether women, by petitioning this house in favor of suffering and distress. perform an office discreditable' to themselves, to the section of the country where they reside, and to this nation. The gentleman says that women have no right to petition Congress on political subjects. Why? Sir, what does the gentleman understand by political subjects? Every thing in which the house has an agency,-every thing which relates to peace and relates to war, or to any other of the great interests of society. Are women to have no opinions or actions on subjects relating to the general welfare? Where did the gentleman get this principle? Did he find it in sacred history,-in the language of Miriam the prophetess, in one of the noblest and most sublime songs of triumph that ever met the human eye or ear? Did the gentleman never hear of Deborah, to whom the children of Israel came up for judgment? Has he forgotten the deed of Jael, who slew the dreaded enemy of her country? Has he forgotten Esther, who, by HER PETITION, saved her people and her country? Sir, I might go through the whole of the sacred history of the Jews to the advent of our Saviour, and find innumerable examples of women, who not only |