It may indeed be objected that a man can be scarcely reckoned among unpractical men, who always effected that which he attempted; who harangued against the

face of it seemingly opposed to old tenets; and never attended to," so, after that event, but the statesman must not, while maintain- made him into a sort of political hermit. It ing new dogmas, seem to have abandoned was, at all events, the kind of character than the old. Burke was in the right at both pe- which none could be more unsuitable to a riods of his parliamentary career; but he political leader. stood somewhat in the position of a renegade in the eyes of his contemporaries, because, in the triumph of Liberalism abroad, he threw himself, with his whole weight, into the opposite scale, as though the iniquities American War, and helped to crush the of a party in one country could ever justify the desertion of the analogous party in another. Burke argued as though Liberals were, if not to abnegate, at all events to preserve complete silence about their principles in England, because those principles abroad had been perverted. It was this that alienated from him and enraged his old companions, not altogether without reason; and it was a character which led him at different periods of his life into conduct of this sort, which has, without detracting from his greatness in the eyes of posterity as a philosophical statesman, justified, at the same time, the demeanor of men like Fox towards him.

Persons who assert that he was guided by corrupt motives in acting as he did, by offended vanity, if not by the grosser incentives of self-interest, are not worth reasoning with. In no sense of the term can he be called a selfish man; but yet he was the prey of an absorbing, however noble, egotism: a feeling that his own sentiments were the true standard by which all true patriots should guage theirs. This is a common accompaniment of that literary type which is observed to predominate, not merely in professional men of letters, but even in some lawyers and statesmen. It is a tone of thought which redeems their words and writings from the risk of superannuation; but it is, in almost every case, indicative of some want of capacity for adaptation to the exigencies of the time. It was this egotism which "broke into fragments," as Lord John Russell confesses in his " Life of Fox," "the great and firm body of the English Whigs." It was this same quality, or rather color of disposition and temperament, which, as before the French Revolution it had caused him to be, as Mr. Macknight says was the case, "not on the best of terms with his party, particularly Sheridan and Fox, his advice being scarcely ever asked,

Cabinet which supported it; who led the onslaught upon pensions and places, and curtailed that form of bribery; who took up the cause of India in a scornful, neglectful House of Commons, and made them take up that cause as their own; who, lastly, when repudiated by his old friends, could teach them that, "if his support was of no account, his hostility was to be dreaded, for that he held their political fortunes in his possession, and was to strike a blow from which the party would not recover for more than a generation." But success is not always a proof of practical abilities. These are shown, not so much by the energy of an onslaught upon hostile views, as by the use made of opportunities, and the power, in new circumstances, of maintaining the same relation to old friends. Burke was right in his dislike of the excesses of the French reformers, but wrong in that he manifested his aversion, not by carrying his party along with him in condemning, as a party, these excesses, but by passing over in spirit, as well as in fact, and "squeezing himself in between Pitt and Dundas," at the head of the English Conservatives. When he did this, he did in effect retire from active political life, as the Whig newspaper organs, in their insolent way, gave out. Henceforth, he only did in Parliament what he might have accomplished as well out; viz., deliver eloquent and often profound essays. The very fact, mentioned by his latest biographer, as though to demonstrate his influence as a practical statesman, that "no great debate passes now without Burke being appealed to as the most unexceptionable authority by one side or the other, and generally by both sides," proves too much, indicating his true position as being, perhaps, above both parties, but certainly not at the head of either.

That his contemporaries should not have clearly recognized his isolated grandeur,

erary man.

while acutely detecting his impracticability | mind of the extravagances of the French as a leader was to be expected. Mr. Mack- Revolution, he wrote and spoke in a way to night accounts it a gross crime. Literary men justify the charge of Francis, that "it was are rather too fond of assuming that it is the easy to pity sufferings of individuals, but no bounden duty of all of practical abilities to bow tears were shed for nations; " or Fox's redown to those who can accomplish results tort upon him of an expression used by himonly in the future. Fox was but little of a self in the interest of our revolted colonies, philosopher, and perhaps still less of a lit-"I do not know how to draw up a bill of Pitt has left no works behind indictment against a whole people." We must repeat, that his error as a politician lay, not in the fact that he ever consciously, if sometimes unconsciously, said what was false, or disguised the truth; but that he did not care to temper one conviction of his mind with another, but now threw his whole weight into the one scale, now into the other. We who have before us his whole career as a statesman, can see that he was never, or very rarely, in sentiment inconsistent, for that one impulse of aversion for tyranny balanced another impulse of loathing for a raw fervor of innovation. His contemporaries may be pardoned for not laboriously weighing against a furious burst of invective against the one an equally violent assault upon the other.

him but the great one of the national debt;
and, consequently, when the latter came
into collision with Burke on the matter of
Sir Elijah Impey, we are told that such con-
duct was
"unbecoming in one who was so
much the inferior in years, in attainments,
and in genius," while Fox's opposition to a
tone which seemed to compromise English
liberalism is denounced as obviously incon-
sistent with his former generous assertion
that he had learned more from Burke than
from all the books he ever read; and he is
held up to reprobation as clearly the ag-
gressor in an indefensible quarrel. We do
not see this. Some great men's greatness
produces its fruits at once, and that of oth-
ers ripens more slowly. Let both have their
proportionate praise and rank. It is unfair
for those who are to reap innumerable har-
vests of fame and sympathy in futurity, to
require homage from the men who can give
their age but one impulse, and then are
gone.

It is a rather ungrateful task to attempt to discover in so grand a statesman's own temperament a reason for his own personal insignificance in the midst of the triumph of his tenets and schemes. It is ungrateful, not merely because it appears to imply a depreciation of this wonderful genius, but While Lord Rockingham lived, the defects still more as liable to be regarded as a deof Burke's political character were not very fence of the parties which, at the same time, apparent. He was able-no one better-profited by and maltreated him. We have to spy out a weakness in the adversary's ar- endeavored to show why it was that his comguments, and point an attack; and his def- panions dared to spurn and ridicule his erence for his great and docile patron made counsels; but the explanation of the cause him submit readily to the directions fur- is no apology for the fact. Those hootings nished by that nobleman's characteristic and obstinate determination to hear nothing caution as to the proper time and objects opposed to their own favorite dogmas, are a for the onslaught. He never learned that dsigrace upon not only the Whig interest, for one object he should not sacrifice all but the House of Commons as a deliberative others; but, during that earlier period, he assembly. acquiesced in such views when taken by his colleagues. Subsequently, when emancipated from patrons, and independent, he acted as though every thing ought to be neglected and thrown aside till the one topic of his mind was thoroughly exhausted. Con- vate life. The death of an only son almost siderateness for the accused, during the prosecution of Hastings, he regarded as sympathy with his imputed crimes; and, with his imagination and passions kindled almost into frenzy by the reflection in his

The same intemperateness which made him, while so far-sighted in perceiving objects at any distance in a straight line, utterly incapable of reconnoitring the circumjacent circumstances, followed him into pri

deprived him of reason; and the love of splendor and good taste made him, for rearing a mansion with "beautiful wings and stately colonnades," accumulate debts the discharging of which tasked and occupied

the residue of his widow's days, and forced | ently desperate. But with the analogy of the the overthrower of pension-lists to receive contrast in both between their tone of feeling thankfully part of the royal or national bounty. It need scarcely be said that we see no crime in Burke's accepting of this favor at the hands of the ministers; yet it is unpleasant to find that this unselfish patriot put himself by uncalled-for extravagance into an apparently equivocal position: and we must protest against Mr. Macknight's argument, that they have no right to accuse Burke of prodigality who can see nothing in Hastings' pecuniary transactions to blame. The expenses of Hastings' trial were forced upon him; but surely the free hospitality and magnificence of Beaconsfield were voluntary luxuries on the part of his great accuser.

Yet Burke, such as he was, will always be reckoned, whether from the potentiality of his genius or the actual effects produced by him, among the really great men of Europe. He in England, and Washington in America, have set their mark ineffaceably upon the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, the results which were mainly due to their exertions in neither case seem to have been in exact accordance with the general tenor of their author's temperament. Burke was surely an ardent lover of his country's greatness; but it was his eloquent voice which, by pleading against the advocates for the justice of the colonial war, damped the national enthusiasm, gave the sympathies of half the land to the insurgents, and so made eventual success hopeless; for who can suppose that however just the revolutionary cause, had Great Britain determined to conquer, it could not have done so? He was equally a friend of liberty; yet his passionate denunciations revived Toryism, and were appealed to, most undeservedly it is true, as authorities for tyranny by all the despots of Europe. Washington, on the contrary, was by birth and connections, by antecedents, and, still more, by disposition, a Conservative, a born friend of aristocracy, and hater of democracy. Further, he disliked theory, and seemed to understand only the practical bearing of measures. Yet to him almost exclusively the United States are indebted for the triumph of their Revolution, and the favorers of revolution for a proof of the practicability of schemes, however appar

and the policy, of effectuating which they were the chief instruments, the resemblance between them stops. The Englishman-for it is impossible to think of Burke as an Irishman-was never the agent in carrying out the plans which he made triumph. He persuaded practical men of their practicability; and his pupils, now a Fox and now a Pitt, brought them into operation. He ever held himself out as a man of action; but his activity seldom ever extended beyond words. He controlled opinion, but not votes. The American leader propounded no theories; but he gave to ideas form and substance. Men learned what were his thoughts only from his deeds. Other men's words explain their life; his life was its own interpreter. About a man of this type every contemporary record and reminiscence possesses an inestimable value. We are interested in minute particulars respecting Burke. It is pleasant to hear of his efforts at farming, of his reproof of the condemnation of indiscriminate charity, because its broken-down object might spend the alms in gin—“ if gin will give him comfort, let him have gin;" but it is only, after all, the objectless curiosity, which dwells eagerly on every detail about those we admire, and whom we already have thoroughly scanned, which is gratified. It is like the pleasure at dwelling on every feature of a scene we can see any day we please, as compared with the very different sentiment of a man planning emigration, looking at a photograph of an Australian prairie. In Burke's works we have all the essential materials for a complete insight into his character. Every detail of his private domestic life and habits is only useful as corroborating a foregone conclusion. If those furnished in a biography were opposed to the clear inferences derived from his works, the reader would be inclined rather to put the stories on one side as untrue, or as capable, were the circumstances fully narrated, of bearing a different construction, than to adandon in their favor the conclusion already come to. But Washington's character is to be translated, as it were, entirely out of the cipher of his actions; and as no interpretation of hieroglyphics can be accepted which is completely

emperor raised to the dignity of consul. This sorrel was of fierce, ungovernable nature, and resisted all attempts to subject him to the rein. He had reached his fullest size and vigor unconscious of a rider; he ranged free in the air which he snuffed in triumph, tossing his mane to the winds, and spurning the earth in the pride of his freedom. It was a matter of common remark that a man never would be found hardy enough to back and ride this vicious horse. Several had essayed, but, deterred by the fury of the animal, they had desisted from their attempts, and the steed remained unbroken. The young Washington proposed to his companions, that if they would assist him in confining the steed, so that a bridle could be placed in his mouth, he would engage to ride this terror of the parish. Accordingly, early the ensuing morning, the associates decoyed the horse into an enclosure, where they secured him, and forced a bit into his mouth. Bold, vigorous, and young, the daring rider sprang to his unenvied seat, and bidding his comrades remove their tackle, the indignant courser rushed to the plain. As if disdaining his burden, he at first attempted to fly; but soon felt the

irreconcilable with one inscription in the same character, every portion of his life requires to be held up to the closest scrutiny. One of the most striking characteristics of this great man is his entire absence of resemblance to the majority of his countrymen. These Recollections of him by his adopted son, while suggesting most vividly his character, themselves contain most terrible evidence of the tawdry love of the stilted and mock-poetic which has so long been the besetting sin of American literature. Why should all American authors, with but two or three undoubted exceptions, harangue on the topics of every-day life in the style of Choctaws in their war paint? As the beauteous Melusine, in the fairy tale, had to atone for her unnatural exchange of her original form for feminine loveliness, by re-assuming, on periodical occasions, her hereditary snakehood, is the national genius of the New World doomed to expiate its precocious practical-mindedness, its propensity for wooden nutmegs, and such pleasant exuberances of a trafficking enthusiasm, by reverting in its literature to the petty pomposities of the aborigines of its backwoods? Two exceptions there certainly are to this rule of majestic trifling-Irving and Long-power of an arm which could have turned fellow. We might have supposed that the precociousness of the national hero in the first case, and the circumstance of having inhabited the general's quarters at Cambridge in the second, had protected them from the pervading infection, but for the inauspicious appearance of the plague-marks thick on the effusions of Washington's own child by adoption and education.

his Arab grandsires in their wildest courses on their native deserts. The struggle now became terrific to the beholders. But the youthful hero, that 'Spirit-protected man,' clung to the furious steed, till, centaur-like, he appeared to make part of the animal itself. Long was the conflict; and the fears of the associates became more relieved as, with matchless skill, the rider preserved his The reader of this otherwise interesting seat, and with unyielding force controlled volume is again and again nauseated by ro- the courser's rage, when the gallant horse, mantic garnishings of a really heroic career. summoning all his powers to one mighty efWe cannot get through twenty pages with- fort, reared and plunged with tremendous out being informed of some apocryphal In-violence, burst his noble heart, and died in dian chief's declaration, that "the Great an instant." We further learn, in various Spirit protected that man, that he might places, that Washington's mother, "the become the chief of nations," or being told Mother of Romans," "who first bent the that he was "Pater Patriæ," and also "first in twig to incline the tree to glory," was war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his made of sterner stuff than to be moved by countrymen." The following episode in the all the pride that glory ever gave, and all boyhood of Washington may be quoted, both the pomp and circumstance of power; as instancing his firm courage from the first," the modern Cincinnatus" "gave to liberand as a fair sample of the diction of the ty's drooping eagles a renewed and bolder book: "One colt there was, a sorrel, des- flight, when a mercenary foe aimed against tined to be as famous (?), and for much bet- him the fatal blow; " that, "on seeing his ter reason, as the horse which the brutal commander standing amidst a roar of mus

66

" that

The "Recollections" embrace all the four divisions of Washington's life-his career previous to the War of Independence, the war itself, his demeanor as President, and finally, his happy retirement till his death, full of years, honors, and love, at Mount Vernon. Many most interesting particulars

ketry, alive, unharmed, and without a wound, I made the brand "George Washington " exhis aid, a gallant and warm-hearted son of empt a barrel of flour from the customary Erin, a man of thews and sinews, and albeit inspection in the West India ports; the inunused to the melting mood, wept like a variable toast, "All our friends," after din child for joy;" that when he went to bed, ner; his honest exactness in doing a day's he was visited, not by plain sleep, but by work in the day, his love of domestic social "tired nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep; " conversation, his cheerful piety, the Sunday that "his physiognomy did not in its type readings of old-fashioned standard English express the reckless ambition of the broad- divines, the frequent walk to his watchfronted Cæsar, or the luxurious indulgence maker when in Philadelphia to regulate his of the curled Anthony, but rather the bet- watch, the moving of the lips and raising of ter age of Rome, the Fabius Maximus, Mar- the hand, marking meditations very differcellus, or the Scipios; that, in short, he had ent from the scene around him; even the a form upon which every god did seem to kindly grasp of a coach-maker's hand by the set his seal, to give the world assurance of president of a great nation, and the evera man; "that when he was a few minutes thoughtful care for his old servants and solbehind his time, "'twas strange, 'twas pass-diers; the otherwise most trifling details, of ing strange ;" and that the Father of his which this volume has certainly its full Country's epoch was "the awful period that share, all borrow dignity from their subject, tried men's souls." But it is useless attempt- and are as interesting as the greatest events ing to give the reader a conception of the in the lives of ordinary statesmen. inflation of style in this volume; for in every page-nay, almost in every line-we see, as it were, the writer's intellect and fancy poised upon tiptoe, trying, it may be imagined, to look over into a vessel of certainly very disproportionate dimensions to his adopted son's genius. The ludicrousness of this vast expenditure of rhetoric is made the more interesting spite of the air of burlesque manifest by the conspicuous reserve and spread over them by the author's ambitious simplicity of character in the subject of its ultra-Homeric style-are narrated about the "Recollections," which it is their great merit earliest of these times; but Sparkes and to have especially brought to light and dis- Washington Irving have already culled most played. In a life of Patrick Henry, of Jef- of the flowers. In the second period we ferson, or of Webster, we have no right to discover everywhere suggestions for a conbe startled at finding the Æneid or Phar-futation of the popular depreciation of Washsalia done into English blank verse, with the ington's generalship. It has been the habit divisions of the lines not marked, and the to represent him as accomplishing every title of Biography prefixed; but à priori thing, as it were, by the perfection of his one might have hoped to have had memo- moral character, or through the miserable rials of Washington at least treated as sa- mismanagement of the British. It is very cred ground, not to be desecrated by plaster true that, without assistance from the latter monuments to the eloquence of their pre- cause, the germ of a nation like the Amerserver or compiler. ican colonies could not have wrenched themselves free from a great empire such as ours; but it was not at all so sufficiently greater in extent than the gross incapacity of many of the colonial commander's dictators in Congress, and his coadjutors elsewhere, as to explain the final result without the recognition, as essential in accomplishing this, of the genius of Washington himself. Lord Stanhope, in the narrative of these events contained in his most judicious history, appears to find, in the conduct at home of Lord

It is pleasant to find that, in this nation of talkers, Washington was distinguished, even in his youth, when he sat in the Prerevolutionary House of Burgesses, as a silent rather than a speaking member. But even much more minute particulars have a significance as respects this great character. The regularity of his taste, even at a luxurious Virginian breakfast-table, when he always chose simply Indian cakes, honey, and tea; the veracity in all his dealings, which