of all his works, none have been read by great numbers; and most of them, from their difficulties of style and subject, have little chance of ever being generally popular. He acted upon the destinies of his race by influencing the thoughts of a minute fraction of the few who thinkfrom them the broad principles travelled onward-became known(their source unknown)-became familiar and successful. I have said that we live in an age of visible transition-an age of disquietude and doubt of the removal of time-worn landmarks, and the breaking up of the hereditary elements of society-old opinions, feelings-ancestral customs and institutions are crumbling away, and both the spiritual and temporal worlds are darkened by the shadow of change. The commencement of one of these epochs-periodical in the history of mankind is hailed by the sanguine as the coming of a new Millennium -a great iconoclastic reformation, by which all false gods shall be overthrown. To me such epochs appear but as the dark passages in the appointed progress of mankind—the times of greatest unhappiness to our species-passages into which we have no reason to rejoice at our entrance, save from the hope of being sooner landed on the opposite side. Uncertainty is the greatest of all our evils. And I know of no happiness where there is not a firm unwavering belief in its duration.

The age, then, is one of destruction! disguise it as we will, it must be so characterized; miserable would be our lot were it not also an age of preparation for reconstructing. What has been the influence of Bentham upon his age?-it has been twofold-he has helped to destroy and also to rebuild. No one has done so much to forward, at least in this country, the work of destruction, as Mr. Bentham. The spirit of examination and questioning has become through him, more than through any one person besides, the prevailing spirit of the age. For he questioned all things. The tendencies of a mind at once sceptical and systematic (and both in the utmost possible degree), made him endeavour to trace all speculative phenomena back to their primitive elements, and to reconsider not only the received conclusions, but the received premises. He treated all subjects as if they were virgin subjects, never before embraced or approached by man. He did not set up an established doctrine as a thesis to be disputed about, but put it aside altogether, commenced from first principles, and deliberately tasked himself systematically to discover the truth, or to rediscover it if it were already known. By this process, if he ever annihilated a received opinion, he was sure of having something either good or bad to offer as a substitute for it; and in this he was most favourably distinguished from those French philosophers who preceded and even surpassed him, as destroyers of established institutions on the continent of Europe And we shall owe largely to one who

reconstructed while he destroyed, if our country is destined to pass more smoothly through this crisis of transition than the nations of the Continent, and to lose less of the good it already enjoys in working itself free from the evil;-his be the merit, if while the wreck of the old vessel is still navigable, the masts of the new one which brings relief are dimly showing themselves above the horizon!

certain, and will be seen every day more clearly, that the initiation of all the changes which are now making in opinions and in institutions, may be claimed chiefly by men who have been indebted to his writings, and to the spirit of his philosophy, for the most important part of their intellectual cultivation.

I had originally proposed in this part of my work to give a slight sketch of the principal tenets of Bentham, with an exposition of what I conceive to be his errors; pointing out at once the benefits he has conferred, and also the mischief he has effected. But slight as would be that sketch, it must necessarity be somewhat abstract; and I have therefore, for the sake of the general reader, added it to this volume in the form of an Appendix.* I have there, regarding Bentham as a legislator and a moralist, ventured to estimate him much more highly in the former capacity than the latter; endeavouring to combat the infallibility of his application of the principle of Utility, and to show the dangerous and debasing theories, which may be, and are, deduced from it. Even, however, in legislation, his greatest happiness principle is not so clear and undeniable as it is usually conceded to be. "The greatest happiness of the greatest number" is to be our invariable guide! Is it so?-the greatest happiness of the greatest number of men living, I suppose, not of men to come; for if of all posterity, what legislator can be our guide? who can prejudge the future? Of men living, then?- well- how often would their greatest happiness consist in concession to their greatest errors?

In the dark ages (said once to me very happily the wittiest writer of the day, and one who has perhaps done more to familiarize Bentham's general doctrines to the public than any other individual), in the dark ages, it would have been for the greatest happiness of the greatest number to burn the witches; it must have made the greatest number (all credulous of wizardry) very uncomfortable to refuse their request for so reasonable a conflagration; they would have been given up to fear and disquietude-they would have imagined their safety disregarded and their cattle despised-if witches were to live with impunity, riding on broomsticks, and sailing in oyster-shells ;-their happiness demanded a bonfire of old women. To grant such a bonfire would have been really to consult the greatest happiness of the

See Appendix B.

greatest number, yet ought it to have been the principle of wise, nay, of perfect (for so the dogma states), of unimpugnable legislation? In fact, the greatest happiness principle is an excellent general rule, but it is not an undeniable axiom.

We may observe, that whatever have been the workings of English philosophy in this age, they have assumed as their characteristic a material shape. No new idealizing school has sprung up amongst us, to confute and combat with the successors of Locke; to counterbalance the attraction towards schools, dealing only with the unelevating practices of the world-the science of money-making, and the passionate warfare with social abuses. And this is the more remarkable, because, both in Scotland and in Germany, the light of the Material Schools has already waxed dim and faint, and Philosophy directs her gaze to more lofty stars, out of the reach of this earth's attraction.

But what is it that in Germany sustains the undying study of pure ethical philosophy? and what is it that in Scotland has kept alive the metaphysical researches so torpid here? It is the system of professorships and endowments. And, indeed, such a system is far more necessary in the loud and busy action of a free commercial people, than it is in the deep quiet of a German state. With us it is the sole means by which we shall be able to advance a science that cannot by any possible chance remunerate or maintain its poorer disciples in all its speculative dignity, preserved from sinking into the more physical or more material studies which to a noisier fame attach greater rewards. Professorships compel a constant demand for ethical research, while they afford a serene leisure for its supply; insensibly they create the taste upon which they are forced, and maintain the moral glories of the nation abroad, while they contribute to rectify and to elevate its character at home.

Since writing the above, I have had great pleasure in reading a Petition from Glasgow, praying for endowed Lectureships in Mechanics' Institutes. I consider such a Petition more indicative of a profound and considerate spirit of liberalism than almost any other which, for the last three years, has been presented to the Legislative Assembly.

CHAPTER VII.

PATRONAGE.

Patronage as influencing Art and Science.-Two sorts of Patronage-that of Individuals, that of the State.-Individual Patronage in certain cases pernicious.Individual Patronage is often subserviency to Individual Taste.-Domestic Habits influence Art.-Small Houses.-The Nobleman and his two Pictures.-Jobbing. -What is the Patronage of a State? That which operates in elevating the people, and s encouraging Genius —The qualities that obtain Honours are the Barometers of the respect in which Intellect, Virtue, Wealth, or Birth are held. -The Remark of Helvetius.-Story of a Man of Expectations.-Deductions of the chapter summed up.

BEFORE touching upon the state of science, and the state of art in England, it may be as well to settle one point, important to just views of either. It is this-What is the real influence of patronage? Now, Sir, I hold that this question has not been properly considered. Some attribute every efficacy to patronage, others refuse it all; to my judgment, two distinct sorts of patronage are commonly confounded: there is the patronage of individuals, and there is the patronage of the State. I consider the patronage of individuals hurtful whenever it is neither supported nor corrected by diffused knowlelge among the public at large-but that of the state is usually beneficial. In England, we have no want of patronage, in art at least, however common the complaint; we have abundant patronage, but it is all of one kind; it is individual patronage, the State patronizes nothing.

Now, Sir, I think that where the Public is supine, the patronage of individuals is injurious; first, because wherever, in such a case, there is individual patronage, must come the operation of individual taste. George the Fourth (for with us a king is as an individual, not as the state) admired the low Dutch school of painting, and Boors and candlesticks became universally the rage. In the second place, and this has never been enough insisted upon, the domestic habits of a nation exercise great influence upon its arts. If people do not live in large houses, they cannot ordinarily purchase large pictures. The English aristocracy, wealthy as they are, like to live in angular drawing-rooms thirty feet by twenty-eight, they have no vast halls and long-drawn galleries; if they buy large pictures, they have no place wherein to hang them. It is absurd to expect them to patronize the grand historical school, until we insist upon their living in grand his

torical houses. Commodiousness of size is therefore the first great requisite in a marketable picture. Hence, one very plain reason why the Historical School of painting does not flourish amongst us. Individuals are the patrons of painting; individuals buy pictures for private houses, as the State would buy them for public buildings. An artist painted an historical picture for a nobleman, who owned one of the few large houses in London; two years afterwards the nobleman asked him to exchange it for a little cabinet picture, half its value. "Your Lordship must have discovered some great faults in my great picture," said the piqued artist. "Not in the least," replied the nobleman very innocently, "but the fact is, I have changed my house."

There was no longer any room for the historical picture, and the ornament in one house had become lumber in the other.

Individual patronage in England is not therefore at this time advantageous to high art: we hear artists crying out for patronage to support art: they have had patronage enough, and it has crippled and attenuated art as much as it possibly could do; add to this that individual patronage leads to jobbing; the fashionable patron does everything for the fashionable artist. And the job of the Royal Academy at this day, claims the National Gallery as a jobbing appendix to itself!-Sir Martin Shee asks for patronage, and owns in the same breath, that it would be the creature of "interest or intrigue." But if it promote jobbing among fashionable artists, individual patronage is likely to pervert the genius of great ones-it commands, it bows, it moulds its protégé to whims and caprices; it set Michael Angelo to make roads, and employed Holbein in designs for forks and saltcellars.

No! individual patronage is not advantageous to art, but there is a patronage which is the patronage of the State, and this only to a certain extent. Supposing there were in the mass of this country a deep love and veneration for art or for science, the State could do nothing more than attempt to perpetuate those feelings; but if that love and veneration do not exist, the State can probably assist to create or impel them. The great body of the people must be filled with the sentiments that produce science or art, in order to make art and science become thoroughly naturalized among us. The spirit of a state can form those sentiments among its citizens. This is the sole beneficial patronage it can bestow. How is the favour of the people to be obtained? by suiting the public taste. If, therefore, you demand the public encouragement of the higher art and loftier science, you must accordingly train up the public taste. Can kings effect this-can individual patrons? They can at times, when the public taste has been long forming, and requires only development or an impetus; not