occasioned. I have frequently tried, but | and peers; no one of whom ever long realways in vain, to read these replies, mained a stranger to his charm. Burke which are pretentious enough-usually flung himself into farming with all the enthe works of deans, members of Parlia-thusiasm of his nature. His letters to Arment, and other dignitaries of the class thur Young on the subject of carrots still Carlyle used compendiously to describe tremble with emotion. You all know as "shovel-hatted” — and each of whom Burke's "Thoughts on the Present Diswas as much entitled to publish phamplets contents." You remember it is hard to as Burke himself. There are some things forget his speech on conciliation with it is very easy to do, and to write a pam- America, particularly the magnificent pasphlet is one of them; but to write such a sage beginning, "Magnanimity in politics pamphlet as future generations will read is not seldom the truest wisdom, and a with delight, is perhaps the most difficult great empire and little minds go ill tofeat in literature. Milton, Swift, Burke, gether." You have echoed back the words and Sydney Smith are, I think, our only in which, in his letter to the sheriffs of great pamphleteers. Bristol on the hateful American War, he protests that it was not instantly he could be brought to rejoice when he heard of the slaughter and captivity of long lists of those whose names had been familiar in his ears from his infancy, and you would all join with me in subscribing to a fund which should have for its object the printing and hanging up over every editor's desk in town and country a subsequent passage from the same letter:

I have now rather more than kept my word so far as Burke's pre-Parliamentary life is concerned, and will proceed to mention some of the circumstances that may serve to account for the fact, that when the Rockingham party came into power for the second time, in 1782, Burke, who was their life and soul, was only rewarded with a minor office. First, then, it must be recorded sorrowfully of Burke that he was always desperately in debt, and in this country no politician under the rank of a baronet can ever safely be in debt. Burke's finances are, and always have been, marvels and mysteries; but one thing must be said of them - that the malignity of his enemies, both Tory enemies and Radical enemies, have never succeeded in formulating any charge of dishonesty against him that has not been at once completely pulverized, and shown on the facts to be impossible. Burke's purchase of the estate at Beaconsfield in 1768, only two years after he entered Parliament, consisting as it did of a good house and one thousand six hundred acres of land, has puzzled a great many good men -much more than it ever did Edmund Burke.

A conscientious man would be cautious how

he dealt in blood. He would feel some apprehension at being called to a tremendous account for engaging in so deep a play without any knowledge of the game. It is no excuse for presumptuous ignorance that it is directed by insolent passion. The poorest being that crawls on earth, contending to save itself from injustice and oppression, is an object respectable in the eyes of God and man. But I cannot conceive any existence under heaven (which in the depths of its wisdom tolerates all sorts of things) that is more truly odious and disgusting than an impotent, helpless creature, without civil wisdom or military skill, bloated with pride and arrogance, calling for battles which he is not to fight, and contending for a violent dominion which he can never exercise...

If you and I find our talents not of the great But how did he get the money? and ruling kind, our conduct at least is conAfter an Irish fashion by not getting it formable to our faculties. No man's life pays at all. Two-thirds of the purchase money the forfeit of our rashness. No desolate widow remained outstanding on mortgage, and weeps tears of blood over our ignorance. the balance he borrowed; or, as he puts Scrupulous and sober in a well-grounded disit," With all I could collect of my own, trust of ourselves, we would keep in the port and by the aid of my friends, I have es- of peace and security; and perhaps in recomtablished a root in the country." That is mending to others something of the same diffi how Burke bought Beaconsfield, where he dence, we should show ourselves more charlived till his end came; whither he alitable to their welfare than injurious to their abilities. ways hastened when his sensitive mind was tortured by the thought of how badly men governed the world; where he entertained all sorts and conditions of men Quakers, Brahmins (for whose ancient rites he provided suitable accommodation in a greenhouse), nobles and abbés flying from revolutionary France, poets, painters,

You have laughed over Burke's account of how all Lord Talbot's schemes for the reform of the king's household were dashed to pieces because the turnspit of the king's kitchen was a member of Par liament. You have often pondered over that miraculous passage in his speech on

the Nabob of Arcot's debts describing the | because a given proportion of anything is addevastation of the Carnatic by Hyder Ali vantageous, that the double will be quite as a passage which Mr. John Morley says good, or that it will be good at all. Neither fills the young orator with the same emoin the one nor the other is it always true that tions of enthusiasm, emulation, and de- two and two make four. spair that (according to the same authority) invariably torment the artist who first gazes on the Madonna at Dresden, or the figures of "Night" and "Dawn" at Florence. All these things you know, else you are mighty self-denying of your pleasures. But it is just possible you may have forgotten the following extract from one of Burke's farming letters to Arthur Young:

This is magnificent, but it is not farming, and you will easily believe that Burke's attempts to till the soil were more costly than productive. Farming, if it is to pay, is a pursuit of small economies, and Burke was far too Asiatic, tropical, and splendid to have anything to do with small economies. His expenditure, like his rhetoric, was in the "grand style." He belongs to Charles Lamb's great race, "the men who borrow." But indeed it One of the grand points in controversy (a wasn't so much that Burke borrowed as controversy indeed chiefly carried on between that men lent. Right-feeling men did not practice and speculation) is that of deep ploughing. In your last volume you seem on the wait to be asked. Dr. Brocklesby, that whole rather against that practice, and have good physician, whose name breathes like given several reasons for your judgment which a benediction through the pages of the deserve to be very well considered. In order biographies of the best men of his time, to know how we ought to plough, we ought to who soothed Dr. Johnson's last melanknow what end it is we propose to ourselves choly hours, and for whose supposed in that operation. The first and instrumental heterodoxy the dying man displayed so end is to divide the soil; the last and ultimate tender a solicitude, wrote to Burke, in the end, so far as regards the plants, is to facilitate strain of a timid suitor proposing for the the pushing of the blade upwards, and the hand of a proud heiress, to know whether shooting of the roots in all the inferior direc- Burke would be so good as to accept tions. There is further proposed a more ready admission of external influences-the £1,000 at once, instead of waiting for the rain, the sun, the air, charged with all those writer's death. Burke felt no hesitation heterogeneous contents, some, possibly all, of in obliging so old a friend. Garrick, who, which are necessary for the nourishment of the though fond of money, was as generousplants. By ploughing deep you answer these hearted a fellow as ever brought down a ends in a greater mass of the soil. This would house, lent Burke £1,000. Sir Joshua seem in favor of deep ploughing as nothing Reynolds, who has been reckoned stingy, else than accomplishing, in a more perfect by his will left Burke £2,000, and forgave manner, those very ends for which you are in him another £2,000 which he had lent duced to plough at all. But doubts here arise, only to be solved by experiment. First, is it him. The Marquis of Rockingham by his quite certain that it is good for the ear and will directed all Burke's bonds held by grain of farinaceous plants that their roots him to be cancelled. They amounted to should spread and descend into the ground to £30,000. Burke's patrimonial estate was the greatest possible distances and depths? sold by him for £4,000; and I have seen Is there not some limit in this? We know it stated that he had received altogether that in timber, what makes one part flourish from family sources as much as £20,000. does not equally conduce to the benefit of all; And yet he was always poor, and was glad and that which may be beneficial to the wood, at the last to accept pensions from the does not equally contribute to the quantity and goodness of the fruit, and, vice versa, that Crown in order that he might not leave his what increases the fruit largely is often far wife a beggar. This good lady survived from serviceable to the tree. Secondly, is her illustrious husband twelve years, and that looseness to great depths, supposing it seemed then for the first time to have useful to one of the species of plants, equally some success in paying his bills, for at useful to all? Thirdly, though the external her death all remaining demands were influences-the rain, the sun, the air-act found to be discharged. For receiving undoubtedly a part, and a large part, in vege- this pension Burke was assailed by the tation, does it follow that they are equally Duke of Bedford, a most pleasing act of salutary in any quantities, at any depths? Or ducal fatuity, since it enabled the penthat, though it may be useful to diffuse one of these agents as extensively as may be in the sioner, not bankrupt of his wit, to write earth, that therefore it will be equally useful a pamphlet, now of course a cherished to render the earth in the same degree pervi- classic, and introduce into it a few paraous to all? It is a dangerous way of reason-graphs about the house of Russell and ing in physics, as well as morals, to conclude, the cognate subject of grants from the

ing in the public service after they had been dismissed, and maintaining them there, in spite of all protests, till the one had the grace to cut his throat and the other was sentenced by the Queen's Bench to a term of imprisonment and a heavy fine, is too long to be told, though it makes interesting reading in the twentysecond volume of Howell's State Trials, where at the end of the report is to be found the following note:

crown. But enough of Burke's debts and | Burke's own office, whose cause he esdifficulties, which I only mention because poused, and whom he insisted on reinstat all through his life they were cast up against him. Had Burke been a moralist of the calibre of Charles James Fox, he might have amassed a fortune large enough to keep up half-a-dozen Beaconsfields by simply doing what all his predecessors in the office he held, including Fox's own father, the truly infamous first Lord Holland, had done - namely, by retaining for his own use the interest on all balances of the public money from time to time in his hands as paymaster of the forces. But Burke carried his passion for good government into actual practice, and cutting down the emoluments of his office to a salary (a high one, no doubt), effected a saving to the country of some £25,000 a year, every farthing of which might have gone without remark into his own pocket.

Burke had no vices, save of style and temper; nor was any of his expenditure a profligate squandering of money. It all went in giving employment or dissemi nating kindness. He sent the painter Barry to study art in Italy. He saved the poet Crabbe from starvation and despair, and thus secured to the country one who owns the unrivalled distinction of having been the favorite poet of the three greatest intellectual factors of the age (scientific men excepted), Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, and Cardinal Newman. Yet so distorted are men's views that the odious and anti-social excesses of Fox at the gambling-table are visited with a blame usually wreathed in smiles, whilst the financial irregularities of a noble and pureminded man are thought fit matter for the fiercest censure or the most lordly contempt.

Next to Burke's debts, some of his companions and intimates did him harm and injured his consequence. His brother Richard, whose brogue we are given to understand was simply appalling, was a good-for-nothing, with a dilapidated reputation. Then there was another Mr. Burke, who was no relation, but none the less was always about, and to whom it was not safe to lend money. Burke's son, too, whose death he mourned so pathetically, seems to have been a failure, and is described by a candid friend as a nauseating person. To have a decent following is important in politics.

A third reason must be given; Burke's judgment of men and things was often both wrong and violent. The story of Powell and Bembridge, two knaves in

Bembridge occasioned much animated discusThe proceedings against Messrs. Powell and sion in the House of Commons, in which Mr. Burke warmly supported the accused. The compassion which on these and all other occa. sions was manifested by Mr. Burke for the sufferings of those public delinquents, the zeal with which he advocated their cause, and the eagerness with which he endeavored to extenuate their criminality, have received severe reprehension, and in particular when contrasted with his subsequent conduct in the prosecution of Mr. Hastings.

The real reason for Burke's belief in Bembridge is, I think, to be found in the evidence Burke gave on his behalf at the trial before Lord Mansfield. Bembridge had rendered Burke invaluable assistance in carrying out his reforms at the paymas. ter's office, and Burke was constitutionally unable to believe that a rogue could be on his side; but indeed Burke was too apt to defend bad causes with a scream of passion, and a politician who screams is never likely to occupy a commanding place in the House of Commons. A last reason for Burke's exclusion from high office is to be found in his aversion to any measure of Parliamentary Reform. An ardent reformer like the Duke of Richmond-the then Duke of Richmond who was in favor of annual Parliaments, universal suffrage, and payment of members, was not likely to wish to associate himself too closely with a politician who wept with emotion at the bare thought of depriving Old Sarum of Parliamentary representation.

These reasons account for Burke's exclusion, and jealous as we naturally and properly are of genius being snubbed by mediocrity, my reading at all events does not justify me in blaming any one but the Fates for the circumstance that Burke was never a secretary of state. And after all, does it matter much what he was? Burke no doubt occasionally felt his exclusion a little hard; but he is the victor who remains in possession of the field;

and Burke is now, for us and for all coming after us, in such possession.

prating optimist; it was his very knowl edge how much could be said against soIt now only remains for me, drawing ciety that quickened his fears for it. upon my stock of assurance, to essay the There is no shallower criticism than that analysis of the essential elements of which accuses Burke in his later years of Burke's mental character, and I therefore apostasy from so-called Liberal opinions. at once proceed to say that it was Burke's Burke was all his life through a passionpeculiarity and his glory to apply the imate maintainer of the established order of agination of a poet of the first order to the facts and the business of life. Arnold says of Sophocles,

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ing with amazing eloquence, detail, and wealth of illustration on the varied elements of society. Both seem as they write to have one hand on the pulse of the world, and to be forever alive to the throb of its action; and Burke, as he regarded humanity swarming like bees out and in of their hives of industry, is ever asking himself, How are these men to be saved from anarchy? whilst Newman puts to himself the question, How are these men to be saved from atheism? Both saw the perils of free inquiry divorced from prac

things, and a ferocious hater of abstractions and metaphysical politics. The same ideas that exploded like bombs through He saw life steadily, and saw it whole. his diatribes against the French Revolution, are to be found shining with a mild Substitute for the word "life" the words effulgence in the comparative calm of his 'organized society," and you get a peep earlier writings. I have often been struck into Burke's mind. There was a catho with a resemblance, which I hope is not licity about his gaze. He knew how the wholly fanciful, between the attitude of whole world lived. Everything contrib- Burke's mind towards government and uted to this; his vast desultory reading; that of Cardinal Newman's towards relihis education, neither wholly academical gion. Both these great men belong, by nor entirely professional; his long years virtue of their imaginations, to the poetic of apprenticeship in the service of knowl-order, and they both are to be found dwelledge; his wanderings up and down the country; his vast conversational powers; his enormous correspondence with all sorts of people; his unfailing interest in all pursuits, trades, manufactures; all helped to keep before him, like motes dancing in a sunbeam, the huge organism of modern society, which requires for its existence and for its development the maintenance of credit and of order. Burke's imagination led him to look out over the whole land; the legislator devising new laws, the judge expounding and enforcing old ones, the merchant de-tical affairs. spatching his goods and extending hist credit, the banker advancing the money of his customers upon the credit of the merchant, the frugal man slowly accumulating the store which is to support him in old age, the ancient institutions of Church and University with their seemly provisions for sound learning and true religion, the parson in his pulpit, the poet pondering his rhymes, the farmer eying his crops, the painter covering his canvases, the player educating the feelings. Burke saw all this with the fancy of a poet, and dwelt on it with the eye of a lover. But love is the parent of fear, and none knew better than Burke how thin is the lava layer between the costly fabric of society and the volcanic heats and destroy ing flames of anarchy. He trembled for the fair frame of all established things, and to his horror saw men, instead of covering the thin surface with the concrete, digging in it for abstractions, and asking fundamental questions about the origin of society, and why one man should be born rich and another poor. Burke was no

It is

Civil freedom [says Burke] is not, as many have endeavored to persuade you, a thing that lies hid in the depth of abstruse science. a blessing and a benefit, not an abstract speculation; and all the just reasoning that can be upon it is of so, coarse a texture as perfectly to suit the ordinary capacities of those who are to enjoy and of those who are to defend it.

Tell men [says Cardinal Newman] to gain notions of a Creator from His works, and if they were to set about it (which nobody does), they would be jaded and wearied by the labyrinth they were tracing; their minds would be To most men argument makes the point in gorged and surfeited by the logical operation. hand only more doubtful and considerably less impressive. After all, man is not a reasoning animal; he is a seeing, feeling, contemplating, acting animal.

Burke is fond of telling us that he is no lawyer, no antiquarian, but a plain, practical man; and the cardinal, in like man. ner, is ever insisting that he is no theolo gian-he leaves everything of that sort to the schools, whatever they may be, and

simply deals with religion on its practical | Nobody is fit to govern this country who side as a benefit to mankind. has not drunk deep at the springs of Burke. Have you read your Burke?" is at least as sensible a question to put to a Parliamentary candidate, as to ask him whether he is a total abstainer or a desperate drunkard. Something there may be about Burke to regret, and more to dispute; but that he loved justice and hated iniquity is certain, as also it is that for the most part he dwelt in the paths of purity, humanity, and good sense. May we be found adhering to them! AUGUSTINE BIRRELL.