parents were waiting his departure in an adjoining room (for they were unable to bear the sight), when he rose from his bed, dressed himself completely, and leaning on his nurse, entered the apartment where they were sitting. "Speak to me, my dear father," said he, as he saw them bowed to the earth under the poignancy of their grief. “I am in no terror; I feel myself better and in spirits; yet my heart flutters, I know not why! Pray talk to me-of religion-of morality-of indifferent subjects." Then turning, he exclaimed, "What noise is that? Does it rain? Oh no, it is the rustling of the wind in the trees ;" and broke out at once, with a clear, sweet voice, in that beautiful passage (the favorite lin 's of his father) from the Morning Hymn in Milton: His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow, He began again, and again repeated them with the same tenderness and fervor, bowing his head as in the act of worship, and then "sunk into the arms of his parents as in a profound and sweet sleep." It would be too painful to dwell on the cenes that followed, until the father laid all that remained to him of his child beneath the Beaconsfield church, adjoining his estate. From that hour he never looked, if he could avoid it, toward that church! Eighteen months after, when he had some. what recovered his composure, he thus adverted to his loss in his celebrated "Letter to a Noble Lord :" "The storm has gone over me, and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered around me. I am stripped of all my honors; I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth! There, and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the divine justice, and in some degree submit to it." "I am alone! I have none to meet my enemies in the gate!" The "Letter" referred to was called forth by an ungenerous attack from the Duke of Bedford, a young man who had just entered upon life. At the age of sixty-five, after devoting more than thirty years to the service of his country, Mr. Burke found himself oppressed with debts, arising chiefly from his kindness and liberality to indigent men of genius who sought his aid. This fact being known, a pension of £3700 a year was granted him in October, 1795, by the express order of the King, without the slightest solicitation of Mr. Burke or his friends. The Duke of Bedford, who had become infected with French principles in politics and religion, made a very offensive allusion to this grant in a debate soon after, and has immortalized his name (the only way he could ever have done it) by the castigation which he thus provoked. Of this "Letter" Mr. Mathias says, in his "Pursuits of Literature," "I perceive in it genius, ability, dignity, imagination; sights more than youthful poets when they dreamed; and sometimes the philosophy of Plato and the wit of Lucan." Within less than a year, Mr. Burke commenced his last work, being Thoughts on the Prospect of a Regicide Peace," which came out in three successive letters in 1796-7. His object was to animate his countrymen to a zealous prosecution of the contest with France, and he now brought out with astonishing ingenuity and eloquence those extreme principles respecting a war with the French Republic which constituted the chief error of his life. In his "Reflections" he dwelt mainly on the rashness of the French in their experiments upon government, as a warning to his wn countrymen against repeating the error. He now took the ground of shutting France out from the society of nations! "This pretended republic is founded in rimes, and exists by wrong and robbery; and wrong and robbery, far from giving a title to any thing, is a war with mankind." War, therefore, to the utmost and to the end, was the only measure to be pursued with the French Republic! To be at peace with robbery," said he, "is to be an accomplice with it!" It seems wou derful how a man like Burke could have fallen into this confusion of ideas betwee 66 the crimes of individuals against the community in which they live, and the acts of an organized government, however wrongly constituted, and however cruel or op pressive in the treatment of those within its borders. If the Republic robbed England or her subjects, there was just ground of war. But if the internal policy of a gov. ernment-its crimes (however great), against those who live under it—can justify an attack from surrounding nations, what government in Europe could escape? or what would Europe itself be but a field of blood? The principle of Mr. Burke was that on which Austria and Prussia sent the Duke of Brunswick, in 1792, to invade France. And what was the consequence? Prostrate as she was-broken down so completely in her military spirit and resources, that Mr. Burke seemed justified in his famous sarcasm, Gallos quoque in bellis floruisse audivimus," we have heard that the French were once distinguished in war-France, in a little more than a month, chased every foreign soldier from her borders; the Republican leaders learned the art of composing every dissension by turning the passions of the people into a rage for foreign conquest, until seven hundred and fifty thousand men stood ready to carry their principles throughout Europe by fire and sword; and, what was worse than all, the sympathy of the friends of freedom in every country on the Continent was turned against their own governments, and given for a time with the warmest zeal and confidence to this republic of blood. Still, Mr. Burke adhered to his principle. His only inference from the disasters of the allies was, that they had used means which were shamefully inadequate to the occasion; that all they had done or attempted was only like "pelting a volcano with pebble stones ;" and that the whole of Europe ought to combine in one grand confederacy to "let loose the ministers of vengeance in famine, fever, plagues, and death upon a guilty race, to whose frame, and to all whose habit, order, peace, religion, and virtue were alien and abhorrent." It is remarkable that this was the only subject on which Mr. Burke was ever betrayed into extreme opinions. Though many have thought otherwise from looking exclusively at this period of his life, his whole history shows that he was pre-emi nently a man of cautious and moderate views. Lord Brougham has truly said, "It would be difficult to find any statesman of any age whose opinions were more habitually marked by moderation; by a constant regard to the dictates of an enlarged reason; by a fixed determination to be practical at the time he was giving scope to the most extensive general views; by a cautious and prudent abstinence from all extremes. He brought this spirit of moderation into public affairs with him; and if we except the very end of his life, when he had ceased to live much in public, it stuck by him to the last." And why did it now desert him? Because, apparently, the dangers of the French Revolution, magnified by his powerful imagination, turned his caution into terror; and all experience shows that nothing is so rash, so headlong, so cruel even, as extreme terror when it takes full possession of a vigorous and determined intellect. Even our virtues in such cases go to swell our excesses; and we thus see how a man of Mr. Burke's justice, humanity, and love of genuine freedom, could become the advocate of war upon principles which would make it eternal, and be led to justify that doctrine of intervention, which absolute governments have ever since been using to arrest the progress of liberal institutions in the world. Before he had finished his "Regicide Peace," Mr. Burke found his health rapidly declining, and in February, 1797, he removed to Bath to try the effect of its waters But his constitution was gone; and after remaining there two months, confined almost entirely to his bed, he made a last effort to return to Beaconsfield, that his bones might there rest with those of his son. It will be so far, at least," said he, "on my way to the tomb, and I may as well travel it alive as dead!" During the short period that remained to him of life, he gave directions with the utmost calmness about the disposal of his papers; he bore his sufferings with placid resignation 66 hoping for divine mercy through the intercession of the Redeemer, which, in his own words, he had long sought with unfeigned humiliation, and to which he looked with trembling hope." He died on the 9th of July, 1797, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and was interred, according to his own directions, in the same grave with his son. It was the wish of his friends, and even proposed by Mr. Fox in the House of Commons, that he should be buried in Westminster Abbey, but the plan was abandoned when the provisions of his will were made known. Pains have been taken in this memoir to bring out the most striking qualities of Mr. Burke's mind in connection with the principal events of his life, and thus to avoid the necessity of an extended summation at the close. He was what the Germans would call a "many-sided man," so that any general analysis of his character must of necessity be imperfect. We can form a correct estimate of most orators from three or four of their best speeches, but fully to know Mr. Burke one must take into view all that he ever spoke, all that he ever wrote. As an orator he derived little or no advantage from his personal qualifications. He was tall, but not robust; his gait and gesture were awkward; his countenance, though intellectual, was destitute of softness, and rarely relaxed into a smile; and as he always wore spectacles, his eye gave him no command over an audience. "His enunciation," says Wraxall, "was vehement and rapid; and his Irish accent, which was as strong as if he had never quitted the banks of the Shannon, diminished to the ear the effect of his eloquence on the mind." The variety and extent of his powers in debate was greater than that of any other orator in ancient or modern times. No one ever poured forth such a flood of thought -so many original combinations of inventive genius; so much knowledge of man and the working of political systems; so many just remarks on the relation of government to the manners, the spirit, and even the prejudices of a people; so many wise maxims as to a change in constitutions and laws; so many beautiful effusions of lofty and generous sentiment; such exuberant stores of illustration, ornament, and apt allusion; all intermingled with the liveliest sallies of wit or the boldest flights of a sublime imagination. In actual debate, as a contemporary informs us, he passed more rapidly from one exercise of his powers to another, than in his printed productions. During the same evening, sometimes in the space of a few moments, he would be pathetic and humorous, acrimonious and conciliating, now giving vent to his indignant feelings in lofty declamation, and again, almost in the same breath, convulsing his audience by the most laughable exhibitions of ridicule or burlesque. In respect to the versatility of Mr. Burke as an orator, Dr. Parr says, "Who among men of eloquence and learning was ever more profoundly versed in every branch of science? Who is there that can transfer so happily the results of laborious research to the most familiar and popular topics? Who is there that possesses so extensive yet so accurate an acquaintance with every transaction recent or remote? Who is there that can deviate from his subject for the purposes of delight with such engaging ease, and insensibly conduct his hearers or readers from the severity of reasoning to the festivity of wit? Who is there that can melt them, if the occasion requires, with such resistless power to grief or pity? Who is there that combines the charm of in imitable grace and urbanity with such magnificent and boundless expansion?" A prominent feature in the character of Mr. Burke, which prepared him for this wide exercise of his powers, was intellectual independence. He leaned on no other nan's understanding, however great. In the true sense of the term, he never bor rowed an idea or an image. Like food in a healthy system, every thing from with out was perfectly assimilated; it entered by a new combination into the very struc ture of his thoughts, as when the blood, freshly formed, goes out to the extremities ander the strong pulsations of the heart. On most subjects, at the preser.t day, this is all we can expect of originality; the thoughts and feelings which a man expresses must be truly his own. In the structure of his mind he had a strong resemblance to Bacon, nor was he greatly his inferior in the leading attributes of his intellect. In imagination he went far beyond him. He united more perfectly than any other man the discordant qualities of the philosopher and the poet, and this union was equally the source of some of his greatest excellencies and faults as an orator. The first thing that strikes us in a survey of his understanding is its remarkable comprehensiveness. He had an amplitude of mind, a power and compass of intellectual vision, beyond that of most men that ever lived. He looked on a subject like a man standing upon an eminence, taking a large and rounded view of it on every side, contemplating each of its parts under a vast variety of relations, and those relations often extremely complex or remote. To this wide grasp of original thought he added every variety of information gathered from abroad. There was no subject on which he had not read, no system relating to the interests of man as a social being which he had not thoroughly explored. All these treasures of acquired knowledge he brought home to amplify and adorn the products of his own genius, as the ancient Romans collected every thing that was beautiful in the spoils of conquered nations, to give new splendor to the seat of empire. nature. To this largeness of view he added a surprising subtlety of intellect. So quick and delicate were his perceptions that he saw his way clearly through the most complicated relations, following out the finest thread of thought without once letting go his hold, or becoming lost or perplexed in the intricacies of the subject. This subtlety, however, did not usually take the form of mere logical acuteness in the detection of fallacies. He was not remarkable for his dexterity as a disputant. He loved rather to build up than to pull down; he dwelt not so much on the differences of things, as on some hidden agreement between them when apparently most dissimilar. The association of resemblance was one of the most active principles of his While it filled his mind with all the imagery of the poet, it gave an impulse and direction to his researches as a philosopher. It led him, as his favorite employment, to trace out analogies, correspondencies, or contrasts (which last, as Brown remarks, are the necessary result of a quick sense of resemblance); thus filling up his originally comprehensive mind with a beautiful series of associated thoughts, showing often the identity of things which appeared the most unlike, and binding together in one system what might seem the most unconnected or contradictory phenomena. To this he added another principle of association, still more characteristic of the philosopher, that of cause and effect. "Why?" "Whence?" "By what means?" "For what end?" "With what results?" these questions fron childhood were continually pressing upon his mind. To answer them in respect to man in all his multiplied relations as the creature of society, to trace out the working of political institutions, to establish the principles of wise legislation, to lay open the sources of national security and advancement, was the great object of his life; and he here found the widest scope for that extraordinary subtlety of intellect of which we are now speaking. In these two principles of association, we see the origin of Mr. Burke's inexhaustible richness of thought. We see, also, how it was that in his mode of viewing a subject there was never any thing ordinary or commonplace. If the topic was a trite one, the manner of presenting it was peculiarly his As in the kaleidoscope, the same object takes a thousand new shapes and col ors under a change of light, so in his mind the most hackneyed theme was trans formed and illuminated by the radiance of his genius, or placed in new relations which gave it all the freshness of original thought. own. This amplitude and subtlety of intellect, in connection with his peculiar habits of Association, prepared the way for another characteristic of Mr. Burke, his remarkable power of generalization. Without this he might have been one of the greatest of poets, but not a philosopher or a scientific statesman. "To generalize," says Sir James Mackintosh, "is to philosophize; and comprehension of mind, joined to the habit of careful and patient observation, forms the true genius of philosophy." But it was not in his case a mere "habit," it was a kind of instinct of his nature, which led h. to gather all the results of his thinking, as by an elective affinity, around their appropriate centers; and, knowing that truths are valuable just in proportion as they have a wider reach, to rise from particulars to generals, and so to shape his statements as to give them the weight and authority of universal propositions. His philosophy, however, was not that of abstract truth; it was confined to things in the concrete, and chiefly to man, society, and government. He was no metaphysician; he had, in fact, a dislike, amounting to weakness, of all abstract reasonings in poiities, affirming, on one occasion, as to certain statements touching the rights of man, that just "in proportion as they were metaphysically true, they were morally and politically false!" He was, as he himself said, "a philosopher in action," his generalizations embraced the great facts of human society and political institutions as affected by all the interests and passions, the prejudices and frailties of a being like man. The impression he made was owing, in a great degree, to the remoteness of the ideas which he brought together, the startling novelty and yet justness of his combinations, the heightening power of contrast, and the striking manner in which he connected truths of imperishable value with the individual case before him. It is here that we find the true character and office of Mr. Burke. He was the man of prin ciples; one of the greatest teachers of "civil prudence" that the world has ever seen. A collection of maxims might be made from his writings infinitely superior to those of Rochefoucauld; equally true to nature, and adapted, at the same time, not to produce selfishness and distrust, but to call into action all that is generous, and noble, and elevated in the heart of man. His high moral sentiment and strong sense of religion added greatly to the force of these maxims; and, as a result of these fine generalizations, Mr. Burke has this peculiarity, which distinguishes him from every other writer, that he is almost equally instructive whether he is right or wrong as to the particular point in debate. He may fail to make out his case; opposing considerations may induce us to decide against him; and yet every argument he uses is full of instruction: it contains great truths, which, if they do not turn the scale here, may do it elsewhere; so that he whose mind is filled with the maxims of Burke has within him not only one of the finest incentives of genius, but a fountain of the richest thought, which may flow forth through a thousand channels in all the efforts of his own intellect, to whatever subject those efforts may be directed. With these qualities and habits of mind, the oratory of Mr. Burke was of necessity didactic. His speeches were lectures, and, though often impassioned, enlivened at one time with wit, and rising at another into sublimity or pathos, they usually became wearisome to the House from their minuteness and subtlety, as "He went on refining, And thought of convincing while they thought of dining." We see, then, in the philosophical habits of his mind (admirable as the results were in most respects), why he spoke so often to empty benches, while Fox, by seizing on the strong points of the case, by throwing away intermediate thoughts, and striking at the heart of the subject, never failed to carry the House with him in breathless attention. His method was admirable, in respect at least to his published speeches. Ne man ever bestowed more care on the arrangement of his thoughts. The exceptions to this remark are apparent, not real. There is now ard then a slight irregularitv |