may be styled men of philosophic genius, and those of the other, men of literary habit and intellect. If we prefer to follow the popular usage in our application of the terms, it is not with any intention of making out for the one class, by the appropriation to it of the peculiar term "genius," a certificate of a higher kind of excellence than belongs to the other. Even according to the popular acceptation of the term, several of those whom we have included in the literary category-as, for example, Robertson, must be denied the title of men of genius; while, according to no endurable definition of the term, could the title of men of genius be refused to such men as Adam Smith, or Chalmers, or Hamilton. Nor even, when thus explained, will our classification bear any very rigid scrutiny. By a considerable portion of what may be called the fundamental or unapparent half of his genius, Carlyle belongs to the class of speculative thinkers; while, on the other hand, the case of Chalmers is one in which the thinking or speculative faculty, which certainly belonged to him, was surcharged and deluged by such a constant flood from the feelings that, instead of ranking him with the thinkers as above, we might, with equal or greater propriety, transpose him to the other side, or even name him on both sides. His thinking faculty, which was what he himself set most store by, was so beset and begirt by his other and more active dispositions, that instead of working on and on through any resisting medium with iron continuity, it discharged itself almost invariably, as soon as it touched a subject, in large proximate generalizations. On the whole, then, instead of the foregoing classification of eminent Scotchmen into men of speculation and men of general literature, one might adopt as equally serviceable a less formal classification which the common satirical talk respecting Scotchmen will suggest. The hard, cool, logical Scotchman-such is the stereotyped phrase in which Englishmen describe the natives of North Britain. There is a sufficient amount of true perception in the phrase to justify its use; but the appreciation it involves reaches only to the surface. The well-known phrase, perfervidum ingenium Scotorum, used, Buchanan tells us, centuries ago on the continent to express the idea of the Scottish character then universally current and founded on a large induction of instances, is, in reality, far nearer to the fact. Without maintaining at present that all Scotchmen are perfervid,-that Scotchmen in general are, as we have seen it ingeniously argued, not cool, calculating, and cautious, but positively rash, fanatical, and tempestuous; it will be enough to refer to the instances which prove at least that some Scotchmen have this character. The thing may be expressed thus :-On referring to the actual list of Scotchmen who have attained eminence by their writings Classification of Eminent Scotchmen. 287 or speeches in this or the last century, two types may be distinguished, in one or the other of which the Scottish mind seems necessarily to cast itself-an intellectual type specifically Scottish, but Scottish only in the sense that it is the type which cultured Scottish minds assume when they devote themselves to the work of specific investigation; and a more popular type, characterizing those Scotchmen who, instead of pursuing the work of specific investigation, follow a career calling forth all the resources of Scottish sentiment. Scotchmen of the first or more recondite and formal type are Reid, Smith, Hume, Mill, Mackintosh, and Hamilton, in all of whom, notwithstanding their differences, we see that tendency towards metaphysical speculation for which the Scottish mind has become celebrated; Scotchmen of the other or popular type, partaking of the metaphysical tendency or not, but drawing their essential inspiration from the sentimental depths of the national character, are Burns, Scott, Chalmers, Irving, and Carlyle. However we may choose to express it, the fact of this two-fold forthgoing of the Scottish mind, either in the scholastic and logical direction marked out by one series of eminent predecessors, or in the popular and literary direction marked out by another series of eminent predecessors, cannot be denied. After all, however, (for we cannot yet leave this topic,) there is, classify and distinguish as we may, a remarkable degree of homogeneousness among Scotchmen. The people of North Britain are more homogeneous-have decidedly a more visible basis of common character-than the people of South Britain. A Scotchman may indeed be almost anything that is possible in this world; he may be a saint or a debauchee, a Christian or a sceptic, a spendthrift or a usurer, a soldier or a statesman, a poet or a statistician, a fool or a man of genius, clear-headed or confused-headed, a Thomas Chalmers or a Joseph Hume, a dry man of mere secular facts, or a man through whose mind there roll for ever the stars and all mysteries. Still, under every possible form of mental combination or activity, there will be found in every Scotchman something distinguishable as his birthquality or Scotticism. And what is this Scotticism of Scotchmen-this ineradicable, universally-combinable element or peculiarity, breathed into the Scottish soul by those conditions of nature and of life which inhere in or hover over the area of Scottish earth, and which are repeated in the same precise ensemble nowhere else? Comes it from the hills, or the moors, or the mists, or any of those other features of scenery and climate which distinguish bleak and rugged Scotland from green and fertile England? In part, doubtless, from these, as from all else that is Scottish. But there are hills, and moors, and mists where Scotchmen are not bred; and it is rather in the long series of the memorable things that have been done on the Scottish hills and moors-the acts which the retrospective eye sees flashing through the old Scottish mists, that one is to seek the origin and explanation of whatever Scotticism is. Now, as compared with England at least, that which has come down to the natives of Scotland as something peculiar, generated by the series of past transactions of which their country has been the scene, is an intense spirit of nationality. No nation in the world is more factitious than the Scotchmore composite as regards the materials out of which it has been constructed. If in England there have been Britons, Celts, Romans, Saxons, Danes, and Normans, in Scotland there have been Celts, Britons, Romans, Norwegians, Danes, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans. The only difference of any consequence in this respect probably is, that whereas in England the Celtic element is derived chiefly from the British or Welsh, and the Teutonic element chiefly from the Continental-German source, in Scotland the Gaels have furnished most of the Celtic, and the Scandinavian Germans most of the Teutonic element. Nor, if we regard the agencies that have acted intellectually on the two nations, shall we find Scotland to have been less notably affected from without than England. To mention only one circumstance, the Reformation in Scotland was marked by a much more decided importation of new modes of thinking and new social forms than the Reformation in the sister country. But though quite as factitious, therefore, as the English nation, the Scottish, by reason of its very smallness, for one thing, has always possessed a more intense consciousness of its nationality, and a greater liability to be acted upon throughout its whole substance by a common thought or common feeling. Even as late as the year 1707, the entire population of Scotland did not exceed one million of individuals; and if, going farther back, we fancy this small nation placed on the frontier of one so much larger, and obliged continually to defend itself against the attacks of so powerful a neighbour, we can have no difficulty in conceiving how, in the smaller nation, the feeling of a central life would be sooner developed and kept more continuously active. The sentiment of nationality is essentially negative; it is the sentiment of a people which has been taught to recognise its own individuality by incessantly marking the line of exclusion between itself and others. Almost all the great movements of Scotland, as a nation, have accordingly been of a negative character, that is, movements of self-defence-the War of National Independence against the Edwards; the Non-Episcopal struggle in the reigns of the Charleses; and even the Non-Intrusion National Feeling of Scotchmen. 289 controversy of later times. The very motto of Scotland, as a nation, is negative-Nemo me impune lacesset. It is different with England. There have of course been negative movements in England too, but these have been movements of one faction or part of the English people against another; and the activity of the English nation, as a whole, has consisted, not in preserving its own individuality from external attack, but in fully and genially evolving the various elements which it finds within itself, or in powerful positive exertions of its strength upon what lies outside it. The first and most natural form of what we have called the Scotticism of Scotchmen, that is, of the peculiarity which differences them from people of other countries, and more expressly from Englishmen, is this amor patriæ, this inordinate intensity of national feeling. There are very few Scotchmen who, whatever they may pretend, are devoid of this pride of being Scotchmen. Penetrate to the heart of any Scotchman, even the most Anglified, or the most philosophic that can be found, and there will certainly be found a remnant in it of loving regard for the little land that lies north of the Tweed. And what eminent Scotchman can be named in whose constitution a larger or smaller proportion of the amor Scotia has not been visible? In some of the foremost of such men, as Burns, Scott, and Wilson, this amor Scotia has even been present as a confessed ingredient of their genius, a sentiment determining, to a great extent, the style and matter of all that they have written or attempted. "The rough bur-thistle spreading wide Amang the bearded bear,— I turn'd the weeding-heuk aside, My envy e'er could raise- I knew nae higher praise." In reading the writings of such men, one is perpetually reminded, in the most direct manner, that these writings are to be regarded as belonging to a strictly national literature. But even in those Scotchmen in the determination of whose intellectual efforts the amor Scotia has acted no such obvious and ostensible part, the presence of some mental reference to, or intermittent communication of sentiment with, the land of their birth, is almost sure to be detected. The speculations of Reid and Hume and Adam Smith, and, in some degree, also, those of Chalmers, were in subjects interesting not to Scotchmen alone, but to the human race as such; and yet, precisely as these men enunciated their generalities intended for the whole world in good broad Scotch, so had they all, after their different ways, a genuine Scottish relish for Scottish humours, jokes, and antiquities. The same thing is true of Carlyle, a power as he is recognised to be not in Scottish only, but in all British literature. Even James Mill, who, more than most Scotchmen, succeeded in conforming, both in speech and in writing, to English habits and requirements, relapsed into a Scotchman when he listened to a Scottish song, or told a Scottish anecdote. But perhaps the most interesting example of the appearance of an intense amor Scotia, where, from the nature of the case, it could have been least expected, is afforded by the writings of Sir William Hamilton. If there is a man now alive conspicuous among his contemporaries for the exercise on the most magnificent scale of an intellect the most pure and abstract, that man is Sir William; and yet, not even when discussing the philosophy of the unconditioned or perfecting the theory of syllogism which is universal, does Sir William forget his Scottish lineage. With what glee, in his notes, or in stray passages in his dissertations themselves, does he seize every opportunity of adding to the proofs that speculation in general has been largely affected by the stream of specific Scottish thought-quoting, for example, the saying of Scaliger, "Les Ecossois sont bons Philosophes;" or dwelling on the fact that at one time almost every continental university had a Scottish professorship of philosophy, specially so named; or reviving the memories of defunct Balfours, and Duncans, and Chalmerses, and Dalgarnos, and other "Scoti extra Scotiam agentes" of other centuries; or startling his readers with such genealogical facts as that Immanuel Kant and Sir Isaac Newton had Scottish grandfathers, and that the celebrated French metaphysician Destutt Tracy was, in reality, but a transmogrified Scotchman of the name of Stott! We know nothing more refreshing than such evidences of strong national feeling in such a man. It is the Scottish Stagirite not ashamed of the bonnet and plaid; it is the philosopher in whose veins flows the blood of a Covenanter. Even now, when Scotchmen, their native country having been so long merged in the higher unity of Great Britain, labour altogether in the interest of this higher unity, and forget or set aside the smaller, they are still liable to be affected characteristically in all that they do by the consciousness that they are Scotchmen. This will be found true whether we regard those Scotchmen who work side by side with Englishmen in the conduct of British public affairs or British commerce, or those Scotchmen who vie with Englishmen in the walks of British authorship and literature. In either case the Scotchman is distinguished from the Englishman by this, that he carries the |