This was at the date when the recent French Revolution and its issues were at the top of all men’s thoughts; and when Burke had just set up his glittering bulwark of eloquence and of sentiment in his famous “Reflections”; and our young Doctor (Mackintosh)--full of a bumptious Whiggism, undertook a reply to the great statesman--a reply so shrewd, so well-seasoned, so sound--that it brought to the young Scotchman (scarce twenty-five in those days) a fame he never outlived. It secured him the acquaintance of Fox and Sheridan, and the friendship of Burke, who in his latter days invited the young pamphleteer, who had so strongly, yet respectfully, antagonized his views, to pass a Christmas with him at his home of Beaconsfield. Of course, such a success broke up the doctoring business, and launched Mackintosh upon a new career. He devoted himself to politics; was some time an accredited lecturer upon the law of nations; was knighted presently and sent to Bombay on civil service. His friends hoped he might find financial equipment there, but this hope was vain; red-tape was an abomination to him always; cash-book and ledger represented unknown quantities; he knew no difference between a shilling and a pound, till he came to spend them. He was in straits all his life. His friendship for Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and Brougham was maintained by correspondence, and on his return from India he became an occasional contributor to the great Scotch _Review_ on various subjects. His range of acquirements was most wide--too wide and too unceasing for the persistency which goes with great single achievements. His histories are fragments. His speeches are misplaced treatises; his treatises are epitomes of didactic systems. When we weigh his known worth, his keenness of intellect, his sound judgment, his wealth of language, his love for thoroughness--which led him to remotest sources of information--his amazing power in colloquial discourse, we are astonished at the little store of good things he has left. There was a lack in him, indeed, of the salient and electrical wit of Sydney Smith; a lack of the easy and graceful volubility of Jeffrey; lack of the abounding and illuminating rhetoric of Macaulay; but a greater lack was of that dogged, persistent working habit which gave to Brougham his triumphs.