Smollett, and Robertson now figure largely in his personal record, so that he had no lack of genial companions.  Adam Smith he describes as “a very absent man in society, moving his lips, talking to himself, and smiling, in the midst of large companies.”  Robertson was a very different person, and held all the conversation-threads in his own fingers, forgetting, alas! sometimes, that he had not been present in many a scene which he described as an eye-witness.

Carlyle went some distance on the way toward London with Home, when he carried his tragedy of “Douglas” for examination to the critics.  Six other clergymen, accompanied the precious manuscript on that expedition, and the fun was prodigious.  Garrick read the play and pronounced it totally unfit for the stage!  “Douglas” was afterwards brought out in Edinburgh with unbounded success.  David Hume ran about crying it up as the first performance he world had seen for half a century.

Carlyle’s visit to Shenstone is very graphically described in the “Autobiography.”  The poet was then “a large, heavy, fat man, dressed in white clothes and silver lace.”  One night in Edinburgh, Dr. Robertson gave a small supper-party to “the celebrated Dr. Franklin,” and Carlyle met him that evening at table.  They came together afterwards several times.

But we must refer our readers to the book itself, our limits not allowing more space for a glance at one of the most entertaining works in modern biography.

The Laws of Race, as connected with Slavery.  By the Author of “The Law of the Territories,” “Rustic Rhymes,” etc.  Philadelphia:  W.P.  Hazard. 1860. 8vo. pp. 70.

There is no lack of talk and writing among us on political topics; but there is great lack of independent and able thought concerning them.  The disputes and the manoeuvres of parties interfere with the study and recognition of the active principles which silently mould the national character and history.  The double-faced platforms of conventions, the loose manifestoes of itinerant candidates for the Presidency, the rhetorical misrepresentations of “campaign documents,” form the staple of our political literature.

The writer of the pamphlet before us is one of the few men who not only think for themselves, nut whose thoughts deserve attention.  His essay on “The Law of the Territories” was distinguished not more by its sound reasoning than by the candor of its statements and the calmness of its tone and temper.  If his later essay, on “The Laws of Race, as connected with Slavery,” be on the whole less satisfactory, this is to be attributed, not to any want in it of the same qualities of thought and style as were displayed in his earlier work, but to the greater complexify and difficulty of the subject itself.  The question of Race, so far as it affects actual national conditions, is one of the deepest and most intricate which can be presented to the student of politics.  It is impossible to investigate it