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THE GALLERY OF PORTRAITS: WITH MEMOIRS.

LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT, 22, LUDGATE-STREET.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES, Duke-Street, Lambeth.

PORTRAITS, AND BIOGRAPHIES CONTAINED IN THIS VOLUME.

? It should have been stated in the Life of D'Alembert, that that Life was mostly taken from the Penny Cyclopaedia, with some alterations by the Editor of this work.

ERSKINE.

The Honourable Thomas Erskine was the third son of David Earl of Buchan, a Scottish peer of ancient family and title, but reduced fortune. He was born in January 1748, and received the rudiments of his education, partly at the High School of Edinburgh, partly at the University of St. Andrews. But the straitened circumstances of his family rendered it necessary for him to embrace some profession at an early age; and he accordingly entered the navy as a midshipman in 1764. Not thinking his prospects of advancement sufficiently favourable to render his continuance in that service expedient, he exchanged it in the year 1768 for that of the army. In 1770 he married his first wife, Frances, the daughter of Daniel Moore, M.P. for Marlow; and soon after went with his regiment to Minorca, where he remained three years. Soon after returning to England he changed his profession again. It has been said that he took this step against his own judgment, and on the pressing entreaties of his mother, a woman of lofty and highly cultivated mind, the sister of Sir James Stewart, whose scientific writings, especially upon political philosophy, have rendered his name so famous, and the daughter of a well known Scotch lawyer and Solicitor-General of the same name. But it is certain that at this time he had acquired considerable celebrity in the circles of London society; and it is hard to suppose that he was not sensible of his own brilliant qualifications for forensic success. Whatever the cause, he commenced his legal life in 1775, in which year he entered himself as a student of Lincoln's Inn, and also as a fellow commoner of Trinity College, Cambridge; not with a view to university honours or emoluments, but to obtain the honorary degree of M.A., to which he was entitled by his birth, and thereby to shorten the period of probation, previous to his being called to the bar. He gave an earnest, however, of his future eloquence, by gaining the first declamation prize, annually bestowed in his college. The subject which he chose was the Revolution of 1688. His professional education was chiefly carried on in the chambers of Mr. Buller and Mr. Wood, both subsequently raised to the bench. In Trinity term, 1778, he was called to the bar.

Mr. Erskine's course was as rapid as it was brilliant. In the following term, Captain Baillie, Lieutenant-Governor of Greenwich Hospital, was prosecuted for an alleged libel on other officers of that establishment, contained in a pamphlet written to expose the abuses which existed there, and bearing heavily on the character of the Earl of Sandwich, then First Lord of the Admiralty. It is believed that on this occasion Mr. Erskine made his first appearance in court. His speech was characterized by great warmth and eloquence, and a most fearless assertion of matters not likely to be palatable either to the Court or the Government. And this is the more worthy of notice, because it shows that the boldness which he afterwards displayed in causes more nearly connected with the liberties of England, was not the safe boldness of a man strong in professional reputation, and confident in his experience and past success, but the result of a fixed determination to perform, at all hazards, his whole duty to his client. The best testimony to the effect of this speech is to be found in the anecdote, that thirty briefs were presented to him by attorneys before he left the court.

We must hasten very briefly through the events of Mr. Erskine's life to make room for speaking at somewhat more length of a very few of his most remarkable performances. He rose at once into first rate junior business in the Court of King's Bench, and received a patent of precedence in May 1783, having practised only for the short space of five years. He belonged to the Home Circuit in the early part of his professional life; but soon ceased to attend it, or any other, except on special retainers, of which it is said that he received more than any man in his time or since.

In his political life he was a firm adherent of Mr. Fox: but his success in Parliament, which he entered in 1783 as member for Portsmouth, was not commensurate with the expectations which had been raised upon the brilliant powers of oratory which he had displayed at the bar. On attaining his majority in 1783, the Prince of Wales appointed Mr. Erskine, with whom he lived in habits of intimacy, to be his Attorney-General. This office he was called on to resign in 1792, in consequence of his refusing to abandon the defence of Paine, when he was prosecuted for a libel, as author of the 'Rights of Man:' and his removal, though not a solitary, is fortunately a rare instance in modern times, of an advocate being punished for the honest discharge of his professional duties. Five years afterwards he conducted the prosecution of the 'Age of Reason;' and in 1802 he was appointed Chancellor of the Duchy of Cornwall. On the formation of the Grenville administration, in 1806, he was appointed Chancellor of Great Britain, and raised to the peerage, by the title of Baron Erskine, of Restormel Castle in Cornwall. The short period during which he presided in the Court of Chancery, makes it difficult to estimate how far his extraordinary powers of mind, and in particular the eminently legal understanding which he possessed, would have enabled him to overcome the difficulties of so new a situation. But his judgments have, generally speaking, stood the test of subsequent investigation; and his admirable conduct in the impeachment of 1806, over which he presided as Lord High Steward, uniting the greatest acuteness and readiness with singular firmness of purpose, and all that urbanity which neither in public nor in private life ever quitted him for an instant, may be said to have restored to life a mode of trial essential to our constitution, though discredited by the vexatious procrastination which had characterized the last instance of its use.

On the dissolution of the Grenville ministry, which occurred about a year after its formation, Lord Erskine retired in a great degree from public life. In 1808 he took an active share in opposing the measure of commercial hostility, so well known under the name of the Orders in Council, and still so deeply felt: and his speech against the Jesuits' Bark Bill, which was not reported, is said to have been worthy of his most celebrated efforts, both for argument and eloquence. In 1809 he introduced into the House of Lords a bill for the prevention of cruelty to animals, which passed that branch of the legislature, but was thrown out by the Commons. The part, too, which he took upon the memorable proceedings of 1820, relative to the Queen's trial, will long be remembered, marked as it was by all the highest qualities of the judicial character: and his arguments upon the Banbury case a few years before, only leave a regret that he did not devote more of his leisure to the legal business of the House of Lords.

After his retirement, Lord Erskine occupied himself occasionally in literary pursuits. In this period he composed the Preface to Mr. Fox's Speeches, and the political romance of Armata. His only other written work of importance is a pamphlet, entitled 'View of the Causes and Consequences of the War with France,' which appeared in 1797, and ran through the extraordinary number of forty-eight editions. But he is not to be considered as a literary man: on the contrary, it is one of the many singularities in his history, that with a scanty stock of what is usually called literature, he should have been one of our most purely classical speakers and writers. His study was confined to a few of the greatest models; and these he almost knew by heart.

The later years of his life were harassed by pecuniary embarrassment, arising partly from the loss of his large professional income, inadequately replaced by a retiring pension of ?4000; and partly from an unfortunate investment of the fruits of his industry in land, which yielded little return when the period of agricultural depression arrived. His first wife died in 1805: and an ill-assorted second marriage, contracted much later in life, is supposed to have increased his domestic disquietudes, as it certainly injured his reputation, and gave pain to his friends. He was seized with an inflammation of the chest while travelling towards Scotland, and died at Almondale, his brother's seat, near Edinburgh, November 17, 1823. Immediately after his decease, the members of that profession of which he had been at once the ornament and the favourite, caused a statue of him to be executed. When the marble was denied admittance within those walls which had so often been shaken by the thunder of his eloquence, they placed it in the hall of Lincoln's Inn, where he had presided as chancellor; a lasting monument to those who study the law, that subserviency is not necessary to advancement, and that they will be held in grateful remembrance by their professional brethren, who boldly uphold the liberties of their country.

Mr. Erskine's powerful and fearless support of the liberty of the subject on all occasions rendered him especially sought after by all persons accused of political libels; and a large proportion of his most important speeches are on these subjects. The earliest reported, and for their consequences the most remarkable, are the series of speeches which he delivered in behalf of the Dean of St. Asaph, in 1784. Of the merits of the case we have not room to speak: but it is important for the influence which it had in determining the great question, whether in prosecutions for libel, the jury is to judge of fact alone, or of law and fact conjointly. For many years it had been the doctrine of the courts, that juries had no cognizance of the nature of an imputed libel, beyond ascertaining how far the meaning ascribed in the indictment to passages charged as libellous was borne out by evidence; the truth of these, and the fact of the publication being ascertained, it was for the judge to determine whether the matter were libellous or no. This doctrine was controverted by Mr. Erskine in his speech for the Dean of St. Asaph, and maintained by the judge who tried the case; and on the ground of misdirection, Mr. Erskine moved for a new trial. On this occasion he went into an elaborate argument to prove that it was the office of the jury, not of the judges, to pronounce upon the intention and tendency of an alleged libel; and to him is ascribed the honour of having prepared the way for the Libel Bill, introduced by Mr. Fox in 1792, and seconded by himself, in which the rights and province of the jury are clearly defined, and the position established, for which he, in a small minority of his professional brethren, had contended. This was a triumph of which the oldest, and most practised lawyer might have been proud; it is doubly honourable to one young in years, and younger in professional experience.

Equal perhaps to those in importance, for it bore directly on the liberty of the press, and superior in brilliance of execution, is the speech in behalf of Stockdale, the bookseller, who was prosecuted for a libel on the House of Commons, in consequence of having published a pamphlet commenting on the articles of impeachment brought against Mr. Hastings, and containing some passages by no means complimentary to some portion of that honourable body. The fact of the publication being admitted, Mr. Erskine, agreeably to the provisions of the Libel Act, proceeded to address the jury on the merits of the work. It was his argument, that the tenor of the whole, and the intentions of the writer, were to be regarded; and that if these should be found praiseworthy, or innocent, the presence of a few detached passages, which, taken separately, might seem calculated to bring the House of Commons into contempt, were altogether insufficient to justify conviction. This speech may be selected as one of the finest examples of Mr. Erskine's oratory, whether for the skill displayed in managing the argument, the justness of the principles, the exquisite taste with which they are illustrated and enforced, or the powerful eloquence in which they are embodied; and from this, in conclusion, we would extract one passage as a specimen of his powers. It is sufficient to state in introduction, that the pamphlet in question was a defence of Mr. Hastings, and that, among other topics, it urged the nature of his instructions from his constituents. Commenting on this, the orator proceeds in a strain which few persons, not hardened by long converse in affairs of state, will read without emotion, or without a deep sense of the justice of the sentiments, the gravity of the topics introduced.

"If this be a wilfully false account of the instructions given to Mr. Hastings for his government, and of his conduct under them, the author and publisher of this defence deserve the severest punishment, for a mercenary imposition on the public. But if it be true, that he was directed to 'make the safety and prosperity of Bengal the first object of his attention,' and that under his administration it has been safe and prosperous; if it be true that the security and preservation of our possessions and revenues in Asia were marked out to him as the great leading principle of his government, and that those possessions and revenues amidst unexampled dangers have been secured and preserved; then a question may be unaccountably mixed with your consideration, much beyond the consequence of the present prosecution, involving perhaps the merit of the impeachment itself which gave it birth; a question which the Commons, as prosecutors of Mr. Hastings, should in common prudence have avoided; unless, regretting the unwieldy length of their prosecution against him, they wished to afford him the opportunity of this strange anomalous defence. For although I am neither his counsel, nor desire to have any thing to do with his guilt or innocence, yet in the collateral defence of my client I am driven to state matter which may be considered by many as hostile to the impeachment. For if our dependencies have been secured, and their interests promoted, I am driven in the defence of my client to remark, that it is mad and preposterous to bring to the standard of justice and humanity, the exercise of a dominion founded upon violence and terror. It may, and must be true, that Mr. Hastings has repeatedly offended against the rights and privileges of Asiatic government, if he was the faithful deputy of a power which could not maintain itself for an hour without trampling upon both; he may and must have offended against the laws of God and nature, if he was the faithful Viceroy of an empire wrested in blood from the people to whom God and nature had given it; he may and must have preserved that unjust dominion over timorous and abject nations by a terrifying, overbearing, insulting superiority, if he was the faithful administrator of your government, which, having no root in consent or affection, no foundation in similarity of interests, nor support from any one principle which cements men together in society, could only be upheld by alternate stratagem and force. The unhappy people of India, feeble and effeminate as they are from the softness of their climate, and subdued and broken as they have been by the knavery and strength of civilization, still occasionally start up in all the vigour and intelligence of insulted nature. When governed at all, they must be governed with a rod of iron; and our empire in the east would long since have been lost to Great Britain, if civil skill and military prowess had not united their efforts, to support an authority which Heaven never gave, by means which it never can sanction.

"Gentlemen, I think I can observe that you are touched with this way of considering the subject, and I can account for it. I have not been considering it through the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself among reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them in my youth, from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince surrounded by his subjects, addressing the Governor of a British colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. 'Who is it,' said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure; 'who is it that causes this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself into the ocean? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in the summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of these lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being, who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend it,' said the warrior, throwing down his tomahawk on the ground, and raising the war-cry of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and depend upon it, nothing but fear will control, where it is vain to look for affection.

"These reflections are the only antidotes to those anathemas of superhuman eloquence which have lately shaken these walls that surround us; but which it unaccountably falls to my province, whether I will or no, a little to stem the torrent of, by reminding you that you have a mighty sway in Asia which cannot be maintained by the finer sympathies of life, or the practice of its charities and affections. What will they do for you when surrounded by two hundred thousand men with artillery, cavalry, and elephants, calling upon you for their dominions which you have robbed them of? Justice may, no doubt, in such a case forbid the levying of a fine to pay a revolting soldiery; a treaty may stand in the way of increasing a tribute to keep up the very existence of the government; and delicacy for women may forbid all entrance into a zenana for money, whatever may be the necessity for taking it. All these things must ever be occurring. But under the pressure of such constant difficulties, so dangerous to national honour, it might be better perhaps to think of effectually securing it altogether, by recalling our troops and merchants, and abandoning our Oriental empire. Until this be done, neither religion nor philosophy can be pressed very far into the aid of reformation and punishment. If England, from a lust of ambition and dominion, will insist on maintaining despotic rule over distant and hostile nations, beyond all comparison more numerous and extended than herself, and gives commission to her Viceroys to govern them, with no other instructions than to preserve them, and to secure permanently their revenues; with what colour of consistency or reason can she place herself in the moral chair, and affect to be shocked at the execution of her own orders; adverting to the exact measure of wickedness and injustice necessary to their execution, and complaining only of the excess as the immorality; considering her authority as a dispensation for breaking the commands of God, and the breach of them only punishable when contrary to the ordinances of man.

No life of Lord Erskine has yet been written on a scale calculated to do justice to the subject. The fullest which we have seen is contained in the 'Lives of British Lawyers,' in Lardner's Cyclopaedia: there is also a scanty memoir in the Annual Biography and Obituary, from which the facts contained in this sketch are principally derived.

DOLLOND.

Footnote 1:

For the details of this life, we are mostly indebted to the Memoir of Dr. Kelly, his son-in-law, from which all the existing accounts of Dollond are taken. This book has become very scarce, and we are indebted for the opportunity of perusing it to the kindness of G. Dollond, Esq.

Footnote 2:

See Penny Cyclopaedia, article Achromatic, for this and other terms employed in this life.

After this great discovery, for which he received the Copley medal of the Royal Society, Mr. Dollond devoted himself to the improvement of the achromatic telescope, in conjunction with his other pursuits. We are informed by G. Dollond, Esq., that his grandfather, at the latter end of his life, was engaged in calculating almanacs for various parts of the world; one of which, for the meridian of Barbadoes, and the year 1761, is now in his possession.

Mr. Dollond was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1761. In the same year, November 30, he was struck with apoplexy, while attentively engaged in reading Clairaut's Theory of the Moon, which had then just appeared. He died in a few hours afterwards, in the fifty-sixth year of his age. His son Peter Dollond, already mentioned, continued the business in partnership with a younger brother; and it is now most ably carried on by his daughter's son, who has, by permission, assumed the name of Dollond.

JOHN HUNTER.

A life and character like that of John Hunter has many claims upon the honourable remembrance of society; the more, because, for meritorious members of his profession, there is no other public reward than the general approbation of good men. We look upon him with that interest which genius successfully directed to good ends invariably excites; as one whose active labours in the service of mankind have been attended with useful consequences of great extent; and whose character it is important to describe correctly, as a valuable example to his profession.

John Hunter was the son of a small proprietor in the parish of Kilbride in Lanarkshire, and was born February 13, 1728. His father died while he was a child; his brothers were absent from home; and, being left to the care of his mother and aunt, he was spoiled by indulgence, and remained uneducated, until his natural good sense urged him to redeem himself in some degree from this reproach. When a boy he continued to cry like a child for whatever he wanted. There is a letter extant from an old friend of the family, which has this curious postscript, "Is Johnny aye greeting yet?" presenting an unexpected picture to those who are familiar only with the manly sense, and somewhat caustic manners, of the great physiological and surgical authority. But the influence of feelings and opinions, proceeding from respected persons, and accompanied by offices of affection, is powerful upon the young mind; and the circumstances of Mr. Hunter's family were calculated to give such feelings their full power over such a character as his. They lived retired, in that state of independence which a small landed property confers on the elder members, while the young men are compelled to seek their fortunes at a distance from home. John Hunter neglected books, but he was not insensible to the pride and gratification expressed by every member of the family on hearing of his elder brother William's success, and the pleasure which that brother's letters gave to all around him. These feelings made him ashamed of his idleness, and inclined him to go to London, and become an assistant to Dr. William Hunter in his anatomical inquiries. William consented to this arrangement; and the subject of our memoir quitted his paternal home in 1748; certainly without that preparation of mind which should lead us to expect a very quick proficiency in medical pursuits. At an earlier age he had displayed a turn for mechanics, and a manual dexterity, which led to his being placed with a cabinet-maker in Glasgow to learn the profession: but the failure of his master had obliged him to return home.

Dr. William Hunter had at this time obtained celebrity as a teacher of anatomy. He won his way by very intelligible modes. His upright conduct and high mental cultivation gained him friends; and his professional merits were established by his lectures, which in extent and depth, as well as eloquence, surpassed any that had yet been delivered. There was a peculiar ingenuity in his demonstrations, and he had a happy manner exactly suited to his subject. The vulgar portion of the public saw no marks of genius in the successful exertions of Dr. Hunter; his eminence was easily accounted for, and excited no wonder. They saw John Hunter's success, without fully comprehending the cause; and it fell in with their notions of great genius that he was somewhat abrupt and uncourtly.

Dr. Hunter immediately set his brother to work upon the dissection of the arm. The young man succeeded in producing an admirable preparation, in which the mechanism of the limb was finely displayed. This at once showed his capacity, and settled the relation between the two brothers. John Hunter became the best practical anatomist of the age, and proved of the greatest use in forming Dr. Hunter's splendid museum, bequeathed by the owner to the University of Glasgow. He continued to attend his brother's lectures; was a pupil both at St. Bartholomew's, and St. George's Hospitals; and had the farther advantage of attending the celebrated Cheselden, then retired to Chelsea Hospital. And here we must point out the advantage which John Hunter possessed in the situation and character of his elder brother, lest his success should encourage a laxity in the studies of those who think they are following his footsteps. It would indeed have been surprising that his efforts for the advancement of physiology commenced at the precise point where Haller's stopped, if he had really been ignorant of the state of science at home and abroad. But he could not have been so, unless he had shut his eyes and stopped his ears. In addition to his anatomical collection Dr. Hunter had formed an extensive library, and possessed the finest cabinet of coins in Europe. Students crowded around him from all countries, and every one distinguished in science desired his acquaintance. John Hunter lived in this society, and at the same time had the advantage of being familiar with the complete and systematic course of lectures delivered by his brother. He was thus furnished with full information as to the actual state of physiology and pathology, and knew in what directions to push inquiry, whilst the natural capacity of his fine mind was untrammelled.

In 1755 John Hunter assisted his brother in delivering a course of lectures; but through life the task of public instruction was a painful one to him, and he never attained to fluency and clearness of expression. In 1760 his health seems to have been impaired by his exertions: and in the recollection that one brother had already died under similar circumstances, his friends procured him a situation in the army, as being less intensely laborious than his mode of life. He served as a staff surgeon in Portugal and at the siege of Bellisle. On returning to London he recommenced the teaching of practical anatomy.

In 1767 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, having already gained the good opinion of its members by several papers on most interesting subjects. There is this great advantage in the pursuit of science in London, that a man remarkable for success in any branch can usually select associates the best able to assist him by their experience and advice. It was through John Hunter's influence that a select club was formed out of the fellows of the Royal Society. They met in retirement and read and criticised each others papers before submitting them to the general body. This club originally consisted of Mr. Hunter, Dr. Fordyce, Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Solander, Dr. Maskelyne, Sir George Shuckburgh, Sir Henry Englefield, Sir Charles Blagden, Mr. Ramsden, and Mr. Watt. To be the associate of such men could not but have a good effect on a mind like Hunter's, active and vigorous, but deficient in general acquirement, and concentrated upon one pursuit.

At this time, and for many years afterwards, he was employed in the most curious physiological inquiries; and at the same time forming that museum, which remains the most surprising proof both of his genius and perseverance. It is strange that Sir Everard Home should have considered this collection as a proof of the patronage Hunter received. He had many admirers, and many persons were grateful for his professional assistance; but he had no patrons. The extent of his museum is to be attributed solely to his perseverance; a quality which is generally the companion of genius, and which he displayed in every condition of life. Whether under the tuition of his brother, or struggling for independence by privately teaching anatomy, or amidst the enticements to idleness in a mess-room, or as an army surgeon in active service, he never seems to have forgotten that science which was the chief end of his life. Hence the amazing collection which he formed of anatomical preparations; hence too the no less extraordinary accumulation of important pathological facts, on which his principles were raised.

It was only towards the close of life that Hunter's character was duly appreciated. His professional emoluments were small, until a very few years before his death, when they amounted to ?6000 a year. When this neglect is the portion of a man of distinguished merit, it has sometimes an unhappy influence on his profession. Men look for prosperity and splendour as the accompaniments of such merit; and missing it, they turn aside from the worthiest models, to follow those who are gaining riches in the common routine of practice. Dr. Darwin said, that he rejoiced in Hunter's late success as the concluding act of a life well spent: as poetical justice. But throughout life he spent all his gains in the pursuit of science, and died poor.

His museum was purchased by government for ?15,000. It was offered to the keeping of the College of Physicians, which declined the trust. It is now, committed to the College of Surgeons, in Lincoln's Inn Fields; where it is open to the inspection of the public during the afternoons of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The corporation has enlarged the museum, instituted professorships for the illustration of it, and is now forming a library. The most valuable part of the collection is that in the area of the great room, consisting of upwards of 2000 preparations, which were the results of Mr. Hunter's experiments on the inferior animals, and of his researches in morbid human anatomy. All these were originally arranged as illustrative of his lectures. The first division alone, in support of his theory of inflammation, contains 602 preparations. Those illustrative of specific diseases amount to 1084. There are besides 652 dried specimens, consisting of diseased bones, joints, and arteries. On the floor there is a very fine collection of the skeletons of man and other animals; and if the Council of the College continue to augment this collection with the same liberal spirit which they have hitherto shown, it will be creditable to the nation. The osteological specimens amount to 1936. But the most interesting portion, we might say one of the most interesting exhibitions in Europe to a philosophical and inquiring mind, is that which extends along the whole gallery. Mr. Hunter found it impossible to explain the functions of life by the investigation of human anatomy, unaided by comparison with the simpler organization of brutes; and therefore he undertook the amazing labour of examining and preparing the simplest animals, gradually advancing from the lower to the higher, until, by this process of synthesis, the structure of the human body was demonstrated and explained. Let us take one small compartment in order to understand the effect of this method. Suppose it is wished to learn the importance of the stomach in the animal economy. The first object presented to us is a hydatid, an animal, as it were, all stomach; being a simple sac with an exterior absorbing surface. Then we have the polypus, with a stomach opening by one orifice, and with no superadded organ. Next in order is the leech, in which we see the beginning of a complexity of structure. It possesses the power of locomotion, and has brain, and nerves, and muscles, but as yet the stomach is simple. Then we advance to creatures in which the stomach is complex: we find the simple membraneous digesting stomach; then the stomach with a crop attached to macerate and prepare the food for digestion; then a ruminating stomach with a succession of cavities, and with the gizzard in some animals for grinding the food, and performing the office of teeth; and finally, all the appended organs necessary in the various classes of animals; until we find that all the chylopoietic viscera group round this, as performing the primary and essential office of assimilating new matter to the animal body.

Mr. Hunter's papers and greater works exhibit an extraordinary mind: he startles the reader by conclusions, the process by which they were reached being scarcely discernible. We attribute this in part to that defective education, which made him fail in explaining his own thoughts, and the course of reasoning by which he had arrived at his conclusions. The depth of his reflective powers may be estimated by the perusal of his papers on the apparently drowned, and on the stomach digested after death by its own fluids. The importance of discovering the possibility of such an occurrence as the last is manifest, when we consider its connexion with medical jurisprudence, and the probability of its giving rise to unfounded suspicions of poisoning. His most important papers were those on the muscularity of arteries; a fine piece of experimental reasoning, the neglect of which by our continental neighbours threw them back an age in the treatment of wounded arteries and aneurisms. But the grand discovery of Mr. Hunter was that of the life of the blood. If this idea surprise our readers, it did no less surprise the whole of the medical profession when it was first promulgated. Yet there is no doubt of the fact. It was demonstrated by the closest inspection of natural phenomena, and a happy suite of experiments, that the coagulation of the blood is an act of life. From this one fact, the pathologist was enabled to comprehend a great variety of phenomena, which, without it, must ever have remained obscure.

After these details no man will deny that John Hunter possessed high genius, and that he employed his talents nobly. He was indeed of a family of genius: his younger brother was cut off early, but not until he had given promise of eminence. Dr. Hunter was, in our opinion, equal in talents to John, the subject of this memoir, though his mind received early a different bias. And in the next generation the celebrated Dr. Baillie, nephew to these brothers, contributed largely to the improvement of pathology, and afforded an instance of the most active benevolence joined to a plainness of manner most becoming in a physician. Joanna Baillie, his sister, still lives, honoured and esteemed, and will survive in her works as one of our most remarkable female writers.

The portrait from which the annexed engraving is made was painted at the suggestion of the celebrated engraver Sharpe, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, and was among his last works. There could not indeed be a more picturesque head, nor one better suited to the burin. The original picture is in the College of Surgeons. It exhibits more mildness than we see in the engraving of Sharpe.

PETRARCH.

Avignon was then the chosen abode of fashion, luxury, and vice. Petrarch mingled in its gay society, without yielding to its corruptions, or withdrawing himself from the philosophical studies which interested him above all other pursuits. A great conformity of tastes, and a common superiority to the low objects of ambition with which they were surrounded, made him the friend of Jacopo Colonna, afterwards Bishop of Lombez. This prelate introduced Petrarch to his brother, the Cardinal Colonna, who resided at Avignon; and in whose palace, in 1331, the poet acquired the friendship of old Stefano Colonna, the illustrious head of that family, and drew from his discourse a stronger love of Italy, of freedom, and of glory. But his affectionate, enthusiastic temper was not to be exhausted even by these objects: soon, without ever being entirely diverted from the interest of friendship or patriotism, he became the vassal of that long and illustrious passion to which he owes the immortality of his name. April 6, 1327, on Easter Monday, in the church of the Nuns of Santa Clara, Petrarch, being then twenty-three years of age, saw for the first time, and loved at sight, Laura de Noves, the bride of Hugo de Sade, a young patrician of Avignon. From this time his life was passed in wandering from place to place, sometimes at the several courts of Italian princes; sometimes in solitary seclusion at Vaucluse; often at Avignon itself, where from the lofty rock on which stands the old Pontifical Palace, he could see Laura walking in the gardens below, which with all the adjacent part of the town belonged to the family of de Sade.

Few subjects have been discussed more largely, with greater minuteness of examination, or with greater licence of conjecture, than the history of the love of Petrarch. Some have chosen to treat with ridicule the idea of a passion, subsisting through a long and eventful life, without gratification, and nearly without hope; others have thought the difficulty obviated by supposing, in defiance of all apparent evidence, that Laura was not so insensible as the laws of morality required. A few have wished to rescue the character of the poet from the imputation of having loved a married woman, and have dragged certain obscure spinsters out of doubtful epitaphs and registers, to dispute the claim of Laura de Sade. A few more, and but a few, although the race is not extinct, have denied the existence of Laura altogether; either considering her as a mere poetical fancy, or still more boldly resolving her into some allegory, political or religious. But none of these theories, maintained at various times, and with various degrees of ingenuity, almost from the age of Petrarch until the present day, have shaken the received opinion on the four main points of the question; namely, that Laura was no creation of the poet's brain, but a woman; that she was married; that Hugo de Sade was her husband; and that her virtue was proof against the passion of Petrarch. When all the circumstances of the case, including the peculiarities of sentiment which characterize the time, are fairly taken into consideration, there will appear no such miraculous improbability as has been presumed in the duration of Petrarch's attachment. That it partook of the vehement character of true passion, is evident from many passages in his epistles and philosophical works, where he may be supposed to speak with less disguise than in his Canzoniere; but a natural vanity, the habit of refining his feelings into intellectual notions, and the then prevalent fashion of poetical constancy to a real object, may have contributed more than he could himself be aware to the durability of the sentiment. It is not to be forgotten, however, that at different periods of his life he had two natural children, a son and a daughter: still he maintained that notwithstanding these irregularities, he never loved any one but Laura. The Sonnets and Canzones, which, separately published, now together form the Canzoniere, soon elevated their author to the highest rank among living poets, and gave him in the eyes of his admirers a place beside the "creator della lingua," the author of the Divina Commedia. Petrarch, however, whose mind was full of veneration for antiquity, and who was ardently desirous to recover all the monuments of classic literature that still preserved a hazardous existence in convents and other receptacles of the little learning of an ignorant age, for a long time, if not to the end of life, prided himself more on his Latin compositions, than on being the founder of a school of poetry in his native language. At one time he had commenced a Latin history of Rome, from the foundation of the city to the reign of Titus. But he was diverted from this work, by conceiving the idea of an epic poem, entitled 'Africa,' founded on the events which marked the close of the second Punic war, of which Scipio was the hero. For a year he laboured on it with enthusiasm; and it was received with admiration: but like most works of imagination composed in languages not rendered familiar to the writer in all their delicacy by vernacular and hourly use, and on subjects not consecrated by any feelings of national and domestic interest, they have long since been forgotten by all but the learned.

In April, 1348, Laura expired of the dreadful malady which then ravaged Europe, and which is described by Boccaccio in the introduction to the Decameron. The second half of the Canzoniere is the monument of his glorious sorrow; which is however more calmly, and, to the apprehensions of many, more convincingly expressed, in the pathetic note to his own MS. of Virgil, now in the Ambrosian Library at Milan. It would be unjust to him not to relate this event in his own words. "Laura, illustrious for her own virtues, and long celebrated by my verses, was seen by me for the first time in my early manhood, in the year 1327, April 6, at six in the morning, in the church of S. Clara, at Avignon. In the same city, in the same month of April, on the same sixth day, and at the same hour, in 1348, this light was taken from the world, while I was at Verona, alas! ignorant of my unhappy lot. The melancholy news reached me in a letter from my friend Louis: it found me at Parma the same year, May 19, in the morning. That body, so chaste, so fair, was laid in the church of the Minor Friars on the evening of the day of her death. Her soul, I doubt not, is returned, as Seneca says of Scipio Africanus, to heaven, whence it came. To preserve the grievous memory of this loss, I write this with a sort of pleasure mixed with bitterness; and I write by choice upon this book, which often comes before my eyes, that hereafter there may be nothing for me to delight in in this life, and that, my strongest chain being broken, I may be reminded by the frequent sight of these words, and by the just appreciation of a fugitive life, that it is time to go forth from Babylon; which, by the help of God's grace, will become easy to me by vigorous and bold contemplation of the needless cares, the vain hopes, the unexpected events which have agitated me during the time I have spent on earth." The authenticity of this note has been contested: to us it bears internal evidence of being genuine, not merely in the unpretending pathos of the conclusion, but in the minuteness of the earlier details. It is the luxury of grief to connect the memory of the dead with our thoughts, and employments, and even abodes at the moment of their death; and the pen of the literary forger is not likely to trace so simple and unpretending a statement.

After some more adventures and wanderings the old man fixed his residence at Arqu?, a village situated on the Euganean hills, at four leagues distance from Padua. Here he led a life of abstinence and study, reposing from the toilsome vicissitudes to which he had been subjected, but not from his thirst for knowledge and desire of glory. His last years were solaced by his intimacy with Boccaccio, who seemed to supply the place of those numerous and valued early friends whom he had survived, and by the filial attentions of his daughter Francesca. The last important act of his life was his appearance before the Senate of Venice, in behalf of Francesco of Carrara, who had been forced to conclude a humiliating peace with the republic in 1373. It is said that he was so much awed by the majesty of the assembly, that on the first day on which he appeared before it, he was unable to deliver his address. The next day he recovered his spirits, or more probably his strength, and his speech in behalf of Carrara was loudly applauded. He returned to his retirement in a failing state of health, and his complaints were aggravated by imprudence, and disregard of medical advice. July 18, 1374, he was found dead in his library, his head resting on an open book. A stroke of apoplexy had thus suddenly terminated his life. All Padua assisted at his obsequies, and Francesco of Carrara led the funeral pomp. A marble tomb, which still exists, was raised to him before the door of the church of Arqu?.

In early life he was distinguished for beauty, of which he was himself not insensible; for he left, in his 'Letter to Posterity,' a description of his own person, which we quote from Ugo Foscolo's translation. "Without being uncommonly handsome, my person had something agreeable in it in my youth. My complexion was a clear and lively brown; my eyes were animated; my hair had grown grey before twenty-five, and I consoled myself for a defect which I shared in common with many of the great men of antiquity , and I had a venerable air, which I was by no means very proud of." He was then miserable, Foscolo continues, if a lock of his hair was out of order; he was studious of ornamenting his person with the nicest clothes; and to give a graceful form to his feet, he pinched them in shoes that put his nerves and sinews to the rack. These traits are taken from his own familiar letters.

The life and writings of Petrarch have been repeatedly illustrated at great length. The 'Petrarcha Redivivus' of Tomasini; the voluminous 'M?moires sur Petrarque' of the Abb? de Sade, who has taken up the subject as a matter of family history; and the works of Tiraboschi and Baldelli, are among the best authorities for our author's history. To the English, and indeed to every reader, we must recommend the 'Essays on Petrarch,' by Ugo Foscolo; at the end of which there are some exquisite translations by Lady Dacre. The most complete edition of Petrarch's works is the folio published at B?sle in 1581. Among the numerous editions of his Italian poems, we may particularize that of Biagioli, 1822, as containing the notes of Alfieri; and that of Marsard, printed at Padua, as distinguished alike for its correctness and beauty of execution.

BURKE.

The six and thirty years which have elapsed since the death of Edmund Burke are not sufficient to secure a right and impartial sentence on his character. We are still within the heated temperature of the same political agitations in which he lived and struggled. We are not, perhaps our children will not be, qualified to judge him and his contemporaries, with that calmness with which men weigh the merits of things and persons who have exerted no perceptible influence over their own times. It is fortunate, therefore, that the limits of this brief memoir prescribe rather a succinct statement of unquestioned facts, than a disputable adjudication between opposite opinions.

Edmund Burke, son of Richard Burke, an attorney in extensive practice in Dublin, was born in that city, January 1, 1730. Of his early life little is known with certainty. He appears to have distinguished himself at Trinity College, Dublin, by his acquirements and talents, especially by a decided taste and ability for the discussion of subjects relating to English history and politics. His first literary effort of any importance was made before he quitted that university, in some letters directed against a factious writer called Lucas, at that time the popular idol. These are not preserved. In 1750 he came to London, and was entered a student of the Middle Temple. It is singular that the idle rumour, expressly contradicted by himself, of his having completed his education at St. Omer's, should be still in some degree accredited by the author of the article 'Burke,' in the Biographie Universelle. Whether, in 1752 or 1753, he became a candidate for the chair of Logic at Glasgow, is a more doubtful question: the opinions of Dugald Stewart and Adam Smith, who took some pains to ascertain the truth, were in the negative. It is certain, however, that the extraordinary talents of Burke soon began to attract attention: he wrote in many political and literary miscellanies, and formed an acquaintance with some distinguished characters of the time. Among these should be mentioned Lord Charlemont, Gerard Hamilton, Soame Jenyns, and somewhat later, Goldsmith, Reynolds, Dr. Johnson, and Hume. His first avowed work, the 'Vindication of Natural Society,' was published in 1756, and excited very general admiration. The imitation of Bolingbroke's style in this essay was so perfect, that some admirers of the deceased philosopher are said to have overlooked the evident signs of irony, and to have believed it to be a genuine posthumous work. This may appear strange; but it is surely more strange, that forty years afterwards this 'Vindication' should have been republished by the French party, with a view of serving democratic interests. Before the close of 1756, appeared the 'Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,' which added largely to Burke's reputation, and procured him the valuable friendship of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Shortly afterwards, the public attention being at that time much directed to the American colonies, was published 'An Account of the European Settlements in America,' of which Burke was probably not the sole, but the principal author. It was much read, as well on the Continent as in England; and indeed no inconsiderable portion of it has been incorporated into the celebrated work of the Abb? Raynal. About this time Burke married the daughter of Dr. Nugent, an intelligent physician, who had invited him to his house while suffering under an illness, the result of laborious application. This union was a source of uninterrupted comfort to him through life. "Every care vanishes," he was in the habit of saying, "when I enter my own home." A confined income, however, rendered literary exertion still more indispensable to him than before: and in 1759 'The Annual Register,' that most useful work, for many years entirely composed by Burke, or under his immediate superintendence, was undertaken by him in conjunction with Dodsley. At length, in 1765, with the first Rockingham administration, he entered on a more extensive sphere of action: being appointed private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, through the recommendation of his friend Mr. Fitzherbert.

The celebrated East-India Bill, of which Burke is said to have been partly the author, and upon which he pronounced one of his most magnificent orations, was fatal to the coalition. William Pitt, called at the age of twenty-four to occupy the first place in the counsels of his sovereign, fought an arduous but finally victorious fight against the Whig majority in the Commons. A dissolution followed; the new House supported the new Ministers; and a second long period of Whig opposition began, during which Fox was the acknowledged leader of the party, and was warmly supported in that capacity by Burke. The most important event of this second great division of Burke's parliamentary life is undoubtedly the impeachment of Warren Hastings. Throughout the long debates on the accusations brought against the Governor of India, and afterwards throughout the trial itself, which began in 1788 and was not concluded until 1795, Burke was indefatigable. Never, perhaps, has greater oratorical genius been displayed than by that combination of great men who were appointed managers of the impeachment. Yet all their efforts failed to establish their case on a secure foundation. History still hesitates to decide with confidence on the guilt or innocence of Hastings. It is agreed, however, that the violence of Burke's proceedings on this trial was often unworthy of the situation he held and the cause he advocated. When with harsh tones and a look more expressive of personal than political hatred he bade Mr. Hastings kneel before the court, it is said that Fox whispered to his friends, "In that moment I would rather have been Hastings than Burke."

At the latter end of 1788 arose the regency question, on which Burke, with all his party, maintained the opinion that any apparently irreparable incapacity in the sovereign caused a demise of the crown, because, the prerogatives of royalty being given for public benefit, it would be highly dangerous to suspend them for an indefinite period. Burke, however, did some injury to his party by the intemperate and imprudent language he adopted on this occasion, speaking of the King's situation in the tone of triumph rather than pity, and even using the expression "God has hurled him from his throne." These constitutional questions, however important, were soon forgotten in a new absorbing interest, which began to occupy the minds of all men. The French Revolution had taken place. That astonishing event was at first hailed with general sympathy and admiration in this country. The supporters of Pitt either joined in the vehement delight of the Fox party, or took no pains to restrain it. Here and there some may have murmured dislike: but in general it was thought unworthy of Englishmen not to rejoice in the acquisition of liberty by a neighbouring people; and not a few looked to this great change as the harbinger of political regeneration to Europe and the world. In this general acclamation one voice was wanting. Burke, from the very first meeting of the States General, did not conceal his aversion to their proceedings and his apprehension of the results. Gradually, as the excesses of popular violence in Paris became more frequent, an Anti-Gallican party began to gather round him. On the 9th of February, 1790, during a debate on the army estimates, Burke took advantage of some expressions which Fox let fall in praise of the French Revolution to open an attack against it, denying that there was any similarity between our revolution of 1688 and the "strange thing" called by the same name in France. Fox in his reply spoke in memorable terms of his obligations to his friend, declaring that all he had ever learnt from other sources was little in comparison with what he had gained from him. Sheridan attacked the speech just made by Burke in no measured terms, describing it as perfectly irreconcilable with the principles hitherto professed by that gentleman. On this, Burke again rose, and in a few words declared that Sheridan and himself were thenceforth "separated in politics." Before the end of this year came out the celebrated 'Reflections,' which at once showed how irreparable was the schism between the author and his former associates. It roused an immediate war of opinion, which gave birth to a war of force throughout Europe. Innumerable pamphlets soon followed upon its publication, some denouncing the work as a specious apology for despotism, others advocating the opinions contained in it with a vehemence which the authors had not dared to show, till they were encouraged by the support of so eloquent and so distinguished a partizan. The most remarkable attempts of the former description were the 'Rights of Man,' by Thomas Paine, which soon became the manual of the democratic party; and the 'Vindiciae Gallicae,' by Mr., afterwards Sir James Mackintosh, the most illustrious, if not the only successor of Burke himself in his peculiar line of philosophical politics. Fox was loud in condemning the book, and although no formal breach of friendship had hitherto taken place, such an event was obviously to be expected. On the 6th May, 1791, during a discussion on a plan for settling the constitution of Canada, this separation actually occurred, with a solemnity worthy of the men and the event. From that hour, during the six remaining years of his life, one idea swayed with exclusive dominion the mind of Burke. Utterly separated from Fox's party, aloof from the ministry, retired, after a few sessions, from Parliament, he continued to wage unceasing war by speech and writing against the principles and practice of Jacobinism. Soon he was pointed out as a prophet, and the verification of his predictions in characters of blood was much more powerful, because much more palpable, than the vague anticipations of future advantage put forward by his opponents. In 1794, after his retirement from Parliament, he received the grant of a considerable pension for himself and his wife. The democratic party did not scruple to stigmatize his motives, and in answer to an accusation of this sort was written the 'Letter to a Noble Lord,' perhaps the most astonishing specimen of his peculiar capacities of style. In this year the death of his son overwhelmed him with affliction. Still he continued his exertions. His views of the war differed widely from those of the ministry; he ceased not to urge that it was a war not against France but Jacobinism, and that it would be a degradation to Britain to treat with any of the Regicides. On this subject are written the two 'Letters on a Regicide Peace,' published in 1796, and the others published since his death. On the 8th of July, 1797, this event took place, in the 68th year of his age, at his own house at Beaconsfield, whither, after seeking medical aid elsewhere in vain, he had returned to die.

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