Our hero stuck very close to his literary and juridical pursuits. He kept very little company of a Sunday; Sir Edward Hamden generally spent the day at his house, or he at Sir Edward’s. Often they prevailed on Strongbrain to be one of the company, and well as they knew him, he at every visit astonished them by the grasp of his genius. They all were friendly to the French revolution, though in different degrees. Hamilton, who besides being a literary man by profession was young, regarded what he considered the triumph of liberty with exultation, and was pleased with a state of things in which he apprehended that intellect was obtaining its native superiority, and trampling every distinction but wisdom and virtue. Hamden, with all his personal merit, not without a sense of rank and birth, was inimical to the destruction of privileged orders. Strongbrain thought the revolution too violent to suit the gradual variations of the human character, and too democratical to suit the mad volatility of the French. Hamilton observed, that a very rapid change now took place in the political sentiments of the country, and with the action and re-action of the press, affected our literature; that though one of its chief objects was innovation in the church and state, its influence extended much farther; and that not only in institutions, but manners, principles, sentiments, thoughts, and even the powers of nature, the great object was innovation. He traced this spirit of boundless change from its first origin, in that superstition and despotism which genius discovered; but observed, that in avoiding great evils it ran into much greater. He reviewed the efforts of Rousseau, Voltaire, and Helvetius, and the various concurring causes of the French revolution, and marked the progress in other parts of Europe, but especially in England, of the innovating spirit which it was now calling into action, and attended peculiarly to the literature which it excited. He admired the genius of Priestly and Price; and though he disapproved of their enmity to the establishment, yet he revered their high spirit of liberty; and if he questioned their prudence, he gave them full credit for sincerity. Though a friend to the church his regard to it was rather political than religious; if he venerated some, and respected many of its members, it was for individual qualities, and not official situation. He profoundly admired Watson, without doing homage to the Bishop of Landaff. He highly estimated the force and science of a Horseley, without adopting in every case the authority of the hierarch. In the classical elegance of a Douglas, the critical acuteness of a Hurd, and the christian simplicity of a Porteous, he valued the men, and not simply the mitre. He himself was rather attached to literary dissenters, whom he conceived to be zealous promoters of that liberty which Cambridge had taught him to prize. Deeply conversant