finished example of what may be called transparent diction, It is so singularly lucid, so free from all affected rhetoric and artificial turns of phrase, so perfectly abstracted, with the exception of a law term or two, from every dialect appropriated to a particular subject, that we have never viewed thoughts through a purer medium. It is so pure and perfect, that we can read on, a considerable way, without our attention being arrested by the medium; it is as if there were nothing, if we may so express ourselves, between us and the thought. And we are made to think of the medium after some time, only by the reflection how very clearly we have apprehended the sense, even when relating to the uncouth subjects of law, or the abstruse subjects of metaphysics. By this pure and graceful diction, we are beguiled along with the author, through several prolix and unnecessary details, without being indignant, till we are past them, that he should have occupied himself and us with things too inconsiderable to deserve a fifth part of the space they fill.

We have been greatly pleased and instructed by many of the reasonings on topics of philosophy, law, and criticism, the result of mature and comprehensive thought, and but very little tinctured by the peculiarities of any sect or school, though somewhat partial, of course, to the opinions of Lord Kames, who, in spite of the immense disparity of age, was the intimate friend of the author's younger years. Many of his observations and statements, elucidate the history and progress of law, science, and literature in Scotland. We have only to regret, that he had not elaborated his thoughts on these various subjects into a digested series of finished essays, instead of throwing them together in a mass, to swell beyond all reasonable bounds the importance of an individual. A great part of this matter might just as well have been appended to the life of any one of half a dozen other of the Scottish philosophers of the last century; a proof of the impropriety of its being all incorporated with the history of one.

As to the letters to Lord Kames, which constitute a material portion of the work, we have already said, that many of them ought to have been omitted. But a considerable number are highly distinguished by sense or ingenuity; we refer to several from Dr. Franklin, many from Mrs. Montagu, ne from Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, on courts of equity, o te or two from David Hume, and a few long ones, of great value, from Professor Walker and Dr. Reid. The very long and intimate friendship with this last eminent philosopher, continued to the death of Lord Kames. Their characters are thus amusingly contrasted by Mr. Dugald Stewart.

With one very distinguished character, the late Lord Kames, he (Dr. Reid) lived in the most cordial and affectionate friendship, notwithstanding the avowed opposition of their sentiments on sonie moral questions to which he attached the greatest importance. Both of them, however, were the friends of virtue and of mankind; and both were able to temper the warmth of free discussion with the forbearance and good humour founded on mutual esteem. No two men, certainly, ever exhibited a more striking contrast in their conversation, or in their constitutional tempers: the one slow and cautious in his decisions, even on those topics which he had most diligently studied; reserved and silent in promiscuous society; and retaining, after all his literary eminence, the same simple and unassuming manners which he brought from his country residence: the other lively, rapid, and communicative; accustomed by his professional pursuits, to wield with address the weapons of controversy, and not averse to a trial of his powers on questions the most foreign to his ordinary habits of inquiry. But these characteristical differences, while to their common friends, they lent an additional charm to the distinguishing merits of each, served only to enliven their social intercourse, and to cement their mutual attachment.' Vol. II. p. 230.

Their correspondence,and no doubt their conversations, were directed very much to the most abstruse questions of physical and metaphysical science. Indeed, we deem it honourable to Lord Kames, that most of his friendships appear to have been as laborious as they were sincere. The whole quantity of intellectual faculty, existing among his friends, was put in permanent requisition. And when he at any time heard of strong minds among his contemporaries, beyond the circle of his acquaintance, it was not long before he was devising how to trepan them, as elephants are caught in the east, in order to make them work. He had all kinds of burdens ready for them, and no burden so light, that any of them could frisk and gambol under it, in the wantonness of superfluous strength. It was at their peril, that any of them shewed signs of thinking little of the difficulty of a discussion in law or criticism; they were sure to have a whole system of metaphysics laid on their backs at the next turn. Very early in life he commenced this plan, and thought himself on the point of catching one of the stoutest of the elephantine race. Dr. Clarke had some years before published his celebrated Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God. Mr. Home, at the age of 27, wrote him a long letter, proposing objections, and demanding new arguments and solutions. Its unceremonious and almost presumptuous style, however, evinced a want of skill as yet in his inveigling art; the device was too coarsely adjusted to trepan one of the most discerning of the giant species; who just stopped a few minutes in passing, tossed about with his trunk, as if in scorn of the design, some of the piles of materials with which it had been intended to load him, and then moved quietly off into the

forest.-In simple language, Dr. Clarke wrote him a short, civil, and argumentative letter, and the correspondence went no further.

Lord Kames's rise to eminence at the bar was retarded, in point of time, by the established ascendancy of several able and eloquent seniors in the profession. At the same time, the spirit of emulation prompted the most zealous application to those studies, and cultivation of those talents, which at length advanced him to the highest rank. The following is a very interesting description of his manner of pleading.

Mr. Home's manner as a barrister was peculiar to himself. He never attempted to speak to the passions, or to captivate his hearers by the graces of oratory; but addressing himself to the judgment, and employing a strain of language only a little elevated above that of ordinary discourse, which, even by its familiar tone and style, fixed the attention of the judge, while it awakened no suspicion of rhetorical artifice, he began by a very short and distinct statement of the facts of the cause, and a plain enunciation of the question of law thence arising. Having thus joined issue with his adversary, on what he conceived to be the fair merits of the case, he proceeded to develope the principle on which he apprehended the decision ought to rest, and endeavoured, with all the acuteness of which he was master, to shew its application to the question in discussion. He knew, that if the principle were once conceded, and its application demonstrated, the cause was gained; the arguments of his opponent needed no deliberate examination, for they fell of necessity to the ground. It was therefore in general much more an object with him to rear his own structure of argument on a solid basis, than to cavil with or impugn the reasoning of his antagonist: the one task almost always superseded the other; and the scornful neglect with which the latter was treated, (where, in truth, no formal refutation was necessary) served to precipitate its downfal. It must be owned, however, that such a mode of argument and pleading is not adapted to every cause; nor to that part which it is often incumbent on the pleader to discharge. It may be in many cases as necessary to assail and demolish a structure of argument, as to frame and build it up. But the same talents are in general alike important to either duty. I should, however, be led to conceive, that Mr. Home's ability lay more in the devising of ingenious argument to support his own side of the question, as an opening or leading counsel, than in reply. Though possessing the utmost ingenuity and subtlety of discrimination, and thus most readily descrying the weakness or fallacy of any reasoning, he wanted that command of copious elocution which is necessary for an extemporaneous discussion of a laboured argument. One peculiarity, however, extremely worthy of notice, attended his mode of reply; which was the fair concession and abandonment of all the weaker points of his cause. Yielding these at once to his antagonist, and before the concession was demanded, he gained the manifold advantage of creating the most favourable impression of his own candour, and a persuasion of the strength of his cause; while, with admirable good policy, he frustrated all attack on those weak parts which would have furnished matter of triumph to his opponents, and prejudiced his more solid

ground of support or defence. A most estimable quality this in a pleader but rare, as it should seem, in proportion to its value.

But the main excellence of Mr. Home, as a pleader, lay in the faculty which he possessed, above all his contemporaries, perhaps above all that had gone before him, of striking out new lights upon the most abstruse and intricate doctrines of the law; of subjecting to a strict scrutiny those rules and maxims, venerable only from inveterate usage, and having no claim to respect on any solid ground of reason: a faculty by which he frequently prevailed, in spite of that prejudice, in general salutary, which leads us to resist all innovations, and, in opposition to a long train of precedents, which often makes the law, to bring about an entire change of opinion, and to establish a new practice, more consonant to rational principles. Vol. I. page 44.

We are not certain that this habit of reducing to the narrow compass of a single principle, the whole merits of a cause, which must, in many instances, be complicated with a great variety of circumstances, and require, as it would seem to us, the combined application of several principles, or perhaps, sometimes, a kind of compromise between them, formed a valuable qualification for the office of a judge; but Lord Kames acquitted himself in that office, in a manner which commanded the highest approbation of intelligent men.

He has been censured by some for severity as a criminal judge: but he had no other severity than that which arises in a warm and ingenuous mind from the abhorrence of vice; from the hatred of crimes, and the zeal for their suppression. In Scotland, where every criminal is allowed, on his trial, the aid of counsel to conduct his defence, and examine the evidence, to urge every argument in exculpation, that can avail either with court or jury, and to reply to the pleadings and charge of the prosecutor, the judge is not, as in England, understood to be ex officio of counsel for the party accused. It is his function to observe the most severe neutrality, to hold the equal balance of justice, and to moderate on the one hand any inordinate rigour on the part of the prosecutor, and on the other to restrain the more natural, and therefore more frequent attempts of the prisoner's counsel to pervert the law and confound the limits of justice in the minds of the jury. In this necessary part of his judicial office, Lord Kames was, from the acuteness of his understanding, and the great extent of his legal knowledge, fitted most eminently to excel; and his feelings, as I have said, gave the keener edge to his intellect. The court and the bar were sensible to those; but it was not unnatural that to the ignorant vulgar, that conduct should wear the appearance of severity, which was truly the result of an uniform and steady resolution to fulfil a sacred duty.' Vol. II. p. 2.

The writings and compilations of Lord Kames, on the various subjects belonging to his profession, exhibit, in their mere bulk, a distinguished monument of industry; independently of all the ingenuity and philosophic reasoning which we can well believe they contain. Of one or two of these, Lord W. has given a very perspicuous analysis.

Lord Kames had always a very strong partiality to metaphysical studies; and he evinced even in that letter to Dr. Samuel Clarke, which we have already noticed with disapprobation of its spirit, an acuteness adapted to excel in abstract speculations. In first introducing him in the character of a philosopher, Lord W. takes occasion to make some observations on the tendency and value of metaphysical researches.

Allowing them to be conversant about the noblest part of our frame, the nature and powers of the human soul; and granting that they give the most vigorous exercise to the understanding, by training the mind to an earnest and patient attention to its own operations; still I fear it must be admitted, that as those abstract studies are beyond the limits of the faculties of the bulk of mankind, no conclusion thence derived can have much influence on human conduct. Even the anxiety shewn by metaphysical writers to apologize for their favourite pursuits, by endeavouring, with great ingenuity, to deduce from them a few practical consequences with respect to life and manners, is strong proof of the native infertility of the soil, on which so much labour is bestowed to produce so small a return. It is not much to the praise of this science, that the most subtle and ingenious spirits have, for above two thousand years, assiduously exercised themselves in its various subjects of discussion, and have not yet arrived at a-set of fundamental principles on which the thinking world is agreed. Neither have the uses, to which this sort of reasoning has sometimes been applied, tended to enhance its estimation. The attempts that have been made to found morality on metaphysical principles, have for certain been prejudicial, on the whole, to the cause of virtue. The acutest of the sceptical writers, availing themselves of Mr. Locke's doctrine of the origin of ideas, and the consequences he has thence drawn respecting morals, have done much more harm by weakening our belief in the reality of moral distinctions, than the ablest of their opponents, combating them on the same ground, and with the same weapons, have found it possible to repair. The baneful industry of the former has, it is true, made the labours of the latter in some degree necessary, and therefore useful; and it is in this point of view that the writings of those metaphysicians, who are antagonists of the sceptical philosophy, are entitled to attention and to praise.' Vol. I. p. 21.

Such observations are of much weight as coming from a person so well versed in metaphysics. But it will be impossible for the reader of these volumes to believe the author can mean to be very rigid in proscribing metaphysical study, to which we can perceive that his clear understanding is in no small degree indebted. Nor will any enlightened man, we think, condemn, without great qualification, what is evidently the sublimest class of speculations, what demands the strongest mental powers and their severest exertion, and makes a bold effort to reach, in some small degree, that kind of knowledge, or, if we may so speak, that mode of knowing, which perhaps forms the chief or peculiar intellectual distinction between us and superior spirits. Metaphysical speculation tries to re