_, a decided part
against Burke, in apology of the French Revolution, yet he possessed great
candour of mind, and had magnanimity enough, in maturer years, to admit,
that he had been far led astray in early life by the inexperience and
ardour of youth. When a man possesses this equanimity and justice of mind,
it is wholly immaterial to what political party he belongs, and with what
preconceived opinions he undertakes the task of narrating events. Truth
will shine out in every page--justice will preside over every
decision--facts will inevitably lead to the correct conclusion. It is
perverted genius, skilful partisanship, imagination brought to the aid of
party, and learning dedicated to the support of delusion, which is really
to be dreaded. Mackintosh's mind was essentially philosophical: this
appears in every page of his Life by his sons--one of the most interesting
pieces of biography in the English language. His characters of statesmen,
orators, and poets, in England during the eighteenth century, chiefly
written at Bombay, or during the voyage home, are perhaps unparalleled in
our language for justice and felicity. They show how richly stored his
mind was; how correctly his taste had been formed on the best models; how
vast a stock of images, comparisons, and associations, he brought to bear
on the events and characters which he passed in survey. He had not a
poetical mind, and was destitute of a pictorial eye. His history,
therefore, never would have been adorned by those moving scenes, those
graphic pictures, which are the life and soul of the highest style of
history, and which have given immortality to the writings of Livy,
Sallust, and Tacitus. But the eighteenth century, though by no means
destitute of events calling for such imaginative powers, has perhaps less
of them than any equal period in English history. What is mainly required
for it is a philosophic mind, to appreciate the effects of the great
convulsions of the preceding century, and an impartial judgment, to
discern the causes which were preparing the still more terrible
catastrophe of the nineteenth. Mackintosh possessed these great and
valuable qualities in a very high degree; and his history, if he had
succeeded in completing it, would unquestionably have taken its place with
those of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. The thing really to be lamented is,
that the time which Providence allotted to him, and which was amply
sufficient for the completion ev