that life unfolded itself, what helped and what hindered, what were its triumphs, and what its chief weaknesses-throughout all may be felt a "kin humanity's responsive beat." Hope, comfort, stimulus, and refreshment may also be gained, the virtues may be imitated and the follies shunned. Our study need not be confined to the great in any department of life; any human life, as it has frequently been remarked, however humble, if graced with sincere and earnest elements, contains materials of interest to fellow human beings. This may be a sufficient apology for the introduction of a few names not usually called "eminent.”

Acknowledgments and thanks are here tendered to those authors and publishers who have very kindly granted the use of much copyright matter. Amongst them: Mr Thomas Carlyle, Mr Richard Holt Hutton, Mr Edmund Clarence Stedman, New York; Dr Pryde, the Rev. George Gilfillan, the Rev. David Macrae, Mr Thomas Constable, Messrs James R. Osgood & Co., Boston, U.S.; Smith, Elder, & Co.; W. Blackwood and Sons, Mozley & Smith, Chatto & Windus; the editors of the Times, the World, and the Dublin University Magazine, etc.

THE

TREASURY OF MODERN BIOGRAPHY.

JEREMY BENTHAM.

[1748-1832.]

BY WILLIAM HAZLITT.

known in England, better in Europe, best of all in the plains of Chili and the mines of Mexico. He has offered constitutions for the New World and legislated for future times. The people of Westminster, where he lives, hardly know of such a person; but the Siberian savage has received cold comfort from his lunar aspect, and may say to him with Caliban, "I know thee, and thy dog and thy bush!" The tawny Indian may hold out the hand of fellowship to him across the Great Pacific. We believe that the Empress Catherine corresponded with him, and we know that the Emperor Alexander called upon him and presented him with his miniature in a gold snuff-box, which the philosopher, to his eternal

[JEREMY BENTHAM, the great political philo- | on the other side of the globe. His name is little sopher, was born at London in 1748, educated at Westminster and Oxford; he graduated M. A. at the early age of twenty, and was afterwards He travelled much on the called to the bar. continent of Europe, visiting Constantinople, and returning to France several times. In 1802 he was received at the Institute of Paris, and in 1825 he was made the subject of considerable honour. In philosophy he is recognised as the great teacher of "Utilitarianism," while he also endeavoured to correct the faults prevalent in the system and language of jurisprudence. Some of his most important works are the "Fragment on Government," "Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation," "Treatise on Civil and Penal Legislation," "Theory of Re-honour, returned. Mr Hobhouse is a greater wards and Punishments," "Rationale of Judicial Evidence," etc. He died in London, 1832. The following realistic sketch of the philosopher is from Hazlitt's "Spirit of the Age, or ConAccordtemporary Portraits," London, 1825. ing to Mr John Stuart Mill, "Bentham has been in this age and country the great questioner of things established. It is by the influence of the modes of thought with which his writings inoculated a considerable number of thinking men, that the yoke of authority has been broken, and innumerable opinions formerly received on tradition as incontestable, are put upon their defence, and required to give an account of themselves." According to William Minto, he is "the most influential and original philosopher of this generation."]

Mr Bentham is one of those persons who verify the old adage, that "A prophet has no honour except out of his country." His reputation lies at the circumference, and the lights of his understanding are reflected with increasing lustre

man at the hustings, Lord Rolle at Plymouth dock; but Mr Bentham would carry it hollow, on the score of popularity, at Paris or Pegu. The reason is, that our author's influence is intellectual. He has devoted his life to the pursuit of abstract and general truths, and to those studies

"That waft a thought from Indus to the Pole," and has never mixed himself up with personal intrigues or party politics. He once, indeed, stuck up a hand-bill to say that he (Jeremy Bentham), being of sound mind, was of opinion that Sir Samuel Romilly was the most proper person to represent Westminster; but this was the whim of the moment. Otherwise, his reasonings, if true at all, are true everywhere alike: his speculations concern humanity at large, and are not confined to the hundred or the bills of mortality. It is in moral as in physical magnitude. The little is seen best near: the great appears in its proper dimensions only from a more commanding point of view, and