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 honour, returned. Mr. Hobhouse is a greater 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 purely 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
gains strength with time, and elevation from distance!

Mr. Bentham is very much among philosophers what La Fontaine was among
poets:--in general habits and in all but his professional pursuits, he
is a mere child. He has lived for the last forty years in a house
in Westminster, overlooking the Park, like an anchoret in his cell,