The most punctilious ceremony existed.  When dinner was announced, a file of ladies went first in strict order of precedence.  ’Mrs. Colonel Such an One;’ ‘Mrs. Doctor Such an One,’ and so on.  Toasts were de rigueur:  no glass of wine was to be taken by a guest without comprehending a lady, or a covey of ladies.  ‘I was present,’ says Lord Cockburn, ’when the late Duke of Buccleuch took a glass of sherry by himself at the table of Charles Hope, then Lord Advocate, and this was noticed as a piece of ducal contempt.’  Toasts, and when the ladies had retired, rounds of toasts, were drunk.  ‘The prandial nuisance,’ Lord Cockburn wrote, ‘was horrible.  But it was nothing to what followed.’

At these repasts, though less at these than at boisterous suppers, a frequent visitor at the same table with Sydney Smith was the illustrious Sir James Mackintosh, a man to whose deep-thinking mind the world is every day rendering justice.  The son of a brave officer, Mackintosh was born on the banks of Loch Ness:  his mother, a Miss Fraser, was aunt to Mrs. Fraser Tytler, wife of Lord Woodhouselee, one of the judges of the Court of Session and mother of the late historian of that honoured name.

Mackintosh had been studying at Aberdeen, in the same classes with Robert Hall, whose conversation, he avowed, had a great influence over his mind.  He arrived in Edinburgh about 1784, uncertain to what profession to belong; somewhat anxious to be a bookseller, in order to revel in ‘the paradise of books;’ he turned his attention, however, to medicine, and became a Brunonian, that is, a disciple of John Brown, the founder of a theory which he followed out to the extent in practice.  The main feature of the now defunct system, which set scientific Europe in a blaze, seems to have been a mad indulgence of the passions; and an unbridled use of intoxicating liquors.  Brown fell a victim to his vices.  Years after he had been laid in his grave, his daughter, Euphemia, being in great indigence, received real kindness from Sir James and Lady Mackintosh, the former of whom used to delight in telling the story of her father’s saying to her:  ’Effy, bring me the mooderate stimulus of a hoonderd draps o’ laudanum in a glass o’ brandy.’

Mackintosh had not quitted Edinburgh when Sydney Smith reached it.  Smith became a member of the famous Speculative Society.  Their acquaintance was renewed years afterwards in London.  Who can ever forget the small, quiet dinners given by Mackintosh when living out of Parliament, and out of office in Cadogan Place?  Simple but genial were those repasts, forming a strong contrast to the Edinburgh dinners of yore.  He had then long given up both the theory and practice of the Brunonians, and took nothing but light French and German wines, and these in moderation.  His tall, somewhat high-shouldered, massive form; his calm brow, mild, thoughtful; his dignity of manner; his gentleness to all; his vast knowledge; his wonderful appreciation of excellence; his discrimination of faults—­all combined to form one of the finest specimens ever seen, even in that illustrious period, of a philosopher and historian.