present, especially to its Scotchmen. It is stated by Hume, in one
of his letters to Robertson, that meeting in Paris with the lady who
first gave to the French a translation of Charles V., he asked her
what she thought of the style of the work, and that she instantly
replied, with great _naivete_, 'Oh, it is such a style as only a
Scotchman could have written.' Scotland did certainly stand high in
the age of Hume and Mackenzie, of Robertson and of Adam Smith, for not
only the vigour of its thinking, but also for the purity and excellence
of its style. We fear, however, it can no longer arrogate to itself
praise on this special score. There have been books produced among
us during the last twenty years, which have failed in making their way
into England, mainly in consequence of the slipshod style in which
they were written. A busy age, much agitated by controversy, is no doubt
unfavourable to the production of compositions of classic beauty. 'The
rounded period,' says an ingenious French writer, 'opens up the long
folds of its floating robe in a time of stability, authority, and
confidence. But when literature has become a means of action, instead of
continuing to be used for its own sake, we no longer amuse ourselves
with the turning of periods. The period is contemporary with the
peruke--the period is the peruke of style. The close of the eighteenth
century shortened the one as much as the other. The peruke reaching
the middle of the loins could not be suitable to men in haste to
accomplish a work of destruction. When was J. J. Rousseau himself given
to the turning of periods? Assuredly it was not in his pamphlets!'
Now the style of Stewart was first formed, we need scarce remark,
during that period of profound repose which preceded the French
Revolution; and his after-life, spent in quiet and thoughtful
retirement, with the classics of our own and other countries, ancient
and modern, for his companions, and with composition as his sole
employment--though the world around him was fiercely engaged with
politics or with war--had nothing in it to deteriorate it. He never
heard the steam-press groaning, as the night wore late, for his
unfinished lucubrations; nay, we question if he ever wrote a careless
or hurried sentence. His naturally faultless taste had full space to
satisfy itself with whatever he deemed it necessary to perform; and
hence works of finished beauty, which, as pieces of art, the younger
_literati_ of S