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In acquired knowledge, the superiority must be our late contests with France and Spain, a very small allowed to Dryden, whose education was more scho- part ever felt the stroke of an enemy; the rest lanlastic, and who, before he became an author, had been guished in tents and ships, amidst damps and putreallowed more time for study, with better means of in-faction; pale, torpid, spiritless, and helpless; gasping formation. His mind has a larger range, and he and groaning, unpitied among men, made obdurate collects his images and illustrations from a more ex- by long continuance of hopeless misery; and were at tensive circumference of science. Dryden knew more last whelmed in pits, or heaved into the ocean, withof man in his general nature, and Pope in his local out notice and without remembrance. By incommomanners. The notions of Dryden were formed by dious encampments and unwholesome stations, where comprehensive speculation, and those of Pope by courage is useless and enterprise impracticable, fleets minute attention. There is more dignity in the are silently dispeopled, and armies sluggishly melted knowledge of Dryden, and more certainty in that of away. Pope.

Poetry was not the sole praise of either; for both excelled likewise in prose; but Pope did not borrow his prose from his predecessor. The style of Dryden is capricious and varied, that of Pope is cautious and uniform. Dryden obeys the motions of his own mind, Pope constrains his mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is sometimes vehement and rapid, Pope is always smooth, uniform, and gentle. Dryden's page is a natural field, rising into inequalities, and diversified by the varied exuberance of abundant vegetation, Pope's is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and levelled by the roller.

Of genius, that power which constitutes a poet, that quality without which judgment is cold and knowledge inert, that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates, the superiority must, with some hesitation, be allowed to Dryden. It is not to be inferred that of this poetical vigour Pope had only a little, because Dryden had more; for every other writer since Milton must give place to Pope; and even of Dryden it must be said, that if he has brighter paragraphs, he has not better poems. Dryden's performances were always hasty, either excited by some external occasion, or extorted by domestic necessity; he composed without consideration, and published without correction. What his mind could supply at call, or gather in one excursion, was all that he sought, and all that he gave. The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all that study might produce or chance might supply. If the flights of Dryden, therefore, are higher, Pope continues longer on the wing. If of Dryden's fire the blaze is brighter, of Pope's the heat is more regular and constant. Dryden often surpasses expectation, and Pope never falls below it. Dryden is read with frequent astonishment, and Pope with perpetual

delight.

This parallel will, I hope, when it is well considered, be found just; and if the reader should suspect me, as I suspect myself, of some partial fondness for the memory of Dryden, let him not too hastily condemn me, for meditation and inquiry may, perhaps, show him the reasonableness of my determi

nation.

[Picture of the Miseries of War.] [From the Thoughts on the Falkland Islands."] It is wonderful with what coolness and indifference the greater part of mankind see war commenced. Those that hear of it at a distance or read of it in books, but have never presented its evils to their minds, consider it as little more than a splendid game, a proclamation, an army, a battle, and a triumph. Some, indeed, must perish in the successful field, but they die upon the bed of honour, resign their lives amidst the joys of conquest, and, filled with England's glory, smile in death!"

The life of a modern soldier is ill represented by heroic fiction. War has means of destruction more formidable than the cannon and the sword. Of the thousands and ten thousands that perished in

Thus is a people gradually exhausted, for the most part, with little effect. The wars of civilised nations make very slow changes in the system of empire. The public perceives scarcely any alteration but an increase of debt; and the few individuals who are benefited are not supposed to have the clearest right to their advantages. If he that shared the danger enjoyed the profit, and after bleeding in the battle, grew rich by the victory, he might show his gains without envy. But at the conclusion of a ten years' war, how are we recompensed for the death of multitudes and the expense of millions, but by contemplating the sudden glories of paymasters and agents, contractors and commissaries, whose equipages shine like meteors, and whose palaces rise like exhalations?

OLIVER GOLDSMITH.

The 'Citizen of the World,' by GOLDSMITH, was published in a collected shape in 1762, and his 'Essays' about the same time. As a light critic, a sportive yet tender and insinuating moralist, and observer of men and manners, we have no hesitation in placing Goldsmith far above Johnson. His chaste humour, poetical fancy, and admirable style, render these essays (for the Citizen of the World consists of dehappy imagery, and pure English. The story of the tached pieces) a mine of lively and profound thought, Old Soldier, Beau Tibbs, the Reverie at the Boar's Head Tavern, and the Strolling Player, are in the logue, Asem, an Eastern Tale, and Alcander and finest vein of story-telling; while the Eastern ApoSeptimius, are tinged with the light of true poetry and imagination. Where the author speaks of actual life, and the fashion of our estate, we see the workings of experience and a finely meditative lished till after his death, is imbued with the same mind. The History of Animated Nature,' not pubgraces of composition. Goldsmith was no naturalist, strictly speaking, but his descriptions are often vivid and beautiful, and his history is well calculated to awaken a love of nature and a study of its various phenomena.

[Scenery of the Alps.]

[From the 'History of the Earth and Animated Nature."] Nothing can be finer or more exact than Mr Pope's description of a traveller straining up the Alps. Every mountain he comes to he thinks will be the last: he finds, however, an unexpected hill rise before him; and that being scaled, he finds the highest summit almost at as great a distance as before. Upon quitting the plain, he might have left a green and fertile soil, and a climate warm and pleasing. As he ascends, the ground assumes a more russet colour, the grass becomes more mossy, and the weather more moderate. When he is still higher, the weather becomes more cold, and the earth more barren. In this dreary passage he is often entertained with a little valley of surprising verdure, caused by the reflected heat of the sun collected into a narrow spot on the surrounding heights. But it much more frequently

happens that he sees only frightful precipices beneath, and lakes of amazing depth, from whence rivers are formed, and fountains derive their original. On those places next the highest summits vegetation is scarcely carried on: here and there a few plants of the most hardy kind appear. The air is intolerably cold-bodies, whether terrestrial or celestial, are found to either continually refrigerated with frosts, or disturbed with tempests. All the ground here wears an eternal covering of ice and snow, that seem continually accumulating. Upon emerging from this war of the elements, he ascends into a purer and serener region, where vegetation is entirely ceased-course, entirely subject to its superior influence. Were where the precipices, composed entirely of rocks, rise perpendicularly above him; while he views beneath him all the combat of the elements, clouds at his feet, and thunders darting upwards from their bosoms below. A thousand meteors, which are never seen on the plain, present themselves. Circular rainbows, mock suns, the shadow of the mountain projected upon the body of the air, and the traveller's own image reflected as in a looking-glass upon the opposite cloud.

[A Sketch of the Universe.]

[From the same.]

The world may be considered as one vast mansion, where man has been admitted to enjoy, to admire, and to be grateful. The first desires of savage nature are merely to gratify the importunities of sensual appetite, and to neglect the contemplation of things, barely satisfied with their enjoyment; the beauties of nature, and all the wonders of creation, have but little charms for a being taken up in obviating the wants of the day, and anxious for precarious subsistence.

Our philosophers, therefore, who have testified such surprise at the want of curiosity in the ignorant, seem not to consider that they are usually employed in making provisions of a more important nature-in providing rather for the necessities than the amusements of life. It is not till our more pressing wants are sufficiently supplied, that we can attend to the calls of curiosity; so that in every age scientific refinement has been the latest effort of human industry. But human curiosity, though at first slowly excited, being at last possessed of leisure for indulging its propensity, becomes one of the greatest amusements of life, and gives higher satisfactions than what even the senses can afford. A man of this disposition turns all nature into a magnificent theatre, replete with objects of wonder and surprise, and fitted up chiefly for his happiness and entertainment; he industriously examines all things, from the minutest insect to the most finished animal, and when his limited organs can no longer make the disquisition, he sends out his imagination upon new inquiries.

that, suspending the constant exertion of his power, he endued matter with a quality by which the universal economy of nature might be continued, without his immediate assistance. This quality is called attraction, a sort of approximating influence, which all possess; and which, in all, increases as the quantity of matter in each increases. The sun, by far the greatest body in our system, is, of consequence, possessed of much the greatest share of this attracting power; and all the planets, of which our earth is one, are, of this power, therefore, left uncontrolled by any other, the sun must quickly have attracted all the bodies of our celestial system to itself; but it is equally counteracted by another power of equal efficacy; namely, a progressive force which each planet received when it was impelled forward by the divine architect upon its first formation. The heavenly bodies of our system being thus acted upon by two opposing powers; namely, by that of attraction, which draws them towards the sun, and that of impulsion, which drives them straight forward into the great void of space, they pursue a track between these contrary directions; and each, like a stone whirled about in a sling, obeying two opposite forces, circulates round its great centre of heat and motion.

In this manner, therefore, is the harmony of our planetary system preserved. The sun, in the midst, gives heat and light and circular motion to the planets which surround it: Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, perform their constant circuits at different distances, each taking up a time to complete its revolutions, proportioned to the greatness of the circle which it is to describe. The lesser planets, also, which are attendants upon some of the greater, are subject to the same laws; they circulate with the same exactness, and are in the same manner influenced by their respective centres of motion.

Besides those bodies which make a part of our peculiar system, and which may be said to reside within its great circumference, there are others that frequently come among us from the most distant tracts of space, and that seem like dangerous intruders upon the beautiful simplicity of nature. These are comets, whose appearance was once so terrible to mankind, and the theory of which is so little understood at present; all we know is, that their number is much greater than that of the planets, and that, like these, they roll in orbits, in some measure obedient to solar influence. Astronomers have endeavoured to calculate the returning periods of many of them; but experience has not, as yet, confirmed the veracity of their investigations. Indeed, who can tell, when those wanderers have made their excursions into other worlds and distant systems, what obstacles may be found to oppose their progress, to accelerate their motions, or retard their return?

But what we have hitherto attempted to sketch is but a small part of that great fabric in which the Deity has thought proper to manifest his wisdom and omnipotence. There are multitudes of other bodies dispersed over the face of the heavens, that lie too remote for examination; these have no motion such as the planets are found to possess, and are therefore called fixed stars; and from their extreme brilliancy and their immense distance, philosophers have been

Nothing, therefore, can be more august and striking than the idea which his reason, aided by his imagination, furnishes of the universe around him. Astronomers tell us that this earth which we inhabit forms but a very minute part in that great assemblage of bodies of which the world is composed. It is a million of times less than the sun, by which it is enlightened. The planets, also, which, like it, are subordinate to the sun's influence, exceed the earth one thousand times in magnitude. These, which were at first supposed to wander in the heavens without any fixed path, and that took their name from their apparent deviations, have long been found to perform their circuits with great exactness and strict regula-induced to suppose them to be suns resembling that rity. They have been discovered as forming with our earth a system of bodies circulating round the sun, all obedient to one law, and impelled by one common influence.

Modern philosophy has taught us to believe, that when the great Author of nature began the work of creation, he chose to operate by second causes; and

which enlivens our system. As the imagination, also, once excited, is seldom content to stop, it has furnished each with an attendant system of planets belonging to itself, and has even induced some to deplore the fate of those systems whose imagined suns, which sometimes happens, have become no longer visible.

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But conjectures of this kind, which no reasoning can ascertain nor experiment reach, are rather amusing than useful. Though we see the greatness and wisdom of the Deity in all the seeming worlds that surround us, it is our chief concern to trace him in that which we inhabit. The examination of the earth, the wonders of its contrivance, the history of its advantages, or of the seeming defects in its formation, are the proper business of the natural historian. A description of this earth, its animals, vegetables, and minerals, is the most delightful entertainment the mind can be furnished with, as it is the most interesting and useful. I would beg leave, therefore, to conclude these commonplace speculations with an observation which, I hope, is not entirely so.

A use, hitherto not much insisted upon, that may result from the contemplation of celestial magnificence, is, that it will teach us to make an allowance for the apparent irregularities we find below. Whenever we can examine the works of the Deity at a proper point of distance, so as to take in the whole of his design, we see nothing but uniformity, beauty, and precision. The heavens present us with a plan which, though inexpressibly magnificent, is yet regular beyond the power of invention. Whenever, therefore, we find any apparent defects in the earth, instead of attempting to reason ourselves into an opinion that they are beautiful, it will be wiser to say that we do not behold them at the proper point of distance, and that our eye is laid too close to the objects to take in the regularity of their connection. In short, we may conclude that God, who is regular in his great productions, acts with equal uniformnity in the little.

[Scenery of the Sea-coasts.]

[From the same.]

Those who have been much upon our coasts know that there are two different kinds of shores-that which slants down to the water with a gentle declivity, and that which rises with a precipitate boldness, and seems set as a bulwark to repel the force of the invading deeps. It is to such shores as these that the whole tribe of the gull kind resort, as the rocks offer them a retreat for their young, and the sea a sufficient supply. It is in the cavities of these rocks, of which the shore is composed, that the vast variety of seafowl retire to breed in safety. The waves beneath, that continually beat at the base, often wear the shore into an impending boldness, so that it seems to jut out over the water, while the raging of the sea makes the place inaccessible from below. These are the situations to which sea-fowl chiefly resort, and bring up their young in undisturbed security.

Those who have never observed our boldest coasts, have no idea of their tremendous sublimity. The boasted works of art, the highest towers, and the noblest domes, are but ant-hills when put in comparison; the single cavity of a rock often exhibits a coping higher than the ceiling of a Gothic cathedral. The face of the shore offers to the view a wall of massive stone ten times higher than our tallest steeples. What should we think of a precipice three quarters of a mile in height and yet the rocks of St Kilda are still higher! What must be our awe to approach the edge of that impending height, and to look down on the unfathomable vacuity below; to ponder on the terrors of falling to the bottom, where the waves that swell like mountains are scarcely seen to curl on the surface, and the roar of an ocean a thousand leagues broad appears softer than the murmur of a brook? It is in these formidable mansions that myriads of seafowl are for ever seen sporting, flying in security down the depth, half a mile beneath the feet of the

spectator. The crow and the chough avoid those frightful precipices; they choose smaller heights, where they are less exposed to the tempest; it is the cormorant, the gannet, the tarrock, and the terne, that venture to these dreadful retreats, and claim an undisturbed possession. To the spectator from above, those birds, though some of them are above the size of an eagle, seem scarce as large as a swallow, and their loudest screaming is scarcely perceptible.

But the generality of our shores are not so formidable. Though they may rise two hundred fathom above the surface, yet it often happens that the water forsakes the shore at the departure of the tide, and leaves a noble and delightful walk for curiosity on the beach. Not to mention the variety of shells with which the sand is strewed, the lofty rocks that hang over the spectator's head, and that seem but just kept from falling, produce in him no unpleasing gloom. If to this be added the fluttering, the screaming, and the pursuits of myriads of water-birds, all either intent on the duties of incubation, or roused at the presence of a stranger, nothing can compose a scene of more peculiar solemnity. To walk along the shore when the tide is departed, or to sit in the hollow of a rock when it is come in, attentive to the various sounds that gather on every side, above and below, may raise the mind to its highest and noblest exertions. The solemn roar of the waves swelling into and subsiding from the vast caverns beneath, the piercing note of the gull, the frequent chatter of the guillemot, the loud note of the auk, the scream of the heron, and the hoarse deep periodical croaking of the cormorant, all unite to furnish out the grandeur of the scene, and turn the mind to Him who is the essence of all sublimity.

[On the Increased Love of Life with Age.]

[From Goldsmith's Essays.]

Age, that lessens the enjoyment of life, increases our desire of living. Those dangers which, in the vigour of youth, we had learned to despise, assume new terrors as we grow old. Our caution increasing as our years increase, fear becomes at last the prevailing passion of the mind, and the small remainder of life is taken up in useless efforts to keep off our end, or provide for a continued existence.

Strange contradiction in our nature, and to which even the wise are liable! If I should judge of that part of life which lies before me by that which I have already seen, the prospect is hideous. Experience tells me that my past enjoyments have brought no real felicity, and sensation assures me that those I have felt are stronger than those which are yet to come. Yet experience and sensation in vain persuade; hope, more powerful than either, dresses out the distant prospect in fancied beauty; some happiness, in long perspective, still beckons me to pursue; and, like a losing gamester, every new disappointment increases my ardour to continue the game.

Whence, then, is this increased love of life, which grows upon us with our years? whence comes it, that we thus make greater efforts to preserve our existence at a period when it becomes scarce worth the keeping? Is it that nature, attentive to the preservation of mankind, increases our wishes to live, while she lessens our enjoyments; and, as she robs the senses of every pleasure, equips imagination in the spoil? Life would be insupportable to an old man who, loaded with infirmities, feared death no more than when in the vigour of manhood; the numberless calamities of decaying nature, and the consciousness of surviving every pleasure, would at once induce him, with his own hand, to terminate the scene of misery; but happily the contempt of death forsakes him at a time when it could only be prejudicial, and life acquires

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an imaginary value in proportion as its real value is

no more.

Our attachment to every object around us increases in general from the length of our acquaintance with it.I would not choose,' says a French philosopher, to see an old post pulled up with which I had been long acquainted.' A mind long habituated to a certain set of objects insensibly becomes fond of seeing them; visits them from habit, and parts from them with reluctance. From hence proceeds the avarice of the old in every kind of possession; they love the world and all that it produces; they love life and all its advantages, not because it gives them pleasure, but because they have known it long.

Chinvang the Chaste, ascending the throne of China, commanded that all who were unjustly detained in prison during the preceding reigns should be set free. Among the number who came to thank their deliverer on this occasion there appeared a majestic old man, who, falling at the emperor's feet, addressed him as follows: Great father of China, behold a wretch, now eighty-five years old, who was shut up in a dungeon at the age of twenty-two. I was imprisoned, though a stranger to crime, or without being even confronted by my accusers. I have now lived in solitude and darkness for more than fifty years, and am grown familiar with distress. As yet, dazzled with the splendour of that sun to which you have restored me, I have been wandering the streets to find out some friend that would assist, or relieve, or remember me; but my friends, my family, and relations are all dead, and I am forgotten. Permit me, then, O Chinvang, to wear out the wretched remains of life in my former prison; the walls of my dungeon are to me more pleasing than the most splendid palace: I have not long to live, and shall be unhappy except I spend the rest of my days where my youth was passed-in that prison from whence you were pleased to release

me.'

The old man's passion for confinement is similar to that we all have for life. We are habituated to the prison, we look round with discontent, are displeased with the abode, and yet the length of our captivity only increases our fondness for the cell. The trees we have planted, the houses we have built, or the posterity we have begotten, all serve to bind us closer to earth, and imbitter our parting. Life sues the young like a new acquaintance; the companion, as yet unexhausted, is at once instructive and amusing; its company pleases, yet for all this it is but little regarded. To us, who are declined in years, life appears like an old friend; its jests have been anticipated in former conversation; it has no new story to make us smile, no new improvement with which to surprise, yet still we love it; destitute of every enjoyment, still we love it; husband the wasting treasure with increasing frugality, and feel all the poignancy of anguish in the fatal separation.

Sir Philip Mordaunt was young, beautiful, sincere, brave, an Englishman. He had a complete fortune of his own, and the love of the king his master, which was equivalent to riches. Life opened all her treasures before him, and promised a long succession of future happiness. He came, tasted of the entertainment, but was disgusted even at the beginning. He professed an aversion to living, was tired of walking round the same circle; had tried every enjoyment, and found them all grow weaker at every repetition. If life be in youth so displeasing,' cried he to himself, what will it appear when age comes on? if it be at present indifferent, sure it will then be execrable.' This thought imbittered every reflection: til at last, with all the serenity of perverted reason, he ended the debate with a pistol! Had this self-deluded man been apprised that existence grows more desirable to as the longer we exist, he would have then faced old

·

age without shrinking; he would have boldly dared to live, and served that society by his future assiduity which he basely injured by his desertion.

[A City Night-Piece.]

[From the 'Citizen of the World."]

The clock has just struck two; the expiring taper rises and sinks in the socket; the watchman forgets the hour in slumber; the laborious and the happy are at rest; and nothing wakes but meditation, guilt, revelry, and despair. The drunkard once more fills the destroying bowl; the robber walks his midnight round; and the suicide lifts his guilty arm against his own sacred person.

Let me no longer waste the night over the page of antiquity or the sallies of contemporary genius, but pursue the solitary walk, where vanity, ever changing, but a few hours past walked before me-where she kept up the pageant, and now, like a froward child, seems hushed with her own importunities.

What a gloom hangs all around! The dying lamp feebly emits a yellow gleam; no sound is heard but of the chiming clock or the distant watch-dog; all the bustle of human pride is forgotten. An hour like this may well display the emptiness of human vanity.

There will come a time when this temporary solitude will be made continual, and the city itself, like its inhabitants, fade away, and leave a desert in its room.

What cities, great as this, have once triumphed in existence, had their victories as great, joy as just and as unbounded, and, with short-sighted presumption, promised themselves immortality! Posterity can hardly trace the situation of some; the sorrowful traveller wanders over the awful ruins of others; and, as he beholds, he learns wisdom, and feels the transience of every sublunary possession.

Here, he cries, stood their citadel, now grown over with weeds; there their senate house, but now the haunt of every noxious reptile. Temples and theatres stood here, now only an undistinguished heap of ruin. They are fallen, for luxury and avarice first made them feeble. The rewards of state were conferred on amusing, and not on useful members of society. Their riches and opulence invited the invaders, who, though at first repulsed, returned again, conquered by perseverance, and at last swept the defendants into undistinguished destruction.

How few appear in those streets, which but some few hours ago were crowded! And those who appear now no longer wear their daily mask, nor attempt to hide their lewdness or their misery.

But who are those who make the streets their couch, and find a short repose from wretchedness at the doors of the opulent? These are strangers, wanderers, and orphans, whose circumstances are too humble to expect redress, and whose distresses are too great even for pity. Their wretchedness excites rather horror than pity. Some are without the covering even of rags, and others emaciated with disease. The world has disclaimed them: society turns its back upon their distress, and has given them up to nakedness and hunger. These poor shivering females have once seen happier days, and been flattered into beauty.

Why, why was I born a man, and yet see the sufferings of wretches I cannot relieve? Poor houseless creatures! the world will give you reproaches, but will not give you relief. The slightest misfortunes of the great, the most imaginary uneasiness of the rich, are aggravated with all the power of eloquence, and held up to engage our attention and sympathetic sorrow. The poor weep unheeded, persecuted by every subordinate species of tyranny; and every law which gives others security becomes an enemy to them.

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Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensibility or why was not my fortune adapted to its impulses? Tenderness without the capacity of relieving, only makes the man more wretched than the object which sues for assistance.

EDMUND BURKE.

As an orator, politician, and author, the name of EDMUND BURKE stood high with his contemporaries, and time has abated little of its lustre. He is still by far the most eloquent and imaginative of all our writers on public affairs, and the most philosophical of English statesmen. Burke was born in Dublin, the second son of an attorney, in 1730. After his education at Trinity college, he removed to London, where he entered himself as a student of the Middle Temple, and laboured in periodical works for the booksellers. His first conspicuous work was a parody on the style and manner of Bolingbroke, a Vindication of Natural Society, in which the paradoxical reasoning of the noble sceptic is pushed to a ridiculous extreme, and its absurdity very happily exposed. In 1757 he published A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which soon attracted considerable attention, and paved the way for the author's introduction to the society of Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith, and the other eminent men of the day. Burke, however, was still struggling with difficulties, and

compiling for booksellers. He suggested to Dodsley the plan of an Annual Register, which that spirited publisher adopted, Burke furnishing the whole of the original matter. He continued for several years to write the historical portion of this valuable compilation. In 1761 Burke accompanied the Earl of Halifax to Ireland as one of his secretaries; and four years afterwards, he was fairly launched into public life as a Whig politician, by becoming private secretary to the Marquis of Rockingham, then appointed first lord of the treasury. A seat in parliament next followed, and Burke became a leading speaker in the House of Commons. His first seat was for Wendover, and he was afterwards member for Bristol and Malton. His speeches on American

At

affairs were among his most vigorous and felicitous appearances: his most important public duty was the part he took in the prosecution of Warren Hastings, and his opposition to the regency biil of Mr Pitt. Stormier times, however, were at hand the French Revolution was then 'blackening the horizon' (to use one of his own metaphors), and he early predicted the course it would take. He strenuously warned his countrymen against the dangerous influence of French principles, and published his memorable treatise, Reflections on the French Revolution. A rupture now took place between him and his Whig friends, Mr Fox in particular; but with characteristic ardour Burke went on denouncing the doctrines of the revolution, and published his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, his Letters to a Noble Lord, and his Letters on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France. The splendour of these compositions, the various knowledge which they display, the rich imagery with which they abound, and the spirit of philosophical reflection which pervades them all, stamp them among the first literary productions of their time. Judged as political treatises, they may in some instances be considered as exaggerated in their tone and manner: the imagination of the orator transported him beyond the bounds of sober prudence and correct taste; but in all his wanderings there is genius, wisdom, and eloquence. Such a flood of rich illustration had never before been poured on questions of state policy and government. the same time Burke was eminently practical in his views. His greatest efforts will be found directed to the redress of some existing wrong, or the preservation of some existing good-to hatred of actual oppression, to the removal of useless restrictions, and to the calm and sober improvement of the laws and government which he venerated, without 'coining to himself Whig principles from a French die, unknown to the impress of our fathers in the constitution.' Where inconsistencies are found in his writings between his early and later opinions, they will be seen to consist chiefly in matters of detail or in expression. The leading principles of his public life were always the same. He wished, as he says, to preserve consistency, but only by varying his means to secure the unity of his end: when the equipoise of the vessel in which he sails may be endangered by overloading it upon one side, he is desirous of carrying the small weight of his reasons to that which may preserve its equipoise.' When the revolution broke out, his sagacity enabled him to foresee the dreadful consequences which it would entail upon France and the world, and his enthusiastic temperament led him to state his impressions in language sometimes overcharged and almost bombastic, sometimes full of prophetic fire, and always with an energy and exuberance of fancy in which, among philosophical politicians, he was unrivalled. In the clash of party strife, so eminent a person could not escape animadversion or censure; his own ardour excited others, and the vehemence of his manner naturally provoked and aggravated discussion. Thus he stood aloof from most of his old associates, when, like a venerable tower, he was sinking into ruin and decay. Posterity, however, has done ample justice to his genius and character, and has confirmed the opinion of one of his contemporaries, that if (as he did not attempt to conceal) Cicero was the model on which he laboured to form his own character in eloquence, in policy, in ethics, and philosophy, he infinitely surpassed the original. Burke retired from parliament in 1794. The friendship of the Marquis of Rockingham had enabled him to purchase an estate near Beaconsfield, in Buckinghamshire, and

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