field. A manly and generous tone would have characterized the paper, and his articles would have been of the very highest newspaper merit. But a post of such importance, and the exercise of so vast an instrumentality, presented no temptation to his ambition. His efforts there would have been necessarily ephemeral, whereas he wrote for fame. We question if such aspirants ever obtain their desired reward.
"Nor Fame I slight, nor for her favours call:
She comes unlooked-for, if she comes at all."
Thus sang one who has secured the guerdon. Had Homer been apprehensive about his fame, the world would never have been charmed with the "Iliad."
We have already noticed his want of self-concentration. This abeyance of the reflective faculty will aid in explaining the absurd extravagance of his earlier political views; it will detract, we fear, from the merit of his later labours in the cause of constitutional government. He was swayed primarily by the feelings. When once a cause had taken hold of his heart, he then sought for arguments to enforce it, and urged his convictions with a zeal glowing as with the warmth of personal interest. This will also explain his aversion to scientific pursuits, and his dislike of scientific men, notwithstanding his life-long friendship with Sir Humphrey Davy, and others. "Generally speaking," he says, "I have little liking for men of science; their pursuits serve to deaden the imagination and harden the heart; they are so accustomed to analyze and anatomatize everything, to understand or fancy they understand whatever comes before them, that they frequently become mere materialists; account for everything by mechanism and motion; and would put out of the world all that makes the world endurable. I do not undervalue their knowledge nor the utility of their discoveries, but I do not like the men. My own nature requires something more than they
