THE LATE PETER EWART, ESQ. 133 
and found especially more to condemn than to 
admire in the eloquent, but, it must be confessed, 
often declamatory lectures of M. Victor Cousin. 
Latterly Mr. Ewart’s attention had been fixed, 
by the publication of Sir James Mackintosh’s Dis- 
sertation, on the successive Theories of Ethics, 
which have been powerfully analyzed, in histori- 
cal sequence, by that profound thinker. He was 
especially impressed with the value of the Ethi- 
cal Theory of Bishop Butler; and was even 
impelled to the careful study of “those deep and 
sometimes dark dissertations, which he preached 
at the Chapel of the Rolls, and afterwards pub- 
lished under the name of Sermons.” In this 
branch of inquiry, one of his most favourite 
authorities was Smith’s Theory of Moral Senti 
ments. It was the work, with which he was 
occupied, before that melancholy event, which 
suddenly termmated his useful life; and he has 
left, in the volume he was reading, numerous re- 
ferences to the passages that had most deeply 
interested him; references, that thus bring 
vividly present to us, with a sacred solemnity, 
his last intellectual acts, his parting moral aspira- 
tions. And there is something deeply affecting 
in contemplating this good and truly venerable 
man, thus employing almost the last moments of 
T 
