mes's
views and opinions was attributed to a personal interview which he
had had a little before his death with Mr. Burke, at his house at
Beaconsfield. In the latter end of the year 1796, appeared the _Regicide
Peace_, from the pen of the great apostate from liberty and betrayer of
his species into the hands of those who claimed it as their property
by divine right--a work imposing, solid in many respects, abounding in
facts and admirable reasoning, and in which all flashy ornaments were
laid aside for a testamentary gravity, (the eloquence of despair
resembling the throes and heaving and muttered threats of an earthquake,
rather than the loud thunder-bolt)--and soon after came out a criticism
on it in _The Monthly Review_, doing justice to the author and the
style, and combating the inferences with force and at much length; but
with candour and with respect, amounting to deference. It was new to Mr.
Burke not to be called names by persons of the opposite party; it was
an additional triumph to him to be spoken well of, to be loaded with
well-earned praise by the author of the _Vindiciae Gallicae_. It was a
testimony from an old, a powerful, and an admired antagonist.[B] He sent
an invitation to the writer to come and see him; and in the course of
three days' animated discussion of such subjects, Mr. Mackintosh became
a convert not merely to the graces and gravity of Mr. Burke's style, but
to the liberality of his views, and the solidity of his opinions.--The
Lincoln's-Inn Lectures were the fruit of this interview: such is the
influence exercised by men of genius and imaginative power over those
who have nothing to oppose to their unforeseen flashes of thought and
invention, but the dry, cold, formal deductions of the understanding.
Our politician had time, during a few years of absence from his native
country, and while the din of war and the cries of party-spirit "were
lost over a wide and unhearing ocean," to recover from his surprise and
from a temporary alienation of mind; and to return in spirit, and in the
mild and mellowed maturity of age, to the principles and attachments of
his early life.

The appointment of Sir James Mackintosh to a Judgeship in India was one,
which, however flattering to his vanity or favourable to his interests,
was entirely foreign to his feelings and habits. It was an honourable
exile. He was out of his element among black slaves and sepoys, and
Nabobs and cadets, and writers to India. H