He was much less likely to have been tainted by ils turbulence.
The book on Embassies from which the above passage is extracted is dedicated lo Sir Philip Sidney, who about llie same time had Iwo books dedicated to him by Jordano Bruno, long protected in his house, which he left from a quarrel with Grcvillc. Our readers know that, many years after. Bruno was burnt alive at Home, “in order,” lo use the atrocious words of Caspar Scioppius, an applauding eyewitness, “thai he might tell in the other worlds which he had imagined, how llie Bomans treated blasphemers.” Il is natural to lind Sir Philip Sidney llie patron of learned exiles; bul il adds a new lustre to his fame, lhat he was the refuge even of extravagant and unintelligible sophists, for whose writings he could have no respect, when the sacred right of free enquiry was violated iu their persons.We do nol remember the argument againsl ihe modern llieory of ulililv ascribed by Mr. Stewart to Buchanan. Among modern moralists, utility always signifies the interest of all men. In Buchanan, and perhaps in all writers before the eighteenth century, it denotes the private utility of the individual, and requires an enlarging epithet to give it a different signification But the mention of Buchanan excites our regret lhat Mr. Stewart should have excluded from his plan the history of those questions respecting the principles and forms of government, which form one of the principal subjects of political philosophy properly so called. No writer could have more safely trusted himself in that stormy region. He was much less likely to have been tainted by ils turbulence, than to have composed it by the serenity of his philosophical character. Every history of the other parts of moral and political science is incomplete, unless it be combined with that of political opinion : the link which, however unobserved, always unites the most abstruse of ethical discussions with Ihe feelings and alTairs of men. The moral philosophy of Hobbcs was made for his political systemand that again arose from ho stale of his country in his time. Every part of the works of Locke have a certain reference, more or less palpable, to the cumstances of Ins age ; without perceiving wliich, it is not easy to seize Hie spirit, or to estimate the merit, of lhat excellent man.
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