skeptical as disclaiming omniscience." The elevation of his aims is disclosed in his well-known motto: "On earth there is nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind." He was born in a college at Glasgow, the son of a Professor of Anatomy and Botany, and a physician. To this last fact, perhaps, the more famous son owed his predilection for medicine, which he studied with a view to the practice at Oxford, and one winter at Edinburgh, abandoning it at the age of twenty-three for law. His law studies were pursued at Brompton, and at his mother's countryhouse in Lanarkshire. In both cases privately we infer, though after he was admitted to the bar in 1813, at the age of twenty-eight, he attended a law class at Edinburgh in the University. His previous line of study had been philosophical and physiological; but he pursued the law with the same exhaustive thoroughness, as his extended researches into his own rights as "Baronet of Preston and Fingalton"—a title long vacant — and into various legal questions connected with the church, fully showed. "Certain papers of his on fishery cases were regarded as remarkable." "He acquired a very thorough acquaintance with civil law. His opinion in antiquarian and genealogical cases was highly thought of, and he was well versed on the subject of teinds" (tithes in Scotland for the support of kirk incumbents). He was made Solicitor of Teinds in 1832, after he had turned again from law to logic and metaphysics. But the law was always subordinate with him to learning. "His name came to be associated more with researches in the Advocates' Library than with practice in the courts." "The study of the technicalities and minutiæ necessary to direct and successful practice was distasteful to him."

Sixteen years intervened between his unsuccessful candidacy for the Professorship of Moral Philosophy, as successor to Dugald Stewart, and Dr. Thomas Brown (1820) and the opening of his real career as Professor of Logic and Metaphysics (1836). Meanwhile he delivered his courses of lectures on history, of which an honorable account is given, and of which Prof. Wilson said: "The most distinguished students of the University spoke with enthusiasm of the sagacity, learning, eloquence and philosophical spirit of those lectures." That such a man as Wilson could be preferred for Dugald Stewart's chair shows how low was then the Scottish estimate of real learning and philosophical genius. It was his first paper in the Edinburgh Review, October, 1829, on the " Philosophy of the Unconditioned, in reference to Cousin's Doctrine of the Infinito-Absolute," and the splendid series of profound discussions which followed it,—some of them hardly intelligible to, not at all appreciated by the readers of the Review,-which decided his career and his fame.

The letters of M. Cousin given in this volume, the reminiscences of Dr. John Cairns, of Berwick, Dr. Lindsay Alexander, Thomas Carlyle, Prof. T. S. Baynes, DeQuincey, George Moir, Dr. Von Scheel, Mrs. Hamilton Gray, Archdeacon Sinclair, Mr. Macvey Napier, Prof. Noah Porter, with the tes timony of Deans Stanley and Johnson, Rev. F. D. Maurice, and the memoranda of Lady Hamilton and his daughter, impress one with the multifa

riousness and immensity of his learning.* Cousin said of him in one of his letters: "Sir William Hamilton knows all systems (of philosophy), ancient and modern, and he examines them by the criticism of the Scottish intellect. His independence is equal to his knowledge. He is, above all, eminent in logic." He spoke of him as the "sole representative in Europe" of Scotch metaphysics and erudition. Dr. Von Scheel said of him: "His reading is immense, for he has considered no branch of science foreign to his pursuits, and his memory is admirable. He undoubtedly is one of the first classical scholars living in Great Britain, and one of the few who, in Germany, would be considered as eminent ones. He is perfectly well acquainted with all that is best and most solid in our (German) literature, and in particular with our most eminent philosophers. He perhaps is the only Briton who can claim any acquaintance with them all." Examples of his out of-theway learning in German bibliography, in modern Latin poetry, in ecclesiastical history, in the text of the Fathers, and the Councils, in Greek and Latin grammar, in political science, in mediæval literature, in physical science, in the history of psychology, and logic, and university education, in biography, and Ana, in lexicography, abounded in his writings, his conversation, and his common-place books. From the great libraries he took books which no one else read, undisturbed since his death. Forgotten scholars, schoolmen, controversialists, seemed to attract him with a peculiar literary affection. His article on the "Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum," is an illustration. Besides his lives and edited works of Reid and Stewart, he made diversified and voluminous preparations for a biography of Luther, with critical, theological, historical and controversial accompaniments, immense in plan, judging from the titles preserved in "thirty separate parcels of papers." He was a learned theologian, and used to say in jest that he “was perhaps the only layman in Europe that could pretend to the title of Reverend," the ancient University of Leyden having offered and conferred upon him the honor of Doctor of Divinity.

One of the refreshing things about this Memoir is the glimpses it gives us of the elasticity and mirthfulness of his temperament. His robust, irrepressible, boyish sportiveness lasted him through life, as it is well for such a quality in a great thinker, worker and teacher to do! He had healthy animal spirits, and a rational, even philosophical love of fun. To one who attended Latin and Greek classes in a Scotch University, at the age of twelve, that was a valuable idiosyncracy. A "cheerfully-serious human face," Mr. Carlyle says he had, a deep-set voice, a commanding intellectual dignity, a wondrous insight into subtle and unworldly speculations struck every pupil and friend; great gentleness, simplicity, and unaffected directness of manner; yet keen in his relish of a practical or verbal * One brief note of M. Cousin is deserving quotation in full:

"7 Décembre, 1847.

"Nous sommes ici dans la plus vive admiration de votre édition de Reid. Exactitude, sagacité, profondeur, tout y est. Aussi nous soupirons après la fin de ce grand travail qui mériterait vos préférences. Le monument qui vous élevez à Reid portera à jamais votre nom. Je connais votre prédilection pour la logique. Mais passez-moi la mienue pour la psychologie."

joke, or a comic incident, fond of repeating bits of bathos, subject to uncontrollable laughter, even in his lecture-room, and prone to garnish with swift drawings of grotesque faces, which he intensely enjoyed, the MSS. of his profoundest and most abstract writings. The "Causes Célèbres," fairy tales, and stories of the Radcliffe type, were favorite reading for recreation. Of children and of domestic animals he was singularly fond. The people learned to enjoy and love the great scholar and metaphysician when they knew him. His conjugal and domestic life had a beauty and sweetness which the reserve of a formal and stately Memoir can by no means conceal. His letters to his son are charmingly heartfelt writing. He seldom spoke of him when absent without tears. "He might be to others," wrote his devoted daughter, "a great and learned man-to us he was but our dear, affectionate father, whose position and fame in the world we only understood so far as to make us proud of him, and value the more his kindness to us. There was in him a tenderness which enhanced his even slight words and acts of affection." After reading this, one looks back to the exquisitely cut and noble countenance facing the title-page, with a warm and softened feeling, with a gentle and moving reverence, which a life so high and superb in the domain of thought is commonly supposed to check.

And we can not forbear to quote here what is said of the beautiful character, God mated to his, in his home. She was his mother's niece, Miss Janet Marshall, and lived in her family a number of years while he was almost a "briefless barrister," and an uncompensated professor of his tory, before marriage seems to have occurred to either party. His mother, a stately, strong-charactered, somewhat severe, but loving Scotch gentlewoman, died in 1829, in his 41st year, and two years afterward her place was filled by Lady Hamilton. 'Filled," indeed! for besides all that her counsels, womanly tact and practical home management (" for the details of which he lacked patience and capacity ") did for him, she had extraordinary power for keeping him up to what he had to do, and a practical force and impulse, along with great endurance of labor, which made her invaluable. From the first she copied every writing of importance, "in the true spirit of love and devotion," his constant amanuensis, and “the number of pages in her hand-writing-filled with abstruse metaphysical matter, original and quoted, and bristling with propositional and syllogistic formula-that are still preserved, is perfectly marvelous." In 1844 he was suddenly prostrated by paralysis, and yet still continued to work on with no abatement of intellectual power, though the athletic physical frame had become a wreck; dictating to others, or writing with his left hand, sending his children for needed books, depending upon them often to read to him, and assisted in his daily ascent of the steps to his class-room. He rode in the country in a little wheel chair drawn by his sons. For twelve years, all years of decline, his cheerful and resolute wife alleviated his sufferings and supported his helplessness. "She became well nigh all to him;" she gave hiin "the most devoted love and care which it was in the nature of a woman and a wife to bestow." "She made it the business of her life to wait upon

him and tend him, and by every means in her power to promote his comfort and ease. Except to consult and acquaint him with everything that went on, she never let him be troubled with matters that her sound sense and general faculty for business enabled her to manage instead of him. She was so cheerful and buoyant of spirit that her presence was a brightening, quickening influence. When he was depressed or put out and annoyed, she often did him good with a little playfulness. She understood his nervous irritability, and never minded it. More and more, as years went on, and his strength declined, and illness again attacked him, did he lean upon her and seek to have her constantly beside him, and with ever increasing care and assiduity did she to the last moment fulfill her life's labor of love,— to smooth and cheer and remove all outward hindrances from the path of her husband; feeling, when she could no longer do this, that her occupation was gone. She had the only reward for which she cared, in the one life which she and her husband in their several spheres lived, in the perfect confidence which he reposed in her, in the depth of his affection and appreciation. Those who knew them both will not be slow to believe that without her he would never have done what he did." All true men will elevate Lady Hamilton to a niche of honor beside the wives of Sir James Mackintosh, and his own formidable, though less learned and profound antagonist, Stuart Mill.

In a notice like this of a great life, we can not go into questions of opinion, or even give the restricted attention allowed them by his biographer.* Touching his religious beliefs and relations, however, we must add a word. His pupil, Dr. Cairns, in a letter to him eight years before his death, a letter which is a model of delicate respect and Christian solicitude-expressed the fervent wish" that his honored master were one with himself in the exercise of the convictions and the enjoyment of the comforts of living Christianity." Sir William, in reply, simply expressed the wish for "the promised aid of God." Prof Veitch tells us no more than this, that toward the close of life, an increasing feeling of that mysterious side of things," which his philosophy characteristically recognized, and a greater sense of "the suggestions of our natural faith regarding what is beyond all that we definitely know." The simplicity and unselfishness of his devotion to truth, are unquestionable; his noble elevation above all sordid motives and self-seeking is clear; and it is certain that the objections made in his early life to his elevation to a professorship on the score of a skeptical tendency were untenable at any time. And it is equally certain that there is no reason in his views of the conflict between Protestantism and Romanism, or of ecclesiastical and controversial questions in Scotland, or of theological points at large, why the wish which every Christian philosopher must share with Dr. Cairns might not be satisfied. It would be

*The Memoir is specially rich in intellectual and professorial processes. No chapter of recent literary history is of greater interest than the concluding chapter: "Reading, Common-Place Book, and Library." The book contains much also that is more than the story of a life; it abounds in matter appertaining to a celebrated authorship. Will not some American publisher re-issue it?

much-how much!-to find that magnificent mind bowing in fervent fealty to God the Father, melting in devout and trustful love to Christ the Son, and honoring joyfully the bright and solemn guidance of the Holy Ghost. It would be beautiful to recognize him among the great pronounced Christians of history. One is sorrowful for the lack of evidence in this ample and otherwise noble biography. In two letters to his son are the following expressions: "Be certain that an anxiety on your part to perform all the duties which Providence may make incumbent on you, is the way to gain the favor of God and man." "I trust He will take you into His holy keeping, and that you may always fulfill all the duties which are now incumbent on you to perform. His blessing, you may be sure, will accompany you in this, and I need not remind you that the chief duty which a man has upon earth is his duty to God." Our reverence for the man, our longing to see the highest powers and results of pure thought wedded to what is richer and nobler and more precious than itself, makes us feel the disappointment of discovering but little more than this. Two disclosures of religious feeling, however, remain. To the same son Lady Hamilton wrote two or three weeks before his father's death: "We have been reading a deeply interesting memoir of an officer who was killed last spring in the Crimea, as truly pious as he was brave, and the latter years of whose life were spent in the most zealous efforts to do good to all who came within his influence [Captain Hedley Vicars]. * * Your papa has been much interested in it, and as we read it to him many times the tears were running down his cheeks." His biographer, who is very reticent touching any religious experience, closes his account of his end with this sentence: "In the one hour of consciousness that preceded the close, he found expression for his feelings in these words: 'Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.'" With more meaning, it may be, than one of the greatest of Americans in like circumstances of solemnity and moment could have given them, these ancient words of supporting faith were used by this wondrous Scotch thinker and teacher, living a life so lofty and pure, so removed from common errors, and so profoundly related to the future of truth.

ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. A Revised Text, with Introduction, Notes and Dissertations. By J. B. Lightfoot, D.D., Hulsean Professor of Divinity, Cambridge. Second Edition. Andover: W. F. Draper. 1870.

Mr. Draper has done a good service in giving this valuable commentary to American scholars at about half the cost of the English edition. This work aims to be, and in some respects is, more complete than any other treatise upon the Epistle in the English language. Great labor and learning are expended upon collateral discussions. Indeed, the commentary on the text forms the smaller part of the volume, invested as it is with elaborate dissertations and detached notes, before and after and between. The author discusses the Galatian people in their history, geography and character; the churches of Galatia, including the Apostle's relations to them; the date of