remain in it for seven, ten, or even twenty years. She would then be regarded more as one of the family, than as a servant : her earnings year after year would be carefully laid aside, and a certain provision made for old age; but how different is the present system adopted by too many servants. Many of them, when out of place, and in distress, being overlooked by their former employers (it may be for their unfaithfulness) after many years' hard service find no other asylum than a workhouse; and too often dishonest practices and intemperate habits reduce individuals to this painful state of pauperism. There is scarcely perhaps any class of persons so free from care as servants. So long as it pleases the Almighty to grant them health, and they conduct themselves in a becoming manner, a comfortable maintenance is provided for them; and they are often more happily situated than their employers, the extent of whose anxieties is often little known to them, as well as the hard struggle they have to maintain a family in respectability and credit. Under such circumstances, the misconduct or unkindness of servants is peculiarly vexatious; and when it is taken into consideration how much of the master's property is at the disposal of servants; and although, for interest sake, as well as from principle, he would neither sanction nor encourage wasteful habits, yet how little comparatively is it in his power to prevent them; how desirable is it to have only persons of strictly honest principles, conscientious in the discharge of their

duty, and actuated by the fear of God! Such servants, whether male or female, are a blessing to their employers: "their price is above rubies;" and into whatever family they enter, they ought to be treated with complacency, kindness, and confidence, for it is exceedingly painful to an upright mind to be regarded with an eye of suspicion. It is important also to impress upon them, as well as on those of less worthy character, by a consistent temper and conversation, the reality of religion; to endeavour to lead them to the knowledge of that Saviour whom their employers profess to believe in, and especially to give them an opportunity atleast once on the Sabbath of attending Divine service. It is true, that unhappilythere are some untoward individuals whom neither kindness can win nor severity subdue; but, generally speaking, kindness will prevail, where harsher measures have failed. It is a bounden duty, for professedly religious masters and mistresses especially, to "give unto their servants that which is just and equal, knowing that they also have a master in heaven;" to "forbear threatening," not to dismiss them upon slight grounds; and where they have enjoyed their long and faithful service, not to lose sight of them, but be ready to assist and shew them kindness either in sickness or old age. If this spirit were more generally cultivated, there would not be that corruption among servants, which is so prevalent in the present day, and which affects in no light degree the happiness of many worthy families.

A-A.

Memoir of the Life and Character of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke; with Specimens of his Poetry and Letters, and an CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 293.

Estimate of his Genius and Talents, compared with those of his great Contemporaries. By JAMES PRIOR, Esq. London;

20

Baldwin and Co. 8vo. pp. xxvi. and 584.

MR. BURKE was one of those remarkable men, who only require a situation of some advantage to enable them to give a tone to the age in which they live. He was gifted (we need not say) with extraordinary powers. But we will particularize one of rare excellence, which he possessed in an eminent degree. There are many persons, who are distinguished by a singular quickness in reaching a theoretical conclusion from very imperfect data. Mr. Burke's sagacity, on the other hand, was shewn in forestalling the effect of practical measures. He discerned, as it were intuitively, the tendency of actions, which open their bearings to other men by slow degrees, and not without some help from experience. In declaring his judgment on these occasions, he did not, as indeed from the nature of the subject he could not always, fortify his positions by close inductive reasoning. He rather abounded in forcible statements, which he pursued with uncommon energy, and rendered probable by the most diligent examination of particulars, aided by a most vivid fancy in describing what his keen penetration led him to anticipate. Then what he saw with clearness, he felt strongly; and naturally maintained with a vehemence, rather increased than diminished by the defect of proof which is incident to such subjects; the want of means for conveying his own convictions to the minds of others, increasing his eagerness to convince them. The same clearness of conception, the same strong and undoubting confidence in his own judgment, imparted a strength to his character, which rendered him indefatigable in prosecuting objects, which he thought right, important, or desirable; and, as this was combined with strict honesty of purpose and zeal for the public good, it gave a downright, straightforward, practical direction to his mind, which never turned to the

These ingredients in his character accord with the distinguishing features in his eloquence; with his stern denunciations of wrong, his keen sarcasm, his powerful invective, his lofty vehemence in statement, and above all his steadiness in argument to the main end pursued, which, amidst all his digressions, discussions, and descriptions, he always kept closely in view.

With these qualities of mind and tongue, he continually exercised over the feelings of the house of commons a powerful influence, of which we find a forcible exposition in the narrative of a foreigner, whose account of the scene is too picturesque to be omitted here, where we are attempting a brief sketch of what he was, and what he did. The writer is the duke of Levis, who attended a debate on the French Revolution. He says:

"The man whom I had the greatest Burke, author of the Essay on the Subdesire to hear was the celebrated Mr. lime and Beautiful, and often himself sublime. At length he rose, but in beholding him I could scarcely recover from my surprise. I had so frequently heard his eloquence compared to that of Demosthenes and Cicero, that my imagination, associating him with those great names, had represented him to me in a noble and imposing garb. I certainly did not expect to find him in the British Parliament dressed in the ancient toga; nor was I prepared to see him in a tight brown coat, which seemed to impede every movement, and, above all, the little bob-wig with curls. *** In the mean time, he moved into the middle of the house, contrary to the usual practice; for the members speak standing, and uncovered, not leaving their places. But Mr-Burke, with the most natural air imaginable, with seeming humility, and with folded arms, began his speech in

so low a tone of voice that I could scarce

ly hear him. Soon after, however, becoming animated by degrees, he described religion attacked, the bonds of subordination broken, civil society threatened to its foundations and in order to shew that England could depend only upon herself, he pictured in glowing colours the political folly which pervaded the greater part of state of Europe; the spirit of ambition and her governments; the culpable apathy of

master.

"That acquaintance with history which distinguished his future life, and which there is no doubt tended to the development of much of his political wisdom, was probably fostered by attendance on occasional meetings of the incipient Historical Society; an association of the students of Trinity college, much celebrated in Ireland, and where some of her greatest men first gave promise of their future fame." pp. 24, 25.

In his twenty-first year he entered himself at the Middle Temple in London, and wrote shortly afterwards to a school-fellow a statement of his impressions on first viewing the English metropolis; from which we select a few sentences, marking strongly the bent of his mind.

"I do not find that genius, the rath primrose, which forsaken dies,' is patronized by any of the nobility; so that writers of the first talents are left to the capricious patronage of the public. Notwithstanding this discouragement, literature is cultivated in a high degree. Poetry raises her enchanting voice to heaven. History arrests the wings of time in his flight to the gulf of oblivion. Philosophy, the queen of arts, and the daughter of heaven, is daily extending her intellectual empire. Fancy sports on airy wing like a meteor on the bosom of a summer cloud; and even metaphysics spins her cobwebs, and catches some flies.

"The House of Commons not unfrequently exhibits explosions of eloquence that rise superior to those of Greece and Rome, even in their proudest days. Yet, after all, a man will make more by the figures of arithmetic than the figures of rhetoric, unless he can get into the trade wind, and then he may sail secure over Pactolean sands." p. 30.

"Soon after my arrival in town I visited Westminster Abbey: the moment I entered I felt a kind of awe pervade my mind which I cannot describe; the very silence seemed sacred. Henry the Seventh's Chapel is a very fine piece of Gothic architecture, particularly the roof; but I am told that it is exceeded by a chapel in the university of Cambridge. Mrs. Nightingale's monument has not been praised beyond its merit. The attitude and expression of the husband, in endeavouring to Ishield his wife from the dart of death, is natural and affecting. But I always thought that the image of death would be much better represented with an extinguished torch inverted, than with a dart. Some would imagine, that all these monuments were so many monuments of folly; -I don't think so; what useful lessons

"I have not the least doubt that the

finest poem in the English language, I mean Milton's Il Penseroso, was composed in the long-resounding aisle of a mouldering cloister or ivy'd abbey. Yet, after all, do you know that I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country church-yard, than in the tomb of the Capulets. I should like, however, that my dust should mingle with kindred dust. The good old expression family burying-ground' has something pleasing in it, at least to me." p. 32.

Mr. Burke was never called to

the bar, though he prosecuted his studies most assiduously.

"His first avowed work, the Vindication of Natural Society,' which came out in the spring of 1756, may in fact be termed a piece of philosophical criticism couched under the guise of serious irony. It was an octavo pamphlet of 106 pages, published by Cooper at the price of 1s. 6d.; and originated in an opinion generally expressed in literary society, of the style of Lord Bolingbroke being not only the best of that time, but in itself wholly inimitable; and in the approbation expressed by some persons of what were called his philosophical opinions, which had then been recently published.

"The design of Mr. Burke was to produce a covert mimicry both of his style and principles; and particularly, by pushing the latter to their inevitable conclusion, to force conviction of their unsoundness, by shewing that the arguments employed by the peer against religion, applied as strongly against every other inscitution of civilized men. His lordship's philosophy, such as it was, was the newest pattern of the day, and of course excited considerable. notice, as coming from a man who had made a conspicuous figure in politics; and whose career, after a youth spent in licentiousness, and a manhood in turbulence and disaffection to the government of his country, seemed appropriately terminated by an old age af infidelity." pp. 43, 44.

"The imitation indeed was so perfect as to constitute identity rather than resemblance. It was not merely the language, style, and general eloquence of the original which had been caught; but the whole mind of the peer, his train of thought, the power to enter into his conceptions, seemed to be transfused into the pen of his imitator with a fidelity and grace beyond the reach of art.' Several able critics of the present day have expressed their admiration of it in strong terms; one of them, in a celebrated periodical work, alluding to this power of copying an author in all his peculiarities,

ever will exist of the art in question), we have all the qualities which distinguish the style, or we may indeed say the genius, of that noble writer, concentrated and brought before us: so that an ordinary reader, who, in perusing his genuine works, merely felt himself dazzled and disappointed-delighted and wearied he could not tell why-is now enabled to form a definite and precise conception of the causes of those opposite sensations; and to trace to the nobleness of the diction and the inaccuracy of the reasoning-the boldness of the propositions and the rashness of the inductions-the magnificence of the pretensions and the feebleness of the performance, those contradictory judgments with the confused result of which he had been perplexed in his study of the original.' "This tract, which was reprinted in 1765, is perhaps equally remarkable for having anticipated many of the wild notions, under the name of philosophy, broached a few years ago in the general rage to overturn old opinions as well as old institutions. It was amusing to see what were first introduced to the world as specimens of ingenious absurdity, retailed to the ignorant of our own day as the legitimate inductions of philosophy. For in this piece may be found (advanced of course ironically) something of the same cant about the evils of governments, the misdeeds of statesmen, the injustice of aristocratic distinctions, the troubles engendered by religion, the tyranny and uncertainty of laws, the virtues of the poor over the rich, with much more of what

the author, when speaking seriously, justly

termed abuse of reason."

pp. 45, 46.

The remarkable work, of which we have extracted the preceding account, contains, as it were, the germ of those powers which were afterwards more seriously exhibited and developed in their full energy on the political theatre of Europe: for, while the imitation of Bolingbroke's style was an accident in the author's purpose, his inherent sagacity was exerted in tracing principles to their ultimate effects, and discerning the practical tendency of a theory in its embryo.

The next work which Mr. Burke published, and which appeared a few months after the former, was his Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of the Sublime and Beautiful; a work, the ability of which, whatever may be thought of his theory, is universally acknowledged.

His studies were now interrupted

by a fit of illness, which drove him to Bath and Bristol; and the attention which he received in the former city from Dr. Nugent, a physician there, led to an attachment to his daughter, whom Mr. Burke soon afterwards married.

"This union was to him a source of comfort ever after. Added to affectionate admiration of his talents, she possessed accomplishments, good sense, goodness of heart, and a sweetness of manners and disposition which served to allay many of the anxieties of his future career,-the labours to attain fame and independence, the fretful moments attendant on severe study, the irritations produced by party and political zeal, and the tempestuous passions engendered by constant contention in active parliamentary life. He repeatedly declared, that every care vanished the moment he entered under his own roof.' He wrote a beautiful piece, filling closely a sheet of letter-paper, the idea of a perfect wife, which he presented to her one morning on the anniversary of their marriage, delicately heading the leavpaper thus, The character of ing her to fill up the blank.” p. 50.

The diligence of Mr. Burke did not decline after his marriage. A publication, entitled an Account of the European Settlements in America, occasioned by the Disputes between England and her Colonies, which appeared in 1757, was either wholly or in part from his pen. In the following year he established, in conjunction with Dodsley, the Annual Register.

In 1761, he made his first advances towards public life by accompanying Mr. Hamilton, as his private secretary, to Ireland, under the viceroyalty of Lord Halifax; an appointment, which procured him, two years afterwards, a pension of three hundred pounds on the Irish establishment. This pension, however, he resigned in eighteen months, on finding that Mr. Hamilton chose to found upon it some intolerable claims. He began now to attend the gallery of the house of commons, and thus initiated himself in all its business, before he became one of its members and leading ornaments.

- His entrance into that assembly was in 1765, when he received the