The first time I saw him was at a concert in the
Upper Rooms; he was pointed out to me by one of my party as a very
eccentric man who had walked over the habitable globe. I remember that
Madame Mara was at that moment singing: and Walking Stewart, who was a
true lover of music (as I afterwards came to know), was hanging upon her
notes like a bee upon a jessamine flower. His countenance was striking,
and expressed the union of benignity with philosophic habits of thought.
In such health had his pedestrian exercises preserved him, connected with
his abstemious mode of living, that though he must at that time have been
considerably above forty, he did not look older than twenty-eight; at
least the face which remained upon my recollection for some years was that
of a young man. Nearly ten years afterwards I became acquainted with him.
During the interval I had picked up one of his works in Bristol,--viz. his
_Travels to discover the Source of Moral Motion_, the second volume
of which is entitled _The Apocalypse of Nature_. I had been greatly
impressed by the sound and original views which in the first volume he had
taken of the national characters throughout Europe. In particular he was
the first, and so far as I know the only writer who had noticed the
profound error of ascribing a phlegmatic character to the English nation.
'English phlegm' is the constant expression of authors when contrasting
the English with the French.
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