there was a man called Edmund Burke, who wrote a treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful.

This opinion is well illustrated by an incident that occurred to ourselves some years ago. We happened to meet in a wateringplace in the North, a venerable old gentleman with white hair, and after some conversation, we discovered that he was the old village schoolmaster, who had taught us our first rudiments of knowledge. A strange feeling came over us at the sight of the retired pedagogue. His ferule, wig, and spectacles had been laid aside, he had done his part in life; the little boys whom he had caned had become fathers of families, and he was now tottering on the verge of the tomb, and patting the heads of his pupils' babies. He did not at first recognize us, and we chose to talk to him without enlightening his darkness. It was during the summer of 1848, that summer of revolutions, and we naturally proceeded to talk about those terrible days of June. To our astonishment and mortification, our old master, whose word was once law, at whose glance multitudes trembled, and whose head was believed to contain all the knowledge that ever a human head could possess, talked the language of a little child, and had never heard of the great continental revolutions. We quoted Burke. He stared vacantly, as if he had somewhere before heard the name, and then said, "Ah! he wrote on the Sublime!"

We are, however, far from being disposed to join in the fashioneble condemnation of this metaphysical essay. It is true that it does not exhibit all the peculiar powers of its author's mind. It is true that many of the philosophical doctrines are absurd; and, indeed, when we look at them now, appear perfectly ridiculous. If Sir Joshua Reynolds be worthy of credit, Burke himself, in his later years, was as ready as any one to make merry with some of the blunders in his own work. The statesman could afford to laugh at the metaphysician. All this, however, may be admitted, and yet this work on the Sublime and Beautiful has always appeared to us an able work, and by no means unworthy of the author's name. Though as a whole his theory may be incorrect, though pleasure may not be the cause of the beautiful, nor terror of the sublime, yet surely when we consider the age of the writer, the state of this branch of metaphysical science at the time when the book was published, it must be allowed to be a masterly work.

Nor are we inclined to lay much stress on what has been called the analysis of the mind. More than one critic has attempted to prove that it was quite impossible for Burke to write a satisfactory essay on the subject, because he did not possess abilities fit for abstract reasoning. It has been said, that he always failed when attempting to analyze very closely, and that it was in observation that the great strength of his intellect consisted. It is, however, rather singular that the author of the essay on the Sublime and Beautiful has also been accused of too great a tendency to speculation and refinement. It appears to us that the contradictions and errors which abound in this treatise might be found in the speculations of the most subtle reasoner, and that many of the faults belong to the nature of the subject itself. Such defects may be discovered in all the metaphysical works of the eighteenth century, and in none more frequently than in those of the Scotch metaphysicians. It will scarcely be said that Hume's mind was incapable of close analysis, for surely no human being ever possessed a more subtle intellect. Yet, does not Hume's most elaborate work abound in absurdities and contradictions almost as striking as any that can be found in the Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful? It is, perhaps, impossible to reconcile metaphysics and physiology, and hence many of Burke's errors.

His theory is entirely mechanical, and this is not a little singular when we consider how he disdained all mechanical philosophy in his political reasonings. He always asserted that there was something higher than logic, and that the strange creature man had desires and aspirations such as no mechanical philosopher could ever explain. A greater truth was never preached. It is as applicable to the science of metaphysics as to that of government; and one cannot but wonder why the greatest political philosopher the world has ever seen should become so mechanical, when treating one of the noblest subjects that could ever occupy the mind. Now and then, indeed, he speaks out in a truly philosophical spirit, and some of the critical remarks are beautiful and true; but he soon relapses again into the usual tone, and with a pair of ordinary spectacles seems passionately determined on exploring the darkest mysteries of humanity.

The origin of our ideas concerning the Sublime and Beautiful is surely a great subject. But is it likely to be thoroughly understood by discourses about proportion, fitness,

smallness, smoothness, variation, and the mere physical causes of love? Is everything in this world so entirely dust, that no rays of Divine wisdom can be seen? Is everything, then, of the earth, and earthy? What, then, becomes of the doctrine, that there is "nothing beautiful but what is good, and that the beautiful includes the good?" Undoubtedly, proportion is not the cause of beauty either in vegetables, animals, or the human species; but is it credible that a man like Burke should believe beauty to be only "some quality in bodies acting mechanically upon the human mind by the intervention of the senses"? What gives beauty to the glorious bow that spans the skies? Does the knowledge of all the laws of optics make us admire the rainbow more? Does its beauty depend upon the theory of colors? When the sky has been blackened, and the rain has poured in torrents, and the clouds are again beginning to break, and the rays of the sun to gladden our eyes, with the words "I set my bow in the heavens" in our memory, we care little for the laws of refraction and the primary colors, as we feel our eyes gladdened, and our hearts comforted, on looking at the symbol of peace to a deluged world. In the twentieth Section of the third Part, Burke says, most truly, that the eye has a great share in the beauty of the animal creation; but is it sufficient to declare that this beauty consists merely in its clearness, motion, and union with the neighboring parts? There are even brighter and more moving objects than the eye, and yet they never approach to it in beauty; is it not because the eye is the index of the soul that it is so exquisitely beautiful? All eyes are not beautiful. The brightest and most active eyes are perhaps the maniac's, and yet, do they affect us with any idea of beauty? It is the eye of affection, the eye of genius, the eye of innocence, in which beauty is found; because affection, genius, and innocence are really qualities that we love, admire, and esteem. This same great law is prevalent through all the different objects that raise in our minds sublime and beautiful ideas. To affect us very powerfully, there must be some human interest in the things we gaze upon. Could the knowledge of the refrangibility of the rays of light ever make the tints of the evening sky appear more beautiful to a reflecting mind? "So dies a hero, to be worshipped,' exclaimed Schiller, as the sun was sinking behind the distant mountains. All the mechanical theories in the world will not explain the different emotions that arise when

we gaze on the face of a sleeping infant, when we look into the happy face of boyhood, when we gaze into the eyes of her who awakened the mysterious sympathies of love in our young hearts, when we stand by the altar where beauty and innocence plight their troth, when we comfort the afflicted, admire the generous, alleviate the pains of sickness, and smooth the pillow of the dying.

It would be easy to point out many faults in the essay; but we should unconsciously be writing a treatise on the subject. The book soon reached a second edition, and the author's name became known in all literary circles. Hume mentions him as "the author of a very pretty treatise on the Sublime."

But however much he might be delighted with the success of his work, his health had suffered dreadfully during its execution. After it was published, he went down to Bristol, where he resided with Dr. Nugent, a native of Ireland, an excellent physician, and a good man. As it is not very extraordinary for young authors to do, he fell in love with the daughter of his host: she could love a man of genius, who offered her himself, at that time all his worldly possessions. They were married, and the marriage was a source of great happiness.

During the years that immediately followed the publication of the Enquiry, Burke appears to have written much for the booksellers. He is known to have labored with Dodsley in the establishment of the Annual Register, and to have written an unfinished essay on English history. Many other publications are said to have proceeded from his pen; and doubtless, if it be true, as it has often been asserted, and, notwithstanding the efforts of Mr. Prior, still remains very probable, that he was often involved in pecuniary difficulties, and had to depend for subsistence entirely on the booksellers, his unavowed productions must have been very numerous. But his friends and biographers seem to have a great fear lest the Right Honorable Edmund Burke should be known to have spent his early years in writing for his subsistence. It appears that at one time he was obliged to sell his books; the humiliating fact having been discovered by the coat-of-arms that was pasted in them. From his correspondence, we learn that he received occasional remittances from his father; but the fact that these are mentioned, proves that they were only occasional. Mr. Prior has so much horror lest Burke should be considered poor, that he makes the desperate assertion that the writer received even so much as twenty

thousand pounds from his friends. This is most absurd. Burke, after he had become connected with the Marquis of Rockingham, paid a great sum for the purchase of an estate called Gregories: he had then inherited the property of his family, and it is well known that he owed much to the friendship of his noble patron; but in his earlier years everything shows that he was poor indeed. The attempt to conceal such poverty in a man of genius is discreditable only to those who make it, and think it reflects any shame on his memory.

By the friendship of Lord Charlemont, Burke became connected with William Gerard Hamilton, and accompanied him to Ireland. This alliance, after continuing for two or three years, was broken off, the pension that Hamilton was said to have procured for his assistant resigned, and Burke again unsettled. The quarrel with Hamilton was in one sense fortunate, for in a few months the adventurer became private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham.

The administration of his patron continued one year and twenty days. Before it reached the period of its brief existence, Burke's star was fast rising in the ascendant. He was considered a person of so much importance, that he was indirectly offered a place in the new arrangement. This, contrary to the disinterested advice of the Marquis of Rockingham, he declined, and cheerfully took his seat on the opposition benches.

He drew up, on the spur of the moment, a Short Account of a late Administration;" a little piece that does not occupy three octavo pages, but is at the same time a brilliant defence of his friends.

Two or three important years passed away, when he again made his appearance in the literary arena as the champion of the Rockingham party.

The ministry that was formed by the Earl of Chatham proceeded most inauspiciously in its career. The guiding hand of the great Palinurus being taken away, the vessel of the state was driven at the mercy of the waves, now in one direction, now in another, and in every direction but that in which its nominal chief intended it to go. The storm that, during the short sway of the Marquis of Rockingham, had nearly subsided, now burst forth with redoubled fury. The whole kingdom was convulsed; a sense of insecurity became general; men looked in each other's faces, and trembled at the thoughts they read there. Libels, such as were unexampled even in the most troubled political times,

were printed and daily poured forth from the press. Nor were these the most threatening symptoms, informing all men that evil times were approaching on the American continent the clouds grew blacker and blacker, and Burke's eye became more earnest and anxious as it scanned the political horizon.

The opposition was composed of two parties, the Rockinghams and the Grenvilles; but they had very little in common: they seem indeed for some time to have hated each other much more than they hated the ministry that they both assailed. A torrent of publications of all sizes, quartos, octavos, pamphlets, and squibs, was diligently poured by the Grenvilles on the heads of the Rockinghams. For a long while the patriotic Whigs forbore to reply to all these assaults, but at length a pamphlet called The Present State of the Nation, written, if not by Grenville himself, certainly under his immediate direction, made its appearance, and the longtried patience of their opponents gave way. To this production Burke replied by his great political treatise, Observations on a late Publication entitled "The Present State of the Nation." The reply was every way conclusive, powerful and triumphant. Some critics have regretted that this pamphlet, and many others of Burke's compositions, should be so much devoted to the topics of the day, and that therefore they become less interesting as these temporary events fade away in the darkness of the past. We cannot think that Burke's choice of subjects is to be regretted. If the use of studying the political writings of past times is to instruct us amidst the perplexing difficulties of the present, no works equal these in the attainment of this great end. To the mere lover of fine writing the Observations may be less attractive than any of his other political pamphlets; but to the philosopher, economist and historian, few even of Burke's works more deserve an attentive study. It abounds in statistics, but the statistics have one merit often wanting in the statistical works of some other times; for instead of confusing, they really illustrate the subject.

George Grenville had many admirers. Bred a lawyer, and connected with families of great political influence, he was of course introduced early into the House of Commons. After he had once set his feet in St. Stephen's Chapel, he appears to have believed that there were no manners, customs, or ways of thinking in the world, except what were dreamed of in the philosophy of the clerks. The Journals were his Bible, the

manufacture is not a great deal enhanced (except to the domestic consumer) by any taxes paid in this country. This I might very easily prove."

This range of mental vision is, perhaps, the greatest of all Burke's characteristics. In one sense, his political life might be called a failure, for during a service of thirty years, only a few months were spent in office. He was so much above the greatest statesmen of his generation, that while always admitting his industry and eloquence, it was long indeed before they had any idea of his great political wisdom. He did not inspire great masses with confidence. He did not keep together for any length of time any great combination. His life was to many people an enigma; his thoughts were not their thoughts, nor his ideas their ideas. He sat in his place at Westminster among men, but not of them; it was, as he said himself, a custom among the leading politicians to have his word go for nothing. Why was it that Fox and Pitt were so much more followed, and so much more trusted? Not, surely, because their abilities were superior to his, not because they were more eloquent, more learned, more cautious, or even more practical. They surpassed him in influence, simply because they were inferior to him, because their ideas were more the ideas of ordinary men. For there is one great secret in politics. It is possible for a politician to be very wise, and yet, at the same time, not wise in his generation. The plainest country gentleman, the most prosaic merchant, could understand all that William Pitt or Charles Fox said on any question: these two celebrated men only put into their own language the ideas of common people. But it was not so with Burke. He could not but be at all times a great philosopher, thinking deeply on the nature of man, and the condition of society. These were his constant themes, his thoughts by day, and his dreams by night. He looked at them from all points of view, and while examining one point, never forgot its relation to the other. Hence it is that he never would go all lengths with any party, and was called, even during the early part of his career, a man of aristocratic principles; for these seemed to be a just middle ground between the doctrines professed by the gentlemen who called themselves king's friends, and those of the city tradesmen who cheered Jack Wilkes. Hence it is that we find him so often accused of inconsistency men did not know what to make of him; for though, during the Ameri

can war, he strenuously opposed the Stamp Act, the Massachusetts Bill, and all the other violent proceedings of the ministry, he contended with equal vehemence for the supremacy of British legislation over all the British dominions, and, contrary to the opinion of Chatham, supported the Declaratory Act. Hence it is, that with such powerful argument and impassioned eloquence, for the first twenty years of his career, he threw himself so manfully against the influence of the court; and that after this influence had been curbed, when wild democratic notions began to threaten all courts and thrones with destruction, and when revolution, like the giant on the mountains, stood up and shook her bloody locks in the face of the whole world, with argument not less powerful, and with eloquence still more impassioned, he endeavored to rouse all Europe to eternal battle against an enemy that he believed opposed to the interests and the civilization of mankind.

His contemporaries, the liberal politicians of the following age, and even a distinguished statesman and orator of a later time, did not give him credit for this comprehensive faculty. They looked only at one side of the question, and therefore accused him of inconsistency; but the fact is, that while inconsistent in name, he was always consistent in spirit.

There is one circumstance in his political life that has been overlooked by his accusers. Before the outbreak of the French Revolution, Burke confined himself entirely to the politics of this empire, and professed himself a Whig. Now there is nothing paradoxical in saying that the principles of the old Whigs and Tories were national principles, that they sprang out of the party disputes of this island, and could only be well understood and applied to the politics of Great Britain. They are as natural to England as our roast beef and plum-pudding: nowhere else could they exist in such perfection. So Burke appears always to have considered, and his political writings, until the year 1790, were all on national affairs. But the French Revolution was not a mere national movement; its distinguished advocates declared and boasted that its principles were universal. Burke, therefore, addressing his Reflections and his Letters on a Regicide Peace to all Europe, was obliged to be more general in his observations than he had been while he directed his attention entirely to English politics.

On reviewing his first philosophical treatise,