the field, and slunk away after an exulting taunt thrown out at “such fanciful chimeras as a golden mountain or a perfect man.”  Mr. Mackintosh had something of the air, much of the dexterity and self-possession, of a political and philosophical juggler; and an eager and admiring audience gaped and greedily swallowed the gilded bait of sophistry, prepared for their credulity and wonder.  Those of us who attended day after day, and were accustomed to have all our previous notions confounded and struck out of our hands by some metaphysical legerdemain, were at last at some loss to know whether two and two made four, till we had heard the lecturer’s opinion on that head.  He might have some mental reservation on the subject, some pointed ridicule to pour upon the common supposition, some learned authority to quote against it.  To anticipate the line of argument he might pursue, was evidently presumptuous and premature.  One thing only appeared certain, that whatever opinion he chose to take up, he was able to make good either by the foils or the cudgels, by gross banter or nice distinctions, by a well-timed mixture of paradox and common-place, by an appeal to vulgar prejudices or startling scepticism.  It seemed to be equally his object, or the tendency of his Discourses, to unsettle every principle of reason or of common sense, and to leave his audience at the mercy of the dictum of a lawyer, the nod of a minister, or the shout of a mob.  To effect this purpose, he drew largely on the learning of antiquity, on modern literature, on history, poetry, and the belles-lettres, on the Schoolmen and on writers of novels, French, English, and Italian.  In mixing up the sparkling julep, that by its potent operation was to scour away the dregs and feculence and peccant humours of the body politic, he seemed to stand with his back to the drawers in a metaphysical dispensary, and to take out of them whatever ingredients suited his purpose.  In this way he had an antidote for every error, an answer to every folly.  The writings of Burke, Hume, Berkeley, Paley, Lord Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Grotius, Puffendorf, Cicero, Aristotle, Tacitus, Livy, Sully, Machiavel, Guicciardini, Thuanus, lay open beside him, and he could instantly lay his hand upon the passage, and quote them chapter and verse to the clearing up of all difficulties, and the silencing of all oppugners.  Mr. Mackintosh’s Lectures were after all but a kind of philosophical centos.  They were profound, brilliant, new to his hearers; but the profundity, the brilliancy, the novelty were not his own.  He was like Dr. Pangloss (not Voltaire’s, but Coleman’s) who speaks only in quotations; and the pith, the marrow of Sir James’s reasoning and rhetoric at that memorable period might be put within inverted commas.  It, however, served its purpose and the loud echo died away.  We remember an excellent man and a sound critic[A] going to hear one of these elaborate effusions; and on his want of enthusiasm being accounted for from its not being