literary talents had been confined to detached essays. His first acknowledged production is his V'indication of Natural Society

This performance is an important object to his biographers, as it marks the sound principles of religion, philosophy, and politics, which he had early formed. By an ironical vindication of natural society, in preference to artificial or political, he exposes the false philosophy of Bolingbroke, which, he thinks, had a tendency to overturn virtue, and every established mode of religion and of government, The scepticism of that author hád hitherto infected only men of rank or literature. It was reserved for Paine to simplify infidelity to the capacities of unlettered men. The disciples of Bolingbroke considered his notions as applying to theology only; they did not foresee that the same engines that were employed for the destruction of religion, which they did not regard, might be used for the subyersion of government, the annihilation of their privileges, and the forfeiture of their property, which they did regard.

The tendency of religious scepticism to produce political confusion was discovered by the penetrating genius of a Burke. He endeavoured to turn sceptics to sound thinking, by shewing that, if false philosophy became general, it would ultimately destroy their rank, consequence, and property. In his ironical attack upon ar

tificial society, he purposely employs the com mon-place mode of unfair reasoning. He argues from incidental abuses against the several forms of political society. Though he intentionally draws a wrong conclusion from his statement of existing abuses, the statement itself is very eloquent, and not much overcharged. Pretending to prove that, because wars often take place between political societies, political society itself is bad, he draws a very striking and glowing picture of the horrors of war, and enters into a particular detail of the butcheries arising from the enmities of men. He gives a summary of the effects of the proceedings of Sesostris, Semiramis, and other conquerors, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman; the northern swarm, the Saracens, Tartars, and those of more modern times, in the bloodshed and devastation that they have caused. "From (says he) the earliest dawnings of policy to this day, the invention of men has been sharpening and improving the mys tery of murder, from the rude essays of clubs and stones, to the present perfection of gunnery, canoneering, bombarding, mining, and all other species of artificial, learned, and refined cruelty, in which we are now so expert, and which make a principal part of what politicians have taught us to believe is our principal glory." He ironically imputes the evils he has detailed to political society, alledging

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that, if men were not so associated, it would have been impossible to find numbers sufficient for such slaughters agreed in the same bloody purpose. "How far then nature would have carried us, we may judge by the examples of those animals who still follow her laws, and even of those to whom she has given dispositions more fierce, and arms more terrible, than ever she intended we should use. It is an incontestible truth, that there is more havock made in one year by men, of men, than has been made by all the lions, tygers, panthers, ounces, leopards, hyenas, rhinoceroses, 'elephants, bears, and wolves, upon their several species since the beginning of the world, though these agree ill enough with each other,"

He goes over the various forms of political society, mentioning their defects; in perfect imitation of sceptical philosophy, pulling them down, and building no other systems in their place. So complete is the irony, that to many, not acquainted with such disquisitions, he would appear to be seriously inveighing against established government. Some modern democrats might suppose that he was supporting the doctrines of one of their apostles. The following passage, among many others, very happily imitates the declamation of anarchists. with respect to you, ye legislators, ye civilizers of mankind, ye Orpheuses, Moseses, Minoses, Solons, Theseuses, Lycurguses, Numas !—

" But

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with respect to you, be it spoken, your regulations have done more mischief in cold blood than all the rage of the fiercest animals, in their greatest terrors or furies, has ever done, or ever could do." Such opinions so much resemble those of disorganizing speculators, that many parts of the Vindication of Natural Society against Artificial Societies, if taken seriously, as some readers might take it, would appear intended to prove speculatively what the Vindication of the Rights of Nature, in opposition to the Usurpation of Establishment, RECOMMENDS

TO PRACTICE.

The Vindication of Natural Society displays, at once the extent of his knowledge, in the historical statements; the versatility of his genius, in the happy imitation of Bolingbroke; and the force of his sagacity, in perceiving, though hitherto, unguided by experience, the tendency of scepticism to dissolve the bands of society. This essay is evidently the production of a mind of no ordinary portion of talents, but of talents not yet quite arrived at their zenith.

His first acknowledged literary work did not meet with so great success as its ingenuity deserved. Like the paradoxes of the Vicar of 'Wakefield's son, it neither excited much praise or blame: like Hume's first effort, it fell deadborn from the press, but was afterwards revived by its younger brothers.

Burke was still a student in the Temple;

but although no man could be more completely master of law, either in its details, or general principles, as a subject of moral and political history and science, yet he does not appear to have studied it with very great zeal as a pro fession. Hume informs us, in his own Life, that, though professing to study law, he found an insurmountable aversion to every thing but the pursuits of general learning. "While they (his friends) fancied I was poring over Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors I was secretly devouring." In the like manner, works of taste, genius, and philosophy attracted Burke more powerfully than usage, decision, and statute. Homer and Longinus occupied his mind more than Montesquieu and Littleton.

Soon after his Vindication of Natural Society, he published an Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful, a work which shewed a genius much beyond that of common critics, and even of highly approved critics. In considering this essay, we are not to look for a rhetorician enumerating constituents of fine writing, but for a

PHILOSOPHER TRACING PHENOMENA AND THEIR

CAUSES in physical and moral nature. He not only collects and narrates facts, but investigates principles; he is not merely an experimental, he is a scientific critic. Longinus possessed more the genius of a poet than the investigating coolness of a philosopher. He illustrated and