Leaving Burns's Monument, we ascend the hill, in the opposite direction, pass the unfinished Parthenon, consisting only of a few elegant columns, and intended to commemorate the battle of Waterloo, the Observatory, and the Monument of Professor Playfair, the celebrated mathematician and astronomer, and reach the elegant though not imposing monument of Professor Dugald Stewart, not the most acute, but certainly the most finished and instructive of all the writers of the Scottish metaphysical school. Let us linger here, a few moments, for the name of Professor Stewart is peculiarly dear to Scotland. No man was ever more enthusiastically regarded by his pupils, or more generally loved and revered by the community. Dr. Reid of Glasgow University, the immediate predecessor and preceptor of Stewart, was a man of an acute and original mind, though not possessed of half the grace and fluency of his illustrious pupil. It was Reid however that first gave clearness and method to the metaphysics of Scotland. His writings on first principles, or, as he called them, principles of Common Sense, gave a death-blow, at least in Scotland, to the _ideal theory_ of Berkeley and Hume, and greatly affected the course of philosophical investigation not only in England but in France. In fact, his philosophy supplanted, for a time, the infidel metaphysics of Hume and the French rationalists. It cut the roots equally of idealism and sensualism, and was eagerly received by thoughtful men in Europe and in this country. It can be seen running like a sunbeam, through the speculations of Royer Collard, Constant, Jouffroy and even of Cousin. Based on the Baconian method, it proceeded, modestly and unostentatiously, to ascertain, and then to classify the facts of mind; and, because it projected no splendid theories, or blazing fancies, it has been rejected by superficial and visionary thinkers, with some degree of contempt. After all, it may yet be recognized, by all genuine philosophers, as the only true scientific method. In the hands of Stewart and of Brown, his colleague and successor, it began to assume a lofty and attractive position; but alas! it has remained stationary for the want of strong and true-hearted defenders. Stigmatized by the Germans as "pallid and insular--timid and cold," it has been forsaken, of late, by the more popular metaphysical writers, for the brilliant and astounding, but ever varying visions of the Transcendental School. Smitten with the love of Ontology, or the doctrine of "the absolute and the essential," scorning the methods of Bacon and Newton as empirical and shallow, and setting their foot on the modest, perhaps timid speculations of Reid and Stewart, metaphysicians have plunged one after another into the abyss of an absolute Spiritualism, where, amid the glimmerings of a half-dark and lurid radiance, may be seen the disciples of Kant and Fichte, Hegel and Schelling, floundering in the gloom, changing places continually, now