caprice should dictate, and waste itself on those romantic reveries and speculations to which he was naturally too much addicted. This was the period when the French Revolution was in its heat, and the awful convulsion experienced in one unhappy country seemed to be felt in every quarter of the globe; men grew familiar with the wildest paradoxes, and the spirit of innovation menaced the oldest and best established principles in morals and government. Brown's Inquisitive and speculative mind partook of the prevailing skepticism. Some of his compositions, and especially one on the Rights of Women, published in 1797, show to what extravagance a benevolent mind maybe led by fastening too exclusively on the contemplation of the evils of existing institutions, and indulging in indefinite dreams of perfectibility.
There is no period of existence when the spirit of a man is more apt to be depressed than when he is about to quit the safe and quiet harbour in which he has rode in safety from childhood, and to launch on the dark and unknown ocean where so many a gallant bark has gone down before him. How much must this disquietude be increased in the case of one who, like Brown, has thrown away the very chart and compass by which he was prepared to guide himself through the doubtful perils of the voyage! How heavily the gloom of despondency fell on his spirits at this time is attested by various extracts from his private correspondence. "As for me," he says, in one of his letters, "I long ago discovered
