all who have either had an opportunity of, Hunter, the Professor of Latin, by his old hearing much of his oratory out of the pul- pupils, on the completion of the fiftieth pit, or who enjoyed any intercouse with him year that he had held the professorshipin private life, will admit that humor was having been, it may be added, all that one of his strongest propensities and richest while the chief ornament of the university? gifts. He was far from abounding in anec- There was no want of enthusiasm in any dote, but he told a story, when he did in- individual, old or young, eminent or obtroduce one, to admiration. And his elo- scure, who made one at that great gatherquence nowhere shone more than in an af-ing; but Chalmers was the most enthusiter-dinner speech. Who will ever forget the astic of us all, and nothing could go beeffect of one which he delivered at the din-yond the spirit and fire with which he spoke, ner given in 1824 to the venerable Dr. John making his hearers wild with delight. From Sharpe's Magazine.. THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF MADAME GUIZOT.* THE history of a woman, and especially that of a happy woman, is soon told. Nature and society have alike combined to establish an indissoluble connexion between the happiness of woman and domestic privacy, and to fix her lot within the calm region of her duties, her affections, and her domestic avocations. Even when imperious circumstances, or a no less powerful vocation, have forced her to extend the sphere of her activity and influence, when a superiority has been bestowed which gives some celebrity to her name, it almost invariably occurs that family ties and affections, the cares and occupations of domestic life, still absorb the greater portion of her time and of her energies, by constituting the chief part of her happiness. We must pity rather than envy her who has made the cultivation of her talents the principal business of life; the highest mental endowments could be to her but a poor and perhaps a miserable compensation. The remembrance which Madame Guizot has left to her friends is happily exempt from any such regret; and to those who have known and loved her, the extraordinary powers of her mind are but the second considerations which her memory awakens. Before they can think of her claims to public regret, her friends love to recall the excellent qualities of her mind; they reckon the invaluable benefits which her short and sometimes troubled life conferred; with an emotion at once pleasing and painful, they first speak her virtues, and afterwards of her talents. From the French.* But, however valuable virtue and happiness may be, there seems but little to say about them. It might satisfy the expectation of the public were we to relate in a few words the principal circumstances of a very private life, and pay a cursory homage to the qualities which have ennobled it, all our attention bearing upon the works and the talents which have alone hitherto given it an interest. Such an account would reduce us to a page of biography, followed by a critical and literary dissertation; but should we thus have made her known of whose writings only we could judge? Should we have said of her more than any one else could say? Should we have done justice to the dearest as to the most revered memorials she has left us? Is it, in short, of her that we should have spoken? Facts have little interest if she to whom they relate is unknown. Works belong to the public, and they can judge of them better than we can. It is of the author, it is of the person herself, that we would speak; thus only can we learn something of her, and in some degree satisfy the faithfulness of our regrets, above all the wishes of that tender and sorrowing devotion which has confided, for a little, to our charge a memory so dear. A more general and no less important reason has likewise determined us. Silence could easily be imposed upon feelings which could not be published without some sacrifice; but thought owes allegiance to virtue; great instruction always results from the life of a person equally superior in character as in mind; her example is a lesson; A her life bears testimony to the opinions she | activity, properly so called, occupying all has professed, and pays a tribute to virtue. our duration, the greater part of it is perMadame Guizot, by dint of experience and haps consumed in objectless emotions, barmeditation, was enabled to refer all her feel-ren sensibilities, and vague reveries. ings, and to render all her resolutions subordinate, to the general ideas that governed her mind; she had found herself as it were in the likeness of her judgment. It is then to speak of her as she would herself perhaps have wished; it is to imitate her, to unite the relation of her life to the principles she so much valued, to look for a moral end in the observations it suggests, to make the remembrance of her sentiments and actions tend to the furtherance of truth. After all, the most distinguished beings only reproduce with greater effect, and in a higher degree, the essential conditions and the general laws of humanity. It is daily said that life is short; it appears that it neither answers to our powers, to our wants, nor our desires, and that our nature overtops our destiny; and yet, when death arrives, when a human being disappears, one is often astonished at the few traces which his steps have left. Whatever place he may hold in our regret, that which he leaves void in this world is incredibly small; and, viewed as the past, the events which have occupied his days hardly appear to satisfy the duration of his existence. Those who are no more used, however, also to deplore the brevity of human life; they felt themselves pressed within narrow limits, and were uneasy in this career which they could not entirely fill up; and now their actions seem too trifling for an existence which they thought too short for them; even the friendship which regrets them finds that their remembrance holds much more room in the heart than their life does in the memory. May it not be that there are always in the soul a multitude of wants and faculties, of feelings and ideas, which nothing here below calls forth? May it not be that none can take advantage of his whole nature, and that those who have been most prodigal of action, emotion, and thought, still carry to the grave an unapplied treasure of energy, of feeling, and of intellect? Such is the perpetual contrast between our nature and our destiny. There is in us something infinite which this world cannot satisfy, and which cannot influence this world; therefore it is that we are at once superior to the world, and restrained by it; therefore it is that we can neither put up the whole canvas of our life, nor display all our material. In fact, so far from thousand things pass within us, which prove and develope us, and make known to ourselves what no others can know. The world sees and conjectures but a small part of our real existence; what is manifest is but one feature of the picture, and we live much more than is apparent. This inherent and superabundant activity to which circumstances and often external power are wanting, those insatiable desires, that never failing sensibility, that constant renewing of the mind, which more than any sensible object presents the emblem of perpetual motion, all this riches of man which he cannot use, which he knows not how to use; in short, this superfluity of his nature, clearly attest that he is superior to his con dition, and that he is reserved for a higher destiny than that of earth: embroidered robes, mysterious tokens found in the cradle of a deserted child. But this interior life which nothing can interrupt, nothing limit, does not betray itself; it remains the secret of each individual. Man only appears for about a moment to his fellow creatures; at all other times he steals away from their view, and reveals himself only to his God. Perhaps this is saying too much; this internal solitude is not invariably his lot. Undoubtedly many more have passed through the crowd, have borne even all the ties of family and society, without ever having been drawn out or fully disclosed; but there are also some minds which hold communion with each other, and pour out their thoughts with little less reserve than to their Maker; sympathy disperses the cloud which separates them; love lifts the veil which covers their hearts, and thus the minds of men are sometimes made known, but only to those who love them. It is for this reason that no account of those of whom death has deprived them, can give satisfaction to their friends. They know more of them than could possibly be related, more than they could themselves repeat; what would be most interesting to them would perhaps be the narration of that part of their life which belongs not to history; they would wish to read over all that they have known, all they have imagined, and that words could equal the vastness of their desire. But this wish is vain; the more distinguished a person has been, the less is it possible to do him marked partiality for her daughter, and justice by description; he would perhaps lavished on her all the cares which a weak himself have failed, had he endeavored to and sickly childhood required. From her give an account of his heart, and to reveal, earliest years she manifested a lively senwithout restraint, what can never be justly sibility, a perfect integrity, and, when her known or faithfully described. These con- education commenced, an extreme facility siderations have powerfully influenced me in learning. Her mind, however, still apwhenever I attempted to recall the circum-peared inactive, tractable, and thoughtful; stances of Madame Guizot's life; it is not, she gave herself up to the employments in fact, those circumstances which are inte- of her age, without taking interest in resting, it is herself. She is the soul of them; her lessons neither wearied her nor the drama; and it is her especially, whom gave her pleasure. She went through her having known, we would wish to make duties because she liked order, and it was known. Yet how shall we ever accomplish more easy to obey than to resist. When, it? How penetrate into those secrets of between ten and fourteen years of age, the the mind at once infinite and delicate, into quickness of her understanding struck the that interior world which conscience itself attention of her masters, and excited the cannot survey, and entirely elucidate? hopes of her family, she still continued to The difficulty is insurmountable; it dis- carry but little spirit or taste into her courages, it depresses, and it is with reluc- studies. She sometimes composed fables tance that I write this account which will and little dramas, as many children do who not satisfy either memory or truth. never afterwards excel. These essays, We must then renounce the idea of destitute of originality and invention, were showing what Madame Guizot was in the only remarkable for singular correctness, opinion of her friends; indeed we scarcely and here and there some happy strokes of know how to add anything to that which feeling; but there was nothing that indithe attentive and intelligent readers of her cated either that energy or that indepenworks must already have formed of her. dence which were one day to rank high in We can only join our testimony to their the qualities of her disposition and her conjectures, and assure them that she pos-i mind. Thoughtful and silent, she seemed sessed all that might be expected from her to be waiting for that external cause which writings; and still we must add that, ex- was to give her the impulse that she wantcept by those who knew and loved her, she, ed. It is seldom that the stimulating could not be justly appreciated. power of circumstances can be dispensed Elizabeth Charlotte Pauline de Meulan with in the development of the mind, more was born at Paris, on the 2d November, especially that of a female, of even the most 1773. She was the eldest daughter of distinguished talents. Called by nature Charles Jacques Louis de Meulan, Re- to hold, in a certain degree, a position of ceiver-General of Paris, and of Marguerite Jeanne de St. Chamans. 1 dependence, and her own instinctive modesty keeping her talents in the shade, a woman's mind is never fully known, even to herself, till some powerful cause arises, which, touching the key-stone of her heart, calls forth the latent powers of her mind, and shows her what she is. She quietly awaits a voice to say, "Arise and walk." Her parents had all the feelings and tastes which distinguished good society at the end of the last century. They took advantage of their large fortune and position in the world, to open their house to a brilliant and literary society, and made conversation its only occupation and its As Mademoiselle de Meulan began to primary amusement. This liberality of advance from childhood, she felt a vague mind, then so common in the Parisian necessity of finding some employment for world, gave them some leaning towards her faculties, though she was conscious of the new opinions, which they adopted with her inability of bringing them herself into confidence, but not with zeal; and amongst play. She has described this feeling in a the distinguished men of the time they letter dated 1822. She says, "At that preferred those of the moderate party. It period (1787), I was exactly at the age was one of those families of which M. when I began to take some interest in life, Neckar was the minister; that is to say, when, after a childhood to which no one who prepared the way for the revolution knew how to give the impetus that I had without either desiring or foreseeing it. not strength to find in myself, I began to feel the energy of existence. I was coming Madame de Meulan showed an early and out of the clouds, and awoke as on a fine to the vexations occasioned by a total day in spring. This is the remembrance overthrow of fortune or position. that I have of that age." In 1794, a general law exiled her family She was nearly sixteen when the revolu- from Paris. Retired into profound solition broke out. She lived in the midst of tude in the country, she found some repose, every opinion, but held none of them. It and was able to reflect with more freedom was not long before discontent and disturb- upon the strong or painful emotions which ance were spread around her, and, though so many causes had excited in her. Thus she judged of the events of this time with she became accustomed to unite solitary severity, yet she enjoyed the liberty, the meditation with penetrating emotion, and excitement it occasioned. She always sometimes to place them in opposition to preserved a very lively recollection of the each other. Cruelly forced to feel, she society of that period, and of the two sit- learned to think. It was in her distant retreat tings of the National Assembly, at which of Passy that she became, as it were, intishe had been present. From that time mately acquainted with herself. She could a strong leaning towards equality took almost remember the day when, occupied possession of her mind; therefore it was in drawing, the idea first struck her, that not through the changes introduced into she might have some genius. This discothe social system that the revolution very fave her great joy; she seemed from wounded her; the violence and in- that time to feel less alone in the justice, the readiness to sacrifice right to world, and to have a certainty of never power, the taste for licentiousness and dis-being destitute: she had just discovered order,-in short, all the evils unhappily a friend. Genius is perhaps one of the inseparable from civil strife, struck her so few benefits that can be possessed without forcibly, that she retained through life a mixture; joined to virtue it leaves no rekind of resentment against the revolution, gret after it. for having caused her so much suffering. From the time she became conscious of Such was the impression it left on her, that her abilities, her energy redoubled, and her she was not able to speak of it with calm- interest in life increased. A great moral ness thirty years afterwards; and it requir-force, which was productive of extreme ed all the influence of her reason to ap-mental and bodily activity, became the preciate that period with the impartiality predominating feature of her character, and due to history. She herself distrusted her her chief resource against misfortune and own remembrances, and, with a candor by vexation. By a happy privilege of nature, no means common, did not make them the the development of her mind, the taste rule of her judgment. she had acquired for meditation, for the To public misfortunes, there were soon study of herself, and for her inquiries after to be added private ones to her. The truth, did not in any degree lessen her defortune of her family had gone, the health votedness to the positive duties of life; on of her father became impaired, and he died in 1790, leaving his family in poverty and affliction. Her mother, suddenly taken from a state of ease and opulence, struggled painfully against the difficulties of a situation so new and so severe; her friends, dispersed or persecuted, could give her neither advice nor assistance. the contrary, she became more vigorous, more decided, more stirring, if I may so speak, in the interest of those whom she considered as confided to her charge. She acquired an ever increasing influence in the direction of the family affairs, and took upon herself all the labors and difficulties attending them. She learned to struggle In despair about the future prospects of against every obstacle, and from that time her three brothers, and a sister whom she she conceived the fondness, the admiration passionately loved, sympathy, devotedness, which she ever afterwards preserved, for and grief, absorbed all the faculties of her persevering activity, in contending with the mind. Becoming more and more a stran- difficulties of life. Confiding in her youth ger to public events, of which she only and strength, she accustomed herself never heard by report, she used all the power and to be disheartened, never to give up as long influence she possessed in consoling and as a single resource remained; and became encouraging her family, in suggesting the firmly fixed in the opinion, that the only courageous part, so difficult to practise by endurance which does not proceed from those who have long been accustomed to weakness, is that which does not yield till prosperity, but which alone can put an end resistance has been exhausted. "It is this luckless onset. His voice, repeatedly raised, was great battle of intellect going on everyas often drowned in an outcry of aversion and where around him, and aspiring with all disgust." his might after what distinction and honor It is plain, from the whole tone and bearing of his first pamphlet, that, when it was written and published, Chalmers had no notion that any distinction he might attain to in the world would ever be derived there God and Nature had qualified him to win. study of the mathematics, he published Although he did not after this drop his nothing more having any reference to that subject. His next work was a volume of and four hundred pages, entitled, An Inpolitical economy, an octavo of between three from or connected with his clerical character. He insists, almost in so many words, upon his profession being considered as a mere accident, or, at any rate, as a circum-quiry into the Extent and Stability of National Resources. It was published, stance of no more real importance than the with his name, at Edinburgh in 1808. color of his coat. One of the most remark- This work, too, never having been reable passages of the pamphlet is an illustra-printed, is little known. It is, however, tion-too long to be here quoted-ridiculing as well as the pamphlet on the Leslie case, Playfair's objection to clerical professors of a most characteristic performance, and mathematics, by an account of a razor which was found to have lost all its shaving vir- very curious to look into at the present tues on its yellow haft being changed for a whose life has all been passed in the Thirty day on various accounts. If any reader, black one. In other places, one would Years' Peace, would obtain a lively imalmost say that he speaks of his being a clergyman as a misfortune, indignantly de- Pression of the very different tone of public sentiment in the last generation, let him precating and protesting against the cruelty repair to this volume of Chalmers's. The of people looking down upon him for what leading principle of the work is, that taxhe cannot help.. "The day is yet to come,' he exclaims, when the world will see that ation, to whatever extent it may be carried, there is the same injustice in attaching ig-transfer what the author calls the disposis no real evil;, its only effect being to nominy to a clergyman on the score of his able population of the country from the profession, as in persecuting an African for service of individuals to that of the his color, or a Mussulman for his religion." Government, and the depression, or even Clergymen, he goes on to contend, are not the ruin and extinction, of any manufacture accountable for being clergymen; "the or branch of trade, bringing with it no sort choice of their profession often depends on of public mischief whatever, and no lasting the most accidental circumstances, a whim suffering or inconvenience to anybody, of infancy, or the capricious destination of beyond the deprivation of some useless, parents." But his sense of injury breaks perhaps pernicious, luxury. But the spirit out with the most passionate expression in in which this principle is urged and applied the concluding paragraph:is warlike to a pitch which we now contemplate with amazement. "The author of the foregoing observations keeps back his name from the public, as a thing of no consequence. With Mr. Playfair, whose mind seems so enlightened by well-founded associations, it will, probably, be enough to know that the author is a clergyman,-a member of the stigmatized caste, one of those puny antagonists with whom it would be degrading to enter into the lists of controversy,-one of those ill-fated beings whom the malignant touch of ordination has condemned to a life of ignorance and obscurity, a being who must bid adieu, it seems, to every flattering anticipation, and drivel out the remainder of his days in insignificance." The writer of these sarcastic and bitter words, we may be assured, was determined that no hic niger est-no black coat or black gown that tailoring ever fashioned-should keep him back from taking part in the ; it is, it all breathes a high, gallant, and Yet, extravagant and almost comical as generous spirit. His suspicion of, and antipathy to, the trading spirit was an innate feeling or principle with Chalmers at this time it was evidently as strong and fierce as it ever was in any feudal baron of the middle ages: but, although he may have afterwards corrected something of its vehemence, we doubt if it ever underwent much essential modification. Even after he went to Glasgow, and there, in the honored and influential position which he held in the midst of a great and wealthy commercial community, had an opportunity of contemplating commerce and its results on the largest scale and in the most favorable light, it may be seen, from his sermons and |