the posthumous publication of that which was not completed by the writer himself for publication, two things at least ought to be well ascertained; first, that the honour of the deceased is secure, and secondly, that the wrong, if any, to his reputation, bears but a small proportion to the value of the communication.

We make due allowance for the prejudice of habitual admiration. But we cannot help thinking that the rough draught of the sketch of the negro code, and the hints for the essay on the drama, which are evidently only first thoughts, mere scouts sent out to reconnoitre the ground for encampment, might have been spared from appearing in the train of the conqueror.

Having said thus much on that part of the present publication which, we cannot but think, stands on a doubtful policy, and a doubtful warrant, we hasten to express our gratitude to the respectable editor for putting us in possession of so many new sources of instruction and delight. Within these few years the country has lost so much ability-so many of the tallest cedars of the grove have perished under the inexorable stroke, that we naturally cling to whatever yet remains of the vestiges of departed excellence. To the political writings, in particular, of the late Mr. Burke, we turn with increasing fondness. Besides their superlative merit, age, that usually destroys the value of works which the passing events have produced, has shed lustre upon his permanent reflections, and crowned them with the wreath of victorious truth. His prophecies are daily receiving their fulfilment, and time is doing homage to the wisdom of his calculations.

So great, indeed, is our admiration of the man, that we cannot fix our minds upon his production which now lies before us, without allowing a few moments to a general view of his course of political action, and the influence of his intellectual operations.

Whatever fate may yet attend us, no period of our history, past or to come, has exceeded, or can well exceed, in interest, that portion of it over which the political life of Mr. Burke extended. His powers, great as they were, found enough in the circumstances of the country, and enough in the rivalry of living talent, to provoke them to their fullest exertion. An era of eloquence new to the nation was opening just at the moment in which he made his appearance. Great constitutional questions concerning the privileges of the lower house, the breach with America, the dubious policy of our Indian management, the problem of the regency, and lastly the disorganization of the civilized world, consequent upon the French revolution, were themes which successively employed the faculties of Mr. Burke, and stretched the line of his reasoning and research. Great events may not create, but they will always excite, ability. To a certain degree they may be said to create, by calling dormant powers into operative existence. But the intellects of those rare persons who stand so

eminent above the rest of their species, and are so thinly scattered over centuries, cannot be the creatures of circumstance and contingency; nor, indeed, of any thing less than that disposing power which determines, as it brings us into being, the measure of our competency, be it small or great. That sometimes these great men appear in clusters, is a fact not very easy to be accounted for by any philosophical analogies. The attraction of example has undoubtedly a great effect. By the conspicuous success of one original genius congenial abilities are prompted to action. The greatness of Garrick, in his department, was the nurse of the capacity of others, which, but for his example, might never have reached its maturity. He formed, therefore, an era of the stage. And thus the orators and philosophers of antiquity were, for the most part, trained to certain original models, which forced their audacious way into unknown regions of excellence. Perhaps it is not too much to say of Mr. Burke, that he became the parent of excellence in others-the master of a school of eloquence. One of the greatest of the orators of his day confessed, that from him he derived his most valuable knowledge, and all the great materials of his art and when the overflowing abundance of his mind is considered, it will appear probable, that the great cotemporary speakers drew part of their wealth, and some the larger part, from his example and ready stores;

From whose mouth issued forth

Mellifluous streams, that watered all the schools
Of academics old and new.

That the example of one man may be thus instrumental in rais ing and sustaining the eloquence of his time, there is surely some reason to believe. At least the phenomenon of the rise and fall of this great art may in general be better explained by a proper attention to a plain circumstance so well agreeing with ordinary observation, than by resorting to any fanciful theory of youth and age, in the growth and decay of states, analogous to the physical constitution of individual man.

That our country has passed the brightest point of its elevation; that the golden crisis of its destiny is over; that it is drawing towards second childhood and political dotage, we are very unwilling to admit; but we cannot help lamenting that amidst the puny battles of factious malevolence at home, involving the highest objects of political reverence in vulgar obloquy and disgrace, the great scene of Europe's regeneration, which is in some measure a consequence of the principles of which Mr. Burke was the champion, has hardly attracted observation. It may not be untrue, that the stimulating effects of public agitation produce sometimes a glowing vivacity of national character very favourable to the efforts of

oratory: but it is untrue and absurd to suppose that such is the tendency of all factious disturbances of the state. If the tumults of rising states are fitted to provoke the powers of the mind, when society is in its spring, and the sentiment of patriotism awakes only to contests of emulation, and the fierce desire of glory; very different are the effects of those profligate contentions which, in the old age of a nation, are inflamed only by selfish rivalry, and those ungenerous strifes of which avarice, envy, and the baser passions, are the stimulants and fomenters.

We have alluded to the great events which met Mr. Burke at the threshold, and led him up the steps of the temple, princeps et plane coryphæus, among the votaries of fame. Public events of less magnitude would not have corresponded with the ability of Mr. Burke as an orator and statesman. But if the times had allowed him more leisure for letters and science, the probability is, that the public stock of useful and elegant knowledge would have owed more to the genius and industry of this great man, than to all the collective faculty of his age. Something more of connected disquisition, and of consecutive labour, might have improved the arrangement, and developed the wisdom of his productions. He would have funded a larger quantity of that floating variety of knowledge, which, consigned to the fugitive eloquence of the hour, eluded, like the Sybil's leaves, the grasp of his countrymen.

Those of his speeches which have been rendered permanent by the press, are the depositories of great intellectual treasure. But whatever lustre and expansion the speeches of Mr. Burke may have derived from his deep acquaintance with all parts of learning, his philosophy may perhaps have been a loser by the partnership. She could scarcely draw out as much as she contributed. Her domicile is the academy and the porch; she is with difficulty dragged into the contentious scene; medium in agmen, in pulverem, in clamorem, in castra atque in aciem forensem. But there is a span in some intellects that covers attainments, which in practice seem distant from each other. Logic and metaphysics, which occupied a great share of Mr. Burke's attention, were not able to estrange his mind from the politer arts; and though these, in combination, were the favourite objects of his youth, he was determined to be found prepared if the chances of life should throw him into more active scenes.

When arrived at about the age of thirty his country claimed him. With an imagination glowing with the brightest images drawn from classic antiquity, a memory furnished with the best selected materials from every source of knowledge, ancient and modern, private and public, domestic and foreign, local and general; and a judgment fully equal to the application and control of

this various accumulation, he stepped into public life, fully accomplished, completely armed, and without an equal in whatever constitutes, adorns, and consummates the statesman and the senator.

Great orators and great politicians came afterwards upon the stage, but they did not come to eclipse his glory, but rather to provoke and illustrate his excellence, and to bear testimony to the creative force of his example. We shall indulge ourselves in very few remarks upon the great parliamentary characters with whom Mr. Burke was destined to act, or to contend. Fully to comprehend his merit, it is necessary for us to view it in comparison with cotemporary and surrounding excellence. Having gone a little beyond our warrant in the retrospective view which we have taken of him, we cannot stop short of this ultimate justice to his character. Ready as we are to acknowledge the eloquence of the parliamentary leaders of his time, we claim for him one distinguishing excellence, which raises his fame above comparison with modern orators: we mean the union of philosophy with eloquence. In listening to the efforts of other orators, we have felt all the sympathy and emotion of which the mind is capable-all which the rapid, the argumentative, and the persuasive, can produce on the hearer-all which solidity, pathos, or splendour, whether derived from original or assisted powers, can convey, of pleasure, wonder, or conviction, to the heart or understanding: but that profound delight which fills, invigorates, and refreshes the soul from the fountains of perennial truth, and deep-seated philosophy; that serious sober rapture which the consciousness of intellectual expansion, and the feeling of permanent acquisition in science, produce, are the witnesses in our bosoms to the substantial superiority of Burke.

For the decoration of these solid materials Mr. Burke had within himself, or within his reach, an exhaustless store of imagery and diction. The whole classic world was in obedience to him; he had visited all its recesses, its groves, its fountains, and its divinities. It is thus that his speeches and compositions, though, for the most part, temporary and local in their leading subjects, have inseparably connected themselves with the permanent literature of his country. While his mind acquired depth and breadth from his early acquaintance with metaphysics, his taste preserved him from its subtlety. The learning of antiquity was so wrought into the staple of his understanding, as to become his own both for use and ornament, without the pomp or impertinence of quotation. It is on this account that he is distinguishable from all those speakers and writers whose heads are full of other men's thoughts, as well by his abstinence as by his abundance.

His style is unaffected, majestic, and copious; neither rendered obscure by the density of his matter, nor florid by the luxuriance of his imagination. It has sometimes been his fate, as it was the

fate of Cicero, to be charged with being diffuse, Asiatic, and tumid. But such a criticism could come only from those who have been unequal to estimate the value of his matter, and the dignity of his manner. The mean betwixt the magna and the nimia, the plena and the tumida, the sublimis and the abrupta, the severa and the tristis, the lata and the luxuriosa, ought to be felt and understood by him who would properly appreciate the merits of Mr. Burke's writings.

We have often heard it said that Bolingbroke was his model. He was certainly very conversant with his writings at an early age, since the first production of his pen appears to have been the vindication of natural society, in imitation, and in ridicule of the philosopher's levity, insolence, and dogmatism. That he may insensibly have acquired some habits from the profound attention he paid to the works of Bolingbroke, for the sake of exposing him, is not unlikely. Bus we are of opinion that an original thinker never studiously copies the manner of any other. His thoughts are too impatient and independent to be kept within any prescribed course: like the salient sources of a cataract, they find a channel wherever the soil yields them a passage, or hurry along the proclivities which nature has prepared for them.

In the qualifications which we have principally touched upon, Mr. Burke was plainly superior to Mr. Fox, whose abilities were peculiarly, we had almost said exclusively, parliamentary. We cannot hesitate to admit, that the latter was in all points and requi⚫ sites the most accomplished debater that the world has produced. So vast and varied were the powers of his oratory, so astonishing his force and celerity, that though the clearest, and most natural of all speakers, he became sometimes obscure from the difficulty alone of following him. Tantus enim cursus verborum fuit, et sic evolavit oratio, ut ejus vim et incitationem adspexeris, vestigia ingressumque vix videris.

It is not difficult to apprehend the distinction between the species of eloquence in which Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox respectively excelled, however arduous it may be to express it in words. When two persons have risen so near the summit of an art, they must possess many things in common. In all essential qualities each must necessarily abound. The manner and the proportions in which these qualities are mixed, afford, by their results, the practical ground of distinction. To be full of their subject, to see it in all its bearings, to feel all its strength and all its weakness, to illumine what was dark, to raise what was low, to amplify, to condense, to inflame, to mitigate, to control the sources of persuasion, and to command the avenues to conviction, was the prerogative of each of those distinguished persons. A certain vehemence, almost irresistible, belonged to both; though the one seemed to have become irresistible by his bulk, the other by his velocity.