The intellectual and moral qualities which are most important in a historian, he possessed in a very high degree.  He was singularly mild, calm, and impartial in his judgments of men, and of parties.  Almost all the distinguished writers who have treated of English history are advocates.  Mr. Hallam and Sir James Mackintosh alone are entitled to be called judges.  But the extreme austerity of Mr. Hallam takes away something from the pleasure of reading his learned, eloquent, and judicious writings.  He is a judge, but a hanging judge, the Page or Buller of the High Court of Literary justice.  His black cap is in constant requisition.  In the long calendar of those whom he has tried, there is hardly one who has not, in spite of evidence to character and recommendations to mercy, been sentenced and left for execution.  Sir James, perhaps, erred a little on the other side.  He liked a maiden assize, and came away with white gloves, after sitting in judgment on batches of the most notorious offenders.  He had a quick eye for the redeeming parts of a character, and a large toleration for the infirmities of men exposed to strong temptations.  But this lenity did not arise from ignorance or neglect of moral distinctions.  Though he allowed perhaps too much weight to every extenuating circumstance that could be urged in favour of the transgressor, he never disputed the authority of the law, or showed his ingenuity by refining away its enactments.  On every occasion he showed himself firm where principles were in question, but full of charity towards individuals.

We have no hesitation in pronouncing this Fragment decidedly the best history now extant of the reign of James the Second.  It contains much new and curious information, of which excellent use has been made.  But we are not sure that the book is not in some degree open to the charge which the idle citizen in the Spectator brought against his pudding; “Mem. too many plums, and no suet.”  There is perhaps too much disquisition and too little narrative; and indeed this is the fault into which, judging from the habits of Sir James’s mind, we should have thought him most likely to fall.  What we assuredly did not anticipate was, that the narrative would be better executed than the disquisitions.  We expected to find, and we have found, many just delineations of character, and many digressions full of interest, such as the account of the order of Jesuits, and of the state of prison discipline in England a hundred and fifty years ago.  We expected to find, and we have found, many reflections breathing the spirit of a calm and benignant philosophy.  But we did not, we own, expect to find that Sir James could tell a story as well as Voltaire or Hume.  Yet such is the fact; and if any person doubts it, we would advise him to read the account of the events which followed the issuing of King James’s declaration, the meeting of the clergy, the violent scene at the privy council, the commitment, trial, and acquittal