Osnaburg, and second son of George III.; and King Wil liam Street and Adelaide Street, Strand, with William IV., in whose reign those improvements were made. Since then a multitude of Regent Streets has been called into existence in almost every part of the metropolis; and besides the names of Victoria and Albert, repeated each above a hundred times a striking proof, if not of our loyalty, at least of the recent growth of London-the history of the reigning dynasty is abundantly recorded in the titles of York (127), Gloucester (87), Cambridge (56), Brunswick (76), and Hanover (35). The ethical meaning, if any, of these statistics we are not curious to inquire; but they afford sufficient proof of the evils of a good system mismanaged. The same exaggeration pervades an otherwise legitimate class of street-names, viz., that derived from the rolls of the Peerage, without reference to circumstances of local interest to which many undoubtedly owe their origin. Devonshire claims 70 streets of that name and Norfolk 60; Clarence and Richmond 50 each; Carlton, Clifton, Russell, Sussex, and Warwick, upwards of 40; Claremont, Dorset, Essex, Lansdowne, and Oxford come next with 30; and Salisbury, Suffolk, Southampton, Winchester, and Wilton with more than 20 each.

We may mention, in conclusion, some curiosities of our street-literature, leaving our readers to discover their meaning. Such are Halfpenny Alley, All-farthing Lane, Bandy-leg Walk, Shoulder-of-Mutton Alley, Cat's-castle, Hen-and-Chicken Lane, Noah's-ark Alley, Jacob's-well Passage, XX Place, Shoot-uphill Lane, Seven Sisters Road, &c. Their singularity is perhaps their best claim to preservation, though their inhabitants, we suspect, would be sorely puzzled to account for their derivation. Turnagain Lane is a homely but expressive description of a cul-de-sac, and dates as far back as Edward III.; and Honey Lane is a curious instance of the lucus à non, being so called, says Stow, not of sweetness thereof, but rather of ' often washing and sweeping to keep it clean.' It is to be hoped that the two Cut-throat Lanes in the suburbs may be similarly explained. Do-little Lane, described by Stow as a 'street with no shops,' has disappeared, but Labour-in-vain Street is found in Shadwell. Chick Lane, Newgate, after passing through the titles of Stinking Lane, and Butcher-hall Lane, is now dignified with that of King Edward Street; but Pig's Alley and Sheepgut Lane have survived the extinction of Blowbladder Street. The foreign element in the seafaring population at the East-end, in the neighbourhood of the docks, is represented by Jamaica Street, Hong-Kong Ter

race, Chaur-Ghur Row (lately altered to Cable Street), ChinChu Cottages, Bombay Street, and Norway Place; and an obscure thoroughfare in Shoreditch retains the enviable appellation of the Land of Promise. Some names of equal absurdity distinguish those accumulations of ephemeral lath and plaster, the stuccoed villas or 'bijou residences' of our suburban districts. Such are Hephzibah Terrace and Tryphena Place; the 14 Ebenezer Places: Elysium and Paradise Rows, repeated ad nauseam; Grove-villas Crescent and Union Vale; the Acacia Villas of Marylebone; Belinda and Belitha Villas; the 10 Medina Villas, and the 14 Bellevue Terraces. There are 12 Broadways, and 11 Mount Pleasants; 17 streets divide between them the names of The Avenue, The Crescent, and The Terrace; 23 are called The Grove, and 4 The Paragon; besides the silly affectations of The Colonade, The Lawn, The Parade, The Cedars, and The Sweep. These rural conceits, however foolish, because nearly always meaningless and inappropriate, may perhaps be excused in the country; but within the radius of the postal districts of the metropolis convenience alone should require the abolition of these bombastic symbols of the rus in urbe. One, at least, of the evils of an overgrown capital will be removed, when necessity demands the complete revision of our modern street-nomenclature.

ART. VII.-Memoir of Sir William Hamilton, Bart., Professor of Logic and Metaphysics in the University of Edinburgh. By JOHN VEITCH, M.A., Professor of Logic and Rhetoric in the University of Glasgow. Edinburgh: 1869. THERE are few subjects of more just and keen regret in

literature than the loss or absence of memorials of men who are known to have exercised a great power over their own generation. To have among us a great name and be conscious that it is nothing but a name, is a thing never realised without a touch of sadness. The blank felt by us in the absence of such a record is the measure of our obligation to him who worthily supplies it. Sometimes there are reasons only too sufficient why the world is disappointed. The lives of gifted men are not invariably clean lives. The companion who knows most about the vanished celebrity is conscious that he cannot present him to society as he was, so he is not presented at all. The world asks why but receives no answer, and the brilliant as well as the dark features in the character of the man are allowed to perish together.

VOL. CXXXI. NO. CCLXVII.

It is impossible to be further from deserving such a fate than the late Sir William Hamilton. Morally and physically his nature was pure and honourable. He was peculiarly averse to courting effect in the eyes of men; he never did anything for fame or notice anything that would leave a picture of his career or of any passages of it before the world. His life was therefore one that would have been peculiarly difficult to portray in a later generation, had no contemporary who knew him undertaken the task. Such are the considerations to be taken into account when we measure the service done to literature by this interesting volume.

The leading character in Hamilton's nature was a grand simplicity. It seemed to absorb and neutralise all affectation or angularities. These defects are often insensibly acquired by studious dreamy men, but he was as entirely free from them as the most cautious and prudent of prigs who has nothing else to think about but the respectability of his appearance in society. Anyone casually meeting him in his walks abroad, and guessing at his social position merely from his dress and manners, might have set him down as a retired capitalist, because, while perfectly well dressed, there was a simplicity in his attire, as of a man who did not require to give outward evidence of his wealth. Some people thought he must be rich because he was entirely free from the pecuniary embarrassments which afflicted more than one among his companions and neighbours. Others thought he must be poor because there was so little of display in his establishment. It seemed as if in his estimate, what a man has and how he spends it, is among the matters of domestic reserve not to be exposed to the world. His name was not paraded among patrons and profuse donors, but his contribution was always to be had when it was wanted, and in his own kind and unostentatious way he was a cheerful giver, as many an unprosperous man of merit well knew. This simplicity of character helped him materially in his grand design of subsidising all human knowledge to his He had for a long period of his life a group of friends around him, shifting as casualties carried away the old and accident brought the new. Many of these were much younger than himself, and all were of lower intellectual stature. But there was nothing of the pedantry of the Stoa in this groupno man saying it is mine to speak and yours to hear. It was a perfect republic of letters-a giving and taking, where indeed Hamilton got more than he gave, for nothing that anyone of the group could impart from his own little treasure of knowledge was lost to him. The young of this group-some twenty years

use.

younger than himself, and attaching themselves to him at the time when those years made all the difference between the sage and the youth-forgot his age while feeling his superiority. He was more like a gifted contemporary to their minds and hearts. And when the fame of his achievements came, strangely as it did, not in the homage of his fellowcountrymen and townsmen but in the echoes from distant lands, the effect was like beholding the distant elevation into eminence of some schoolfellow-a

'Divinely gifted man,

Whose life in small estate began,
And on a simple village green.'

We propose hereafter to note more especially and fully some of the peculiar living minds on which he drew for the materials of thought in this kind of companionship. In the meantime let us see how it bore on the great intellectual mission falling to his lot. His companionship with his friends has a parallel in his choice of books-save that in them it might be more properly said that universality of reading was his choice. His mission was the demolition of the despotism of special schools in science and literature. To explain the object of his labours in another way, we may say that they were directed against that weakness of the human intellect that rushes into extremes of intellectual fashion as capriciously and as absolutely as the leaders in the gay world follow the shiftings of fashionable costume. Hamilton was an intellectual Luther lifting his testimony against the shifting despotism of this kind of vogue. But he found it in a more serious shape than it took in literature when he turned to science and philosophy. For example, he was keenly sensible to this peculiar defect in the profession to which he first desired to attach himself-medicine. The student acquires the belief that it is a folly and a scandal to look from the existing leaders in practice and opinion into the past; and the mind is narrowed by the submissive adoption of the absolute dictates of the leading teachers of the day.

The great idea that carried Hamilton through his conquering labours was that in the work of the human intellect there is nothing common or unclean. It was not possible, he thought, that any succession of men could ardently labour on, generation after generation, in the endeavour to solve the difficulties of the sciences of mind and matter, and yet leave no fruit of all their zealous labours. Hence was it that from the ponderous volumes of the fathers, the schoolmen, the civilians and

canonists, the early physicians and naturalists, and the monkish chroniclers, he sought to extract a knowledge of what the human intellect had done, so as to have full material for an examination of its nature and capacity.

His education and his professional projects were signally adapted to the training of his strong intellect to such a purpose. He first studied medicine-not theoretically merely but with a view to practice. Then he turned from that task to law and joined the bar, where he had fully as much professional work to do as a philosopher whose mind was elsewhere could hope to achieve. Thus he had two great avenues to a knowledge of the practical operation of theoretical creations. But a third profession might be said to be the choice of his heart -that was divinity. What sort of a pastor he would have made had he turned practically to this also it were hard to say. But he loved intensely the study of polemics, and perhaps enjoyed no literature better than the works of the two great masters, Luther and Calvin. The Dutch showed their appreciation of his genius in this shape by conferring on him the title-curious in this country as bestowed upon a layman -of Doctor in Divinity of the University of Leyden.

Sir William had a hobby as every good man has, the bad supplying its place with a vice. It was his felicity that his hobby squared admirably with the graver purpose of his life. He was a book collector, or bibliomaniac as it is scornfully called. But to few of the victims of that malady has it been given to show so much method in their madness. He was rapacious as a gatherer of volumes, and when he had them he nursed them tenderly, refreshing their bindings with his own hand and discovering unguents for giving them strength and comeliness. But none of this was thrown away; every book he had came within the universality of his purpose. Many a time does the victim of this weakness impose on himself with the delusion, and endeavour also, but in vain, to impose it upon his wife, that the countless volumes brought home one after another in interminable array are necessary for his enlightened studies. But here the justification was so sound and true, and so obvious as not to be worth putting in words. Yet collect as he might, the literary treasures available to anyone of moderate fortune would have been far too meagre a feast for his intellectual appetite. He had continually to go beyond his own shelves to the College Library or the nobler collection in the Advocates' Library, and he hunted out with ravenous avidity any rare morsels of literature not within these stores, which any private friend might happily be able to