that external objects are not visible, otherwise than in imagination," (Essays on Morals, p. 276). It has been said, and not without reason, that the critical principles of lord Kames are more artificial than natural, more the produce of refined reasoning than of feeling or sentiment. The whole of his deductions are, indeed, founded on the doctrine of taste being increased and improved, and almost formed by art, and his personal character seems not to have suggested any other medium for his own acquisition of it. He joined the vulgar cry of the period on the barbarism of the Gothic architecture, probably because the general disrespect in which it was held prevented him from being anxious to discover any "first principles" on which to erect for it a character of propriety and elegance. In his plans for the improvement of his grounds, we find him falling into practical abortions of taste, of which, had they been presented to him as speculative questions, he might have seen the deformity. In a letter to the accomplished Mrs Montague, he says, "a rill of water runs neglected through the fields, obscured by pretty high banks. It is proposed that the water be raised in different places by stone buildings imitating natural rocks, which will make some beautiful cascades. The banks to be planted with flowering shrubs,
and access to the whole by gravel paths. The group will produce a mixture of sweetness and liveliness, which makes fine harmony in gardening as well as in life;" and farther on, "But amongst my other plans, I have not forgot the spot pitched upon by you for a seat; and because every thing belonging to you should have something peculiar, the bottom, to be free from wet, is contrived to fold up, and to have for its ornament a plate of brass with this inscription, 'rest, and contemplate the beauties of art and nature.'" The Elements of Criticism had the good fortune to call forth a little of the virulence of Warburton, who seems to have complacently presumed that lord Kames composed his three thick volumes with the sole and atrocious aim of opposing some of the theories of the learned divine; and Voltaire, certifying the author by the anomalous name of "Makaims," has bestowed on him a few sneers, sparingly sprinkled with praise, provoked by the unfortunate Scotsman having spoken of the Henriade in slighting terms, and having lauded Shakspeare to the prejudice of the French drama.
In April, 1763, lord Kames was appointed a lord of justiciary, in the criminal court of Scotland. Some have accused him of severity as a judge; but in the character of the man who can stretch the law against the criminal, there is something so repugnant, and acting in a court where judges decide very much from discretion, and from which the accused enjoys no appeal something so truly abhorrent, that we would require much and strong evidence indeed, before we could attribute to a man of great benevolence, of much and tried philanthropy, and of general virtue, the characteristic of a cruel judge. Surrounded by judicial duties and immersed in professional and literary studies, he was still an active supporter of the useful institutions which he had some time previously joined, investigating along with the celebrated Dr Walker, the proper grounds for improving the cultivation and manufactures of the Western Isles, and the more remote parts of Scotland, In 1766, a new field was opened for his exertions, by his succession, through the death of his wife's brother, to the extensive estate of Blair Drummond, which made him a richer, but not a more illustrious man. The chief circumstance which renders this accession to his fortune interesting to the world, is the commencement of a vast system of improvement, by floating into the Firth of Forth the surface of a moss, extending over portions of his own, and many contiguous estates, and shrouding what cultivation has made and is still making the finest land in Scotland. The next issue from the pen of lord Kames, were, a small pamphlet on the Progress of Flax Husbandry in Scotland, published in the year 1765, and in the ensuing year, a
