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; till 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 us 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.

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

Edmund Burke.

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 bill 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

orator, a philosopher, and practical statesman; and his knowledge, his industry, and perseverance, were as remarkable as his genius. The protracted and brilliant career of this great man was terminated on the 9th of July 1797, and he was interred in the church at Beaconsfield.*

there the orator spent exclusively his few remaining years. In 1795 he was rewarded with a handsome pension from the civil list. It was in contemplation to elevate him to the peerage, but the death of his only son (who was his colleague in the representa tion of Malton) rendered him indifferent, if not averse, to such a distinction. The force and energy A complete edition of Burke's works has been pubof his mind, and the creative richness of his imagi- lished in sixteen volumes. His political, and not his nation, continued with him to the last. His Letter philosophical writings, are now chiefly read. His 'Disto a Noble Lord on his Pension (1796), his Letters on quisition on the Sublime and Beautiful' is incorrect a Regicide Peace (1796 and 1797), and his Observa- in theory and in many of its illustrations, though tions on the Conduct of the Minority (1797), bear no | containing some just remarks and elegant criticism. trace of decaying vigour, though written after the His mighty understanding, as Sir James Mackintosh age of sixty-seven. The keen interest with which | observed, was best employed in the middle region, he regarded passing events, particularly the great political drama then in action in France, is still manifest in these works, with general observations and reflections that strike from their profundity and their universal application. 'He possessed,' says Coleridge, and had sedulously sharpened that eye which sees all things, actions, and events, in relation to the laws which determine their existence and circumscribe their possibility. He referred habitually to principles-he was a scientific statesman.' This reference to principles in the writings and speeches of Burke (and his speeches were all carefully prepared for the press), renders them still popular and valuable, when the circumstances and events to which they relate have long passed away, and been succeeded by others not less important; while their grander passages, their imagery and profusion of illustration, make them interesting to the orator and literary student. His imagination, it is admitted, was not always guided by correct taste; some of his images are low, and even border on disgust. His language and his conceptions are often hyperbolical; or it may be said, his mind, like the soil of the East, which he loved to paint, threw up a rank and luxuriant vegetation, in which unsightly weeds were mingled with the choicest flowers and the most precious fruit. He was at once a poet, an

* One of the happiest of his homely similes is contained in his reply to Pitt, on the subject of the commercial treaty with France in 1787. Pitt, he contended, had contemplated the subject with a narrowness peculiar to limited minds as an affair of two little counting-houses, and not of two great nations. He seems to consider it as a contention between the sign of the fleur-de-lis and the sign of the old red lion, for which should obtain the best custom.' In replying to the argument, that the Americans were our children, and should not have revolted against their parent, he said, They are our children, it is true, but when children ask for bread, we are not to give them a stone. When those children of ours wish to assimilate with their parent, and to respect the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our constitution? Are we to give them our weakness for their strength, our opprobrium for their glory, and the slough of slavery, which we are

not able to work off, to serve them for their freedom ?" His

account of the ill-assorted administration of Lord Chatham is no less ludicrous than correct. He made an administration so chequered and speckled; he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented, and whimsically dove-tailed; a cabinet so variously inlaid; such a piece of diversified mosaic; such a tesselated pavement without cement, here a bit of black stone, and there a bit of white; patriots and courtiers; king's friends and republicans; Whigs and Tories; treacherous friends and open enemies; that it was indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch, and unsure to stand on. The colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards stared at each other, and were obliged to ask, "Sir, your name?" "Sir, you have the advantage of me;"" Mr Such-a-one, I beg a thousand pardons." I venture to say it did so happen, that persons had a single office divided between them, who had never spoke to each other in their lives, until they found themselves, they knew not how, pigging together, heads and points, in the same truckle bed.'

Beaconsfield.

between the details of business and the generalities of speculation.' In this department, his knowledge of men as well as of books, of passions as well as principles, was called into action, and his imagination found room for its lights and shadows among the varied realities and shifting scenes of life. A generous political opponent, and not less eloquent (though less original and less powerful) writer, has thus sketched the character of Burke:

6

'It is pretended,' says Robert Hall, that the moment we quit a state of nature, as we have given up the control of our actions in return for the superior advantages of law and government, we can never appeal again to any original principles, but must by the terms of the society. These are the views rest content with the advantages that are secured which distinguish the political writings of Mr Burke, an author whose splendid and unequal powers bave given a vogue and fashion to certain tenets which, from any other pen, would have appeared abject and contemptible. In the field of reason the encounter would not be difficult, but who can withstand the fascination and magic of his eloquence? The excursions of his genius are immense. His imperial fancy has laid all nature under tribute, and has collected riches from every scene of the creation

* A plain mural tablet has been erected in the church to the memory of Burke. The orator's residence was about a mile from the town of Beaconsfield. The house was afterwards partly destroyed by fire, and is now, we believe, wholly re

moved.

and every walk of art. His eulogium on the queen of France is a master-piece of pathetic composition; so select are its images, so fraught with tenderness, and so rich with colours" dipt in heaven," that he who can read it without rapture may have merit as a reasoner, but must resign all pretensions to taste and sensibility. His imagination is, in truth, only too prolific: a world of itself, where he dwells in the midst of chimerical alarms-is the dupe of his own enchantments, and starts, like Prospero, at the spectres of his own creation. His intellectual views in general, however, are wide and variegated, rather than distinct; and the light he has let in on the British constitution, in particular, resembles the coloured effulgence of a painted medium, a kind of mimic twilight, solemn and soothing to the senses, but better fitted for ornament than use."*

Sir James Mackintosh considered that Burke's best style was before the Indian business and the French Revolution had inflamed him. It was more chaste and simple; but his writings and speeches at this period can hardly be said to equal his later productions in vigour, fancy, or originality. The excitement of the times seemed to give a development to his mental energies. The early speeches have most constitutional and practical value -the late ones most genius. The former are a solid and durable structure, and the latter its Corinthian

columns.'

·

new

[From the Speech on Conciliation with America, 1775.] Mr Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over the great consideration. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things. He was then old enough acta parentum jam legere, et qua sit poterit cognoscere virtus. Suppose, sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that, when in the fourth generation, the third prince of the house of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation, which (by the happy issue of moderate and healing councils) was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son, lord-chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honour and prosperity that angel should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the Genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him-Young man, there is America-which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by

* Hull's Works, 2d edition, vol. iv. p. 89.

succession of civilising conquests and civilising settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!' If this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate, indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect and cloud the setting of his day! *

You cannot station garrisons in every part of these deserts. If you drive the people from one place, they will carry on their annual tillage, and remove with their flocks and herds to another. Many of the people in the back settlements are already little attached to particular situations. Already they have topped the Appalachian mountains. From thence they behold before them an immense plain, one vast, rich, level meadow; a square of five hundred miles. Over this they would wander without a possibility of restraint; they would change their manners with the habits of their life; would soon forget a government by which they were disowned; would become hordes of English Tartars, and, pouring down upon your unfortified frontiers a fierce and irresistible cavalry, become masters of your governors and your counsellors, your collectors and comptrollers, and all the slaves that adhere to them. Such would, and in no long time must be, the effect of attempting to forbid as a crime, and to suppress as an evil, the command and blessing be the happy result of an endeavour to keep as a lair of Providence-increase and multiply.' Such would of wild beasts that earth which God, by an express charter, has given to the children of men. Far different, and surely much wiser, has been our policy hitherto. Hitherto we have invited our people, by every kind of bounty, to fixed establishments. We have invited the husbandman to look to authority for his title. We have taught him piously to believe in the mysterious virtue of wax and parchment. We have thrown each tract of land, as it was peopled, into districts, that the ruling power should never be wholly out of sight. We have settled all we could, and we have carefully attended every settlement with government.

Adhering, sir, as I do to this policy, as well as for the reasons I have just given, I think this new project of hedging in population to be neither prudent nor practicable.

To impoverish the colonies in general, and in particular to arrest the noble course of their marine enterprises, would be a more easy task, I freely confess it. We have shown a disposition to a system of this kind; a disposition even to continue the restraint after the offence; looking on ourselves as rivals to our colonies, and persuaded that of course we must gain all that they shall lose. Much mischief we may certainly do. The power inadequate to all other things is often more than sufficient for this. I do not look on the direct and immediate power of the colonies to resist our violence as very formidable. In this, however, I may be mistaken. But when I consider that we have colonies for no purpose but to be serviceable to us, it seems to my poor understanding a little preposterous to make them unserviceable, in order to keep them obedient. It is, in truth, nothing more than the old, and, as I thought, exploded problem of tyranny, which proposes to beggar its subjects into submission. But remember, when you have completed your system of impoverishment, that nature still proceeds in her ordinary course; and that discontent will increase with misery; and that there are critical moments in the fortunes of all states, when they who are too weak to contribute to your prosperity, may be strong enough to complete your ruin. Spoliatis arma supersunt.