streets of Constantinople as a foreigner in any European capital.

He did not lose the opportunity, which was now offered him, of travelling into Greece. He saw the ruins of some of its most celebrated cities, and many of those innumerable places which have been dignified by the actions of its ancient heroes. Among these he visited the plain of Marathon, where the monument of Miltiades still stands. The twentytwo libraries which are contained in the twenty-two monasteries of Mount Athos, employed much of his attention. With great labour he made catalogues of all the works they contain. Many of the monks impressed him with a high opinion of their abilities and learning, and he professes to have owed much to their civility and communicativeness. From Mount Athos, among other acquisitions, he brought a manuscript of one of the plays of schylus.

Before his return to England, he made a tour through the most considerable parts of Italy. He has compared the ruins of Athens and Rome, and thinks that the admiration resulting from the contemplation of objects which appear with unexpected grandeur, will not strike at Rome those who have viewed Athens; such is the superiority which the ingenuity and public spirit of the Athenians gave them over the power of the Romans, to whose corts, in raising monuments of their greatness, the riches of a mighty empire contributed. From Italy he returned through Tyrol and part of Germany to England, where

he

he landed in September 1801, after an absence of two years, during which his literary objects and his curiosity had carried him into all the most celebrated countries of the Old World.

In this sketch of his travels, it has not been pro posed so much to satisfy as to excite the expectations of the public. That full and precise account which it will undoubtedly desire, must be expected from Mr. Carlyle himself, whom the motives which engaged him in such long and dangerous expeditions will induce to communicate the information which they gave him the opportunity of acquiring. The novelty, variety, and importance of what he has seen, and his power of adding interest to his narration, by the extent and refinement of his knowledge, will render the account of his travels a work of the highest value.

Since his return to England he has been presented by the Bishop of Carlisle to the living of Newcastleupon-Tyne, supposed to be worth 1000l. per annum. It is said that he suffers, and has suffered since the beginning of last winter, under a severe illness, occasioned by the fatigues and variety of climate he has experienced. We hope that he will soon be restored to a state of health which will allow him to attend to his important literary engagements, and enjoy those satisfactions which must attend the remembrance of his public labours.

HENRY

MR. HENRY MACKENZIE,

AUTHOR OF THE MAN OF FEELING, &c. &c.

HENRY MACKENZIE, a man eminent by tenderness and elegance of genius, by his love of literature, by diligence and ability in business, and by the attractions of his conversation and manners, was born, as we have been informed, about the year 1746.

His father was Dr. Joshua Mackenzie, of a distinguished branch of the ancient family of the Mackenzies of the North of Scotland. He was a gentleman of great worth and benevolence; and died last year, in Edinburgh, at the advanced age of eighty-one.

The gentleman, whose merits are the subject of this memoir, after receiving a liberal education with the advantages usual in Scotland, chose for his profession to engage in a particular department of the practice of the law; and in the year 1766 became an attorney in the Scottish court of exchequer,

A taste for even the delicacies of the polite literature of France and England had, just about that time, become fashionable in the best society in Scotland. David Hume, Lord Kaimes, Dr. Robertson, and Dr. Adam Smith, had already cultivated history, philosophy, and eloquence, with a success which excited emulation, and in conditions of life from which the same praise might appear desirable to the gentleman, the man of business, and the man of the world, who would have disdained the pedantry of obscure

erudition.

erudition. Macpherson's translation of the remains of Ossian, Home's tragedy of Douglas, and a few other successful pieces in the literature of fancy, had been, also, produced, from which it began to be supposed, that natives of Scotland, even while permanently resident there, might occasionally excel, not merely in science, learning, and energy of sentiment, but in those compositions, which required a skill in all the many-changing colours of English phraseology, in the finer diversities of the texture of English style, in those modes of the superficial manners of English life which form as it were the colouring and the drapery of our lighter ethical literature, in the art of touching those keys, of giving vibration to those chords, of educ ing those sweetly wild, yet exquisitely artificial sounds to which alone the native tones of English passion, and the peculiar energies of English imagination are wont to awake responsive.

The classics, in particular, of the English and French literature of fiction, were, then, read in Scotland, with incredible fondness; but, read as yet only or chiefly by people of fashion. It is with our taste in books, as with our fashions in dress. As the par ticular form of a head-dress, or the particular cut of a coat, however in itself happily elegant and graceful, no sooner descends to the use of the shopkeeper's smart wife or the beau behind a compter, than it becomes odious to the gay flutterers of high life: so, let even a taste for literary amusement become general among the common people-and the great shall be scen, all, to contend with one another for

the

the palm of ignorance; but, let any one species of science or literature have just shewn itself in a country, as a novelty, and be known as yet only as one of the pleasures or decorations of people in higher lifeand you shall see them pursue it with a zeal the most ardent, and a diligence the most persevering. With this advantage in their favour, the works of Le Sage, of Fielding, and of Smollet, could not fail to please they had pleased much in Scotland: but the first partiality for them among the more refined order of readers, had already somewhat abated. Comedy in tears, and sentimental novels were, now, the rage. The Tristram Shandy of Sterne, La Nouvelle Heloise by Rousseau, the comedies of Diderot, and still, to a certain degree, the novels of Richardson, were the favourite volumes. These even the unskilful affected highly to admire. Upon these, the public taste was formed. A young man, with a fondness for study, and feeling the first impulses of genius might, indeed, happen not to have read them; but he could not listen to conversation on any subject related to taste in the literature of fancy, without being taught to think those excellencies for which they were distinguished, the best virtues and graces of whatever was elegant in literary composition.

Genius springs not up, like an Arabian palace of enchantment, in the desart, without the exercise of visible means in its creation. It is not born with that culture and those biases to which we owe the particular efforts and productions which afterwards distinguish it in the world. One may, therefore, hope

1802-3.

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