purity of John's mind was, that he never asked any thing for himself, though he had the undisputed ear of the Prime Minister. Even those who envied John for the place of favour he held, exclaimed against the chief for doing so little for the man of his right hand; and John might have starved on a scanty pension (for he was required to be in attendance in London for more than half the year), had not Ferguson and I taken advantage of a vacancy of an office in Scotland, and pressed Lord Milton to procure the Lord Conservator's place for him, which more than doubled his income. But though Home was careless of himself, he was warm and active at all times for the interest of his friends, and served a greater number of people effectually than it had been in the power of any private man to do before, some few of whom proved themselves not worthy of his friendship."

Ro

Perhaps in this instance it is the manner of the painter rather than the portrait itself which jars on good taste. bertson meets with his share of censure and praise:

Though he was truly a very great master of conversation, and in general perfectly agreeable, yet he appeared sometimes so very fond of talking, even when showing-off was out of the question, and so much addicted to the translation of other people's thoughts, that he sometimes appeared tedious to his best friends. Being on one occasion invited to dine with Patrick Robertson, his brother, I missed my friend, whom I had met there on all former occasions; I have not invited him to dine to-day,' says Peter, for I have a very good company, and he'll let nobody speak but himself.' Once he was staying with me for a week, and I carried him to dine with our parish-club, who were fully assembled to see and hear Dr. Robertson; but Dr. Finlay of Drummore took it in his head to come that day, where he had not been for a year before, who took the lead, being then rich and self-sufficient, though a great babbler, and entirely disappointed the company, and gave us all the headache. He [Robertson] was very much a master of conversation, and very desirous to lead it, and to make dissertations and raise theories that sometimes provoked the laugh against him. .

Robertson's conversation was not always so prudent as his conduct, one instance of which was his always asserting that any minister of state who did not take care of himself when he had an opportunity was no very wise man. This maxim shocked most young people, who thought the Doctor's standard of public virtue was not very high. This manner of talking likewise seconded a notion that prevailed that he was a very selfish man. With all those defects, his domestic society was pleasing beyond measure; for his wife, though not a woman of parts, was well suited to him, who was more fitted to lead than to be led; and his sons and daughters led so happy a life that his guests, which we were often for a week together, met with nothing but welcome, and peace, and joy."

He compares Robertson with Blair in the following characteristic strain:

"Dr. Blair was a different kind of man from Robertson, and his

character is very justly delineated by Dr. Finlayson, so far as he goes. Robertson was most sagacious, Blair was most naïf. Neither of them could be said to have either wit or humour. Of the latter Robertson had a small tincture-Blair had hardly a relish for it. Robertson had a bold and ambitious mind, and a strong desire to make himself considerable; Blair was timid and unambitious, and withheld himself from public business of every kind, and seemed to have no wish but to be admired as a preacher, particularly by the ladies. His conversation was so infantine that many people thought it impossible, at first sight, that he could be a man of sense or genius. He was as eager about a new paper to his wife's drawing-room, or his own new wig, as about a new tragedy or a new epic poem. Not long before his death I called upon him, when I found him restless and fidgety. 'What is the matter with you to-day,' says I, 'my good friend. are you well?' 'O yes,' says he; but I must dress myself, for the Duchess of Leinster has ordered her granddaughters not to leave Scotland without seeing me." 'Go and dress yourself, Doctor, and I shall read this novel; for I am resolved to see the Duchess of Leinster's granddaughters, for I knew their father and grandfather.' This being settled, the young ladies, with their governess, arrived at one, and turned out poor little girls of twelve and thirteen, who could hardly be supposed to carry a wellturned compliment which the Doctor gave them in charge to their grandmother."

Perhaps David Hume is the most lucky, considering the black name he bears in some quarters: here is his character, -the sting in the tail of it as usual:

of

"At this time David Hume was living in Edinburgh, and composing his History of Great Britain. He was a man of great knowledge, and of a social and benevolent temper, and truly the bestnatured man in the world. He was branded with the title of Atheist, on account of the many attacks on revealed religion that are to be found in his philosophical works, and in many places of his Historythe last of which are still more objectionable than the first, which a friendly critic might call only sceptical. Apropos of this, when Mr. Robert Adam, the celebrated architect, and his brother, lived in Edinburgh with their mother, an aunt of Dr. Robertson's, and a very respectable woman, she said to her son, 'I shall be glad to see any your companions to dinner, but I hope you will never bring the Atheist here to disturb my peace.' But Robert soon fell on a method to reconcile her to him, for he introduced him under another name, or concealed it carefully from her. When the company parted, she said to her son, I must confess that you bring very agreeable companions about you, but the large jolly man who sat next me is the most agreeable of them all.' This was the very Atheist,' said he, 'mother, that you was so much afraid of.' 'Well,' says she, 'you may bring him here as much as you please, for he's the most innocent, agreeable, facetious man I ever met with.' This was truly the case with him; for though he had much learning and a fine taste, and was professedly a sceptic,

though by no means an Atheist, he had the greatest simplicity of mind and manners with the utmost facility and benevolence of temper of any man I ever knew. His conversation was truly irresistible, for while it was enlightened, it was naïve almost to puerility.

I was one of those who never believed that David Hume's sceptical principles had laid fast hold on his mind, but thought that his books proceeded rather from affectation of superiority and pride of understanding and love of vain-glory."

Dr. Carlyle tells an amusing story of Hume's retreating into a remote corner of a certain baronet's breakfast-room, and when invited by his host to come to the table, replying, "Take away the enemy first." "The baronet, thinking it was the warm fire that kept David in the lower end of the room, rang the bell for a servant to carry some of it off. It was not the fire that scared David, but a large Bible that was left on a stand at the upper end of the room, a chapter of which had been read at the family prayers the night before."

There are also some interesting sketches, though of a slighter kind, of Smollett, whom Carlyle seems to have much liked; Shenstone, whom he evidently despised; Macpherson, in whose Ossian story he implicitly believed; and Garrick, whom he got by degrees to appreciate very much in private life, preferring him on the stage in comedy to tragedy. He had a curious rencontre, on his return from Leyden, in the ship's cabin with the lady who afterwards became Mrs. Garrick, and was then coming over, dressed in men's clothes, to appear at the Operahouse as a dancer! When he met the lady, several years afterwards, as Mrs. Garrick, he had the discretion not to allude to this earlier meeting, and she did not recognise him after his change in age and costume. Dr. Franklin, Carlyle had met in company, and did not like. He is enthusiastic about Lord Chatham's eloquence. Of the lawyers, we have graphic notices of Wedderburn (afterwards Lord Chancellor Loughborough) and Lord Mansfield. Of the statesmen, we have the minutest social glimpses of Archibald, Duke of Argyll, and the celebrated Charles Townshend. The hospitable and intelligent Duke, with his tendency to take shorter or longer naps under the retirement of a black-silk cap drawn over his eyes, is an amusing and lifelike portrait. Of Charles Townshend, we have an account in his early college-days at Leyden, as well as in his latter years, as husband of the widowed Countess of Dalkeith, and step-father to the young Duke of Buccleuch. Although justice is done to Townshend's extraordinary powers of conversation, and his fascination in society, he is evidently no favourite with Dr. Carlyle. He speaks repeatedly of his superficiality, though admitting his geniality. Perhaps the

singular fact that Townshend never alluded to their former intimate intercourse at Leyden, may partly account for this disparaging tone. There had been a quarrel in the set of Leyden students, in which Townshend, according to Carlyle, had rather shown the white feather; and this may explain his silence.

We have left ourselves no space for any of the more general sketches of social manners with which the autobiography is filled. The journeys of the clerical brethren-a tried company of jokers-to the south, and the various visits which Dr. Carlyle, both before and after his marriage, was continually making to England, as well as different parts of his native country, are full of humorous descriptions of men and things. Harrogate, in 1763, is a picture not so very dissimilar from Harrogate in the nineteenth century. There would seem to be a fixity of manners, and even of personal characters, in such places which resists those changes of time to which most sublunary things succumb. The Dragon and the Granby hotels, with their well-disciplined table-d'hôtes, their periodic balls, their chronic billiards, and their large ingredient of half-pay officers and secular or pedantic clergymen, remain to this day with wonderfully little variation from their original type. The "Select Society" and the "Poker Club" will be more appreciated by those who are conversant with the characters of the leading men of Scotch society at this period. The latter club derived its name from its origin in the efforts of most of Carlyle's set to stir up and keep alive an agitation for the extension of the Militia to Scotland. For although so frequent a visitor in the southern portion of the island, Dr. Carlyle preserved his Scotch national feelings unimpaired; and it is not a little amusing to observe, in the covert sneers at "John Bull" which creep into his narrative now and then, the remnants of those prejudices which so long survived the union of the crowns under one sceptre.

A host of minor personages cross the scene in Dr. Carlyle's pages; indeed, the stage is crowded with sketches of character, which jostle one another out of the memory of the reader. This is perhaps one great defect in the work. But it is a defect which springs from a superabundance of power where the majority of biographers are the most deficient; and it will be readily pardoned in consideration of the interesting results which it insures in so many cases. It is no slight thing, after such a lapse of time, to have the illustrious men of that age resuscitated by the master-hand of their contemporary, and brought again before us in body and soul. With how different a feeling will many a student, when he arises from the perusal

of this autobiography, glance his eye down the shelves of his library, no longer dealing in his mind with empty names of standard authors, but listening to the voices of real men, and entering into their writings in a far more intelligent manner when he has thus seen them face to face. We do not often autobiographies, for as a class of literature they are

ery unequal merit; but we shall heartily rejoice to see as many more autobiographies as possible, if they are half as well worth reading as "Jupiter Carlyle's."

ART. XI.-THE SLAVE STATES AND THE AMERICAN

UNION.

The Federalist on the New Constitution. By Publius. Written in 1788. Essays by General Hamilton, Mr. Jay, and Mr. Madison. 2 vols. New York, 1802.

Political Debates between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen

A. Douglas in 1858, in Illinois. Columbus: Follett, 1860. North America; its Agriculture and Climate. Containing Observations on the Agriculture and Climate of Canada, the United States, and the Island of Cuba. By Robert Russell. Kilwhiss: Black, 1857.

A Journey in the Back Country. By Frederick Law Olmsted. Vol. III.: "Our Slave States."

Now, when the stability of the American Union is "on its trial," it is not a little curious to review the fears entertained by the great men who elaborated the federal constitution of the United States, and to see their estimate of the dangers which were likely to beset it. In the volumes, whose title we have placed first on the list at the head of this Article, we have the most elaborate statement of the doubts and hopes entertained on this subject by the first Federalists, Hamilton and Jay. We find, of course, the greatest anxiety expressed to secure a stable equilibrium between the power of the Federal Union and the power of the individual States. But amidst all the dangers which are supposed to beset it from different sides, it never seems to have occurred to these able statesmen that there was already in the Union the germs of a fundamental divergence of general policy between different classes of States, which, if the most anxious care were not taken to reduce and finally to obliterate it, could not but mature in time, first into chronic hostility, then into open conflict. The strongest and most conservative members of the federalist party, in defending their