James Frederick Ferrier. By E. S. Haldane. (Oliphant, Anderson, and
Ferrier. ls. 6d.)—Ferrier, who died thirty-five years ago, was a prominent figure in the small but highly cultivated circle of St. Andrews (where he was Professor of Moral Philosophy for nineteen years). Mr. Haldane gives a vivid picture of the min, who, indeed, was of no common stamp, and sketches his position in philosophy. He married a daughter of " Christopher North " ; and in the midst of a not very lucrative practice at the Bar, tried his hand at literature, contributing essays on " The Philosophy of Consciousness" to Blackwood's Magazine. (What editor would now venture on such papers in a magazine ?) Edinburgh, where he was born in 1808. did not behave very kindly to her distinguished son. He was pronounced to be heterodox, largely because be was opposed to Sir William Hamilton. We have gone a good way further by this time. Orthodoxy nowadays looks askance at Hamilton and his school. But in the "fifties" the feeling was so much the other way that twice (in 1852 and 1856) he was postponed to candidates who were certainly inferior to him. The Free Church seems to have been the powerful element in the opposition. But it would not have been easy forty-five -years ago to find an ecclesiastical body penetrated with really liberal views (the Edinburgh electors were Liberal enough, but the capital " L " makes all the difference).
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