which, skilfully used, made the fortune of more than one speech.  But “it was caviare to the general.”  And even those who listened to Sir James with pleasure and admiration could not but acknowledge that he rather lectured than debated.  An artist who should waste on a panorama, or a scene, or on a transparency, the exquisite finishing which we admire in some of the small Dutch interiors, would not squander his powers more than this eminent man too often did.  His audience resembled the boy in the Heart of Midlothian, who pushes away the lady’s guineas with contempt, and insists on having the white money.  They preferred the silver with which they were familiar, and which they were constantly passing about from hand to hand, to the gold which they had never before seen, and with the value of which they were unacquainted.

It is much to be regretted, we think, that Sir James Mackintosh did not wholly devote his later years to philosophy and literature.  His talents were not those which enable a speaker to produce with rapidity a series of striking but transitory impressions, and to excite the minds of five hundred gentlemen at midnight, without saying anything that any one of them will be able to remember in the morning.  His arguments were of a very different texture from those which are produced in Parliament at a moment’s notice, which puzzle a plain man who, if he had them before him in writing, would soon detect their fallacy, and which the great debater who employs them forgets within half an hour, and never thinks of again.  Whatever was valuable in the compositions of Sir James Mackintosh was the ripe fruit of study and of meditation.  It was the same with his conversation.  In his most familiar talk there was no wildness, no inconsistency, no amusing nonsense, no exaggeration for the sake of momentary effect.  His mind was a vast magazine, admirably arranged.  Everything was there; and everything was in its place.  His judgments on men, on sects, on books, had been often and carefully tested and weighed, and had then been committed, each to its proper receptacle, in the most capacious and accurately constructed memory that any human being ever possessed.  It would have been strange indeed if you had asked for anything that was not to be found in that immense storehouse.  The article which you required was not only there.  It was ready.  It was in its own proper compartment.  In a moment it was brought down, unpacked, and displayed.  If those who enjoyed the privilege—­for a privilege indeed it was—­of listening to Sir James Mackintosh had been disposed to find some fault in his conversation, they might perhaps have observed that he yielded too little to the impulse of the moment.  He seemed to be recollecting, not creating.  He never appeared to catch a sudden glimpse of a subject in a new light.  You never saw his opinions in the making, still rude, still inconsistent, and requiring to be fashioned by thought and discussion.  They came forth, like the pillars of that temple in which no sound of axes or hammers was heard, finished, rounded, and exactly suited to their places.  What Mr. Charles Lamb has said, with much humour and some truth, of the conversation of Scotchmen in general, was certainly true of this eminent Scotchman.  He did not find, but bring.  You could not cry halves to anything that turned up while you were in his company.