-was

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sign of the Doctor's ship as a pall. The grave-place, overgrown with long reedy grass, was not more than a few paces from the water's edge; and its uses were indicated only by what the captain calls "wooden tombstones," of which there are only two, both dated 1832, and all of wood, painted of a stone colour, the first I have seen in England. Scarried to his last home by the sailors of our vessel. riving at the grave, we found it of dark clay, with water at the bottom; a wet ditch being near, above its level. It was also too small, and we had to wait till it was enlarged; and then, the coffin being brought to the side, ready to be let down, the Doctor's head servant took out a prayer-book, and, all uncovering, read a part of the burial service. We waited till the grave was filled up and banked over; and then, with a sigh, not the last, returned to the boat. On our return, the flags, which had hitherto been floating half-mast high, were raised to their usual position." Kitto's fellow-traveller, whose dust he saw thus consigned to the dark, obscure burial-yard at the mouth of the Thames, had been engaged to a young lady, on whom, after his release from quarantine, the deaf man waited, to communicate to her the fate of her lover. The two widowed hearts drew kindly together; and in course of time the lady became Mrs Kitto,—a match from which her husband, now entering on a literary life of intense labour, derived great comfort and support.

Never did literary man toil harder or more incessantly. His career as an author commenced in 1833, and terminated at the close of 1853; and during that period he produced twenty-one separate works, some of them of profound research and great size. Among these we may enumerate the "Pictorial Bible," the "Pictorial History of Palestine," the "History of Palestine from the Patriarchal Age to the Present Time," the "Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature," the "Lost Senses," "Scripture Lands," and the "Daily Bible

Illustrations." And in order to produce this amazing amount of elaborate writing, Dr Kitto used to rise, year after year, at four o'clock in the morning, and toil on till night. But the overwrought brain at length gave way, and in his fiftieth year he broke down and died. Could he have but retained the copyright of his several works, he would have been a wealthy man; he would at least have left a competency to his family. But commencing without capital, and compelled, by the inevitable expense of a growing family, to labour for the booksellers, he was ever engaged in "providing," according to Johnson, "for the day that was passing over him," and died, in consequence, a poor man. And his widow and family have, we understand, a direct interest in the sale of the well-written and singularly interesting biographic work to which we are indebted for the materials of our article, and which we can recommend with a good conscience to the notice of our readers. We know not a finer example than that which it furnishes, of the "pursuit of knowledge under difficulties," nor of a devout and honest man engrossingly engaged in an important work, in which he was at length to affect the thinking of his age, and to instruct and influence its leading minds. It may be interesting to remark how such a man received the first decided direction in his course of study; and so the following extract, with which we conclude, of a letter on the subject from a gentleman much before the public at the present time, from his, we believe, honest and fearless report on the mismanagement of our leading officers in the Crimea during the campaign now brought happily to a close, may be regarded by our readers as worthy of perusal

:

"My first meeting with Kitto," says Sir John M'Neill, was at Tabreez in 1829. He was going with Mr and Mrs Groves and their two sons to Bagdad, where Mr Groves intended to establish himself as a missionary. Kitto was then acting as tutor to the two boys, who were lively and intelligent; and I was struck with the singularity of his position, as the deaf and almost dumb teacher of boys who were very far

from being either deaf or dumb. This circumstance, and the loneliness of mind which was a necessary consequence of his inability to communicate with the persons whom he was thrown amongst at Tabreez, led me to put some questions to him in writing, with the view of drawing him into conversation; but I found great difficulty in comprehending his answers, in consequence of the peculiarity of his voice and enunciation. With the assistance of his pupils, however, who spoke with great rapidity on their fingers, and appeared to have no difficulty in understanding what he said, I succeeded in engaging him in such conversation as could be so carried on. I found his intelligence and his information vastly greater than I had anticipated. He had evidently the greatest avidity for information; but was restrained from pressing his inquiries, apparently by his modesty, and the fear of being considered obtrusive or troublesome. Finding him well read and deeply interested in the Scriptures, I directed his attention to the many incidental allusions in the Bible to circumstances connected with oriental habits and modes of life, which had become intelligible to me only after I had been for some time in the East. I remember he was particularly interested in something I had said in illustration of the importance attaching to the fact that 'Jacob digged a well.' I had explained to him, that in arid countries, where cultivation could only be carried on by means of irrigation, the land was of no value unless when water could be brought to irrigate it; and that in Persia the theory of the law still is, that he who digs a well in the desert is entitled to the land which it will irrigate. He came to me more than once for fuller information upon this subject, and was greatly delighted with some illustrations of Scripture which I pointed out to him in Morier's Second Journey to Persia.' I refer to these circumstances because I believe that they relate to the first steps of that inquiry which he prosecuted so assiduously and successfully during the remainder of his life, and to which he constantly recurred almost every time I met him afterwards, either in Asia or in England."-May 30, 1856.

THE IDEALISTIC SCHOOL.

It is not often in these latter days that a metaphysical question is forced on the notice of the public. The muse of abstract thought, the genius that asserts as her special province the region of "being and knowing,"-has been dozing for at

least an age in a state of partial hybernation, sucking her paws in closets and class-rooms, and getting so marvellously thin and spiritual under the process, that her attenuated form has long since failed to make any very distinct impression on the retina of the community. The case was widely different once. During the latter half of the last century no other class of questions possessed half such an interest in Scotland as metaphysical ones. Metaphysical had succeeded to theological disquisition, and was pursued with equal earnestness; partly, no doubt, because the metaphysics of the age had set the theology of the age that had gone before virtually on its trial, but in great part also because the largest minds of the time had given themselves to the work; and further, because the limited character of that cycle in which the mental philosophy is doomed to expatiate was not yet known. Early in the present century the interest had in some degree begun to flag, and the keen eye of Jeffrey was one of the first to detect the slacking of the tide. And in his ingenious critique on "Stewart's Life of Reid," he attempted to render a reason for it. The age had already started forward in that course of natural, physical, and mechanical experiment in which such distinguished trophies have since been won, and which have given its peculiar character to the time; and it had become impatient, said the critic, of barren, non-productive observation. And it was a grand distinction, he held, between the physical and the metaphysical walks, that, while experiment reigned paramount in the one, and formed the all-potent key by which man could lay open at will the arcana of nature, and arm himself with her powers, observation only could be employed in the other, a mere passive faculty, that had an ability of seeing, but none whatever of controlling. Hence, he argued, the unproductive character of metaphysical science, and the natural preference which the public had begun to manifest, on ascertaining such to be its character, for pursuits through

"In the proper ex

which solid benefits were to be secured. perimental philosophy," he said, "every acquisition of knowledge is an increase of power, because the knowledge is necessarily derived from some intentional disposition of materials, which we may always command in the same manner. In the philosophy of observation, it is merely a gratification of our curiosity. The phenomena of the human mind are almost all of the latter description. We feel, and perceive, and remember, without any purpose or contrivance of ours, and have evidently no power over the mechanism by which those functions are performed. We cannot decompose our perceptions in a crucible, nor divide our sensations by a prism; nor can we by act and contrivance produce any combination of thoughts or emotions besides those with which all men have been provided by nature. No metaphysician expects by analysis to discover a new power, or to excite a new sensation, in the mind, as a chemist discovers a new earth or a new metal; nor can he hope by any process of synthesis to exhibit a mental combination different from any that nature has produced in the minds of other persons."

Certainly metaphysical found in physical science at the beginning of the present century a formidable rival, that could reward her followers much more largely than she could ; and even ere the retirement of Dugald Stewart, her decline in interest and influence, which the keen eye of Jeffrey had remarked at an earlier period, might be seen by all. The genius of Thomas Brown created a diversion in her favour; but he sank and died in middle life, and his science in Scotland might be said to die with him. His successor in the moral philosophy chair of our university was at least his equal in genius; but the bent of Wilson was literary, not scientific; and the enthusiasm which he excited among his pupils was an enthusiasm for the sensuous, not the abstract. But while all must agree in the fact remarked by Jeffrey, many may fail