wonder Burke declared that, in all the most anxious moments of his public life, every care vanished the moment he entered his own house. Though contributing largely to the periodicals of the day the first of his essays, so far as is known, that attained to any great distinction was his Vindication of Natural Society, which appeared anonymously in the spring of 1756. This work exhibited so complete though ironical an imitation of Lord Bolingbroke's style that many persons were deceived by it, not perceiving Burke's intention, which was to prove that the same arguments which were employed by his lordship for the destruction of religion might be employed with equal success for the subversion of government. Before the end of the same year Burke published his celebrated work, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin | of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which, by the elegance of its language and the spirit of philosophical investigation displayed in it, advanced him to a first place among writers on taste and criticism. Johnson praised it highly, and Blair, Hume, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and other eminent men sought the friendship of the gifted author. His father, who had been indignant at his son's desertion of the law, was so pleased with the work that he sent him a present of £100 as a proof of his admiration and approval. In 1758, still devotedly attached to the study of his tory, he proposed to Dodsley the publication of the Annual Register, and the proposal being entertained, an arrangement was made under which Burke wrote the historical part of the work for many years. In 1761 his political career properly commenced. In that year he went to Ireland as private secretary to William Gerard Hamilton (of single-speech memory), who was at the time chief secretary to the lord-lieutenant. For his services he was rewarded with a pension of £300, but after a time he threw it up as inconsistent with his personal independence. In 1765 he returned to London, and in the same year was introduced to the Marquis of Rockingham, who, on becoming prime minister, appointed him private secretary. In 1766, through the influence of Lord Verney, he became member for the borough of Wendover, and took his seat in that house which he was afterwards so greatly to influence and adorn. His first speech was on American affairs, and was praised by Pitt. In it he advised the Rockingham administration to repeal the stamp act which so irritated the Americans, but at the same time to pass an act declaratory of the right of Great Britain to tax her colonies. The compromise which he advised was carried out; but the ministry soon after resigned to give place to Mr. Pitt. Upon this Burke wrote his Short Account of a Late Short Administration. In this year (1768) Mr. Burke thus writes to a friend: "I have purchased a house (Beaconsfield) with an estate of about 600 acres of land in Buckinghamshire, twenty-four miles from London, where I now am. It is a place exceedingly pleasant, and I propose (God willing) to become a farmer in good earnest. You who are classical will not be displeased to hear that it was formerly the seat of Waller the poet, whose house, or part of it, makes at present the farmhouse within a hundred yards of me." During the Wilkes excitement he opposed the violent measures adopted against the firebrand, and in 1770 he published his Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents, which contains a copious statement of his ideas on the English constitution. He also took a prominent part in the debates on the liberty of the press, strongly supporting those who wished to curtail the power of the crown. In 1774 he was chosen member for Bristol, and it is to his credit that he subsequently ventured to give offence to his Bristol friends by his support of the Irish petition for freetrade and for moderating the penal statute, which was felt so intolerable by his countrymen. On the 19th of April in this year he made a powerful speech on the repeal of the tea duty in America. This speech was one of the greatest to which any assembly had ever listened, replete with philosophy, and adorned with the most gorgeous diction," and it raised Burke at once into the position of first orator in the house. 66 In March, 1775, he introduced his famous "Thirteen Propositions for Quieting the Troubles in America," and delivered another great speech, in which he pointed out how, on the grounds of expediency alone, concession to the colonists' demands was the wiser course. In 1777 he again appeared in advocacy of the cause of the colonies; but the hour for conciliation was past, and his speeches on the subject were only able reasoning and eloquence wasted. In 1783 Lord Rockingham again came into power, and Burke was appointed to the well-paid post of paymastergeneral, together with a seat at the council board. On the death of Rockingham he resigned his post and joined the coalition with Fox and North. This coalition defeated Shelburne, who had taken Rockingham's place, and on the 2d of April entered office, Burke becoming once more paymaster-general. But the ministry was short-lived, being defeated on the India bill in December of the same year, and Mr. Pitt succeeded to the helm of state. In 1784 Burke, who had for a long time viewed the career of Warren Hastings in India with indignation, commenced his famous attack upon that individual. No sooner had Hastings returned to England than Burke took steps towards his impeachment. He had studied Indian affairs with assiduous care, and was thus enabled to make the great speeches with which he began his attack not only eloquent, but full of information such as no other member of the house could impart. However, for a time he made little way against the large majority opposed to him, and it was the 13th February, 1788, before the great trial commenced. As every one knows it lasted for six years, and was the cause of some of the most eloquent speeches by Burke and others ever uttered in Westminster Hall. The trial brought Burke increase of fame as an orator, but rather lessened him in the popular opinion, and the final result was the acquittal of the "haughty criminal." In 1789 and 1790 Burke vigorously opposed the extreme views of the men who in France were apparently dragging the whole fabric of society to ruin. In November of the latter year he published his famous pamphlet Reflections on the French Revolution. It exhibits both the merits and defects of the writer, and contains much justness of argument, profundity of observation, and beauty of style, but it is equally obvious that he commits the very fault which he intended to reprobate in his Vindication of Natural Society, by making his arguments applicable to the defence of all establishments, however tyrannical, and the censure of every popular struggle for liberty, whatever the oppression. The pamphlet had an unprecedented sale. Within one year 19,000 copies were sold in England, and about as many more, translated into French, on the Continent. Its richness of diction and felicity of illustration caused it to be read by thousands who would have cared nothing for a dry philosophical treatise. But while it had multitudes of enthusiastic admirers, it met also with several formidable critics, and brought forth in reply Sir James Mackintosh's lin diciae Gallicae and Thomas Paine's famous Rights of Man. Burke followed it up by a Letter to a Member of the National Assembly, in 1791, An Appeal from the New Whigs to the Old, and Thoughts on a Regicide Peace. The publication of his views on the proceedings of the French revolutionists was of course highly distasteful to their English sympathizers, and soon brought about a complete estrangement between Burke and his former political friends Fox and Sheridan. In May, 1791, the celebrated scene between him and Fox in the House of Commons took place, which resulted in a breach never again repaired. In 1792 he published a Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe on the Propriety of Admitting Roman Catholics to the Elective Franchise, and in 1794 withdrew from parliament, being succeeded in the representation of Malton by his only son, a youth of great promise. This son died soon after, and the shock was so great that Burke never fully recovered from it. At the express wish of the king, who with his court had assumed a very friendly attitude towards Burke, because of his views on the French revolution, a pension of £3700 per annum was settled upon him in 1795. For the acceptance of this he was fiercely attacked in the House of Lords. His Letter to a Noble Lord, full of biting sarcasm, and at the same time lofty resentment, was in answer to this attack. The remaining two years of his life were spent in retirement, but his pen was not idle. Educational and philanthropic measures were noted and commented on, and his latest publication was on the affairs of his native land, at that time fast approaching a crisis. In the February of 1797 his health began to decline, and a visit to Bath was ordered. After a sojourn of about four months, no visible change for the better was effected, and in May he returned to his family seat at Beaconsfield, where he died on July 8th of the same year. His remains were buried at Beaconsfield by his own desire, as he said, "near to the bodies of my dearest brother and my dearest son, in all humility praying that as we have lived in perfect unity together, we may together have a part in the resurrection of the just." Macaulay distinctly pronounces Burke, "in aptitude of comprehension, and richness of imagination, superior to every orator, ancient or modern." "With the exception of his writings upon the French revolution," says Lord Brougham, "an exception itself to be qualified and restricted, it would be difficult to find any Within the massive railings in front of Trinity College, Dublin, stand on either side the magnificent statues of Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith, both executed by the eminent sculptor J. H. Foley, R.A. An edition of Purke's works and correspondence, we believe the most complete published, appeared in 1852 in eight volumes.] GRADUAL VARIATION.1 statesman of any age whose opinions were | lery, sometimes bordering upon farce. His more habitually marked by moderation; by main battery is now opened, and a tempest a constant regard to the result of actual ex- bursts forth of every weapon of attack, inperience, as well as the dictates of an enlarged vective, abuse, irony, sarcasm, simile drawn reason; by a fixed determination always out to allegory, allusion, quotation, fable, parto be practical, at the time he was giving able, anathema." The great statesman Fox scope to the most extensive general views; says: "If I were to put all the political inforby a cautious and prudent abstinence from all mation that I have ever gained from books, extremes, and especially from those towards and all that I have learned from science, or which the general complexion of his political that the knowledge of the world and its principles tending, he felt the more necessity affairs have taught me, into one scale, and the for being on his guard against the seduction." improvement I have derived from the con"As a writer he was of the first class, and ex- versation and teachings of Edmund Burke into celled in every kind of prose composition, the the other, the latter would preponderate." extraordinary depth of his detached views, the penetrating sagacity which he occasionally applies to the affairs of men and their motives, and the curious felicity of expression with which he unfolds principles, and traces resemblances and relations, are separately the gift of few, and in their union probably without an example. When he is handling any one matter we perceive that we are conversing with a reasoner and a teacher to whom almost every other branch of knowledge is familiar. His views range over all the cognate subjects; his reasonings are derived from principles applicable to other matters as well as the one in hand; arguments pour in from all sides as well as those which start up under our feet, the natural growth of the path he is leading us over; while to throw light around our steps, and either explore its darker places, or serve for our recreation, illustrations are fetched from a thousand quarters; and an imagination marvellously quick to descry unthought of resemblances pours forth the stores which a lore yet more marvellous has gathered from all ages and nations, and arts and tongues. We are, in respect of the argument, reminded of Bacon's multifarious knowledge, and the exuberance of his learned fancy; while the many-lettered diction recalls to mind the first of English poets and his immortal verse, rich with the spoils of all sciences and all times. . . . He now moves on with the composed air, the even dignified pace of the historian; and unfolds his facts in a narrative so easy, and yet so correct, that you plainly perceive he wanted only the dismissal of other pursuits to have rivalled Livy or Hume. But soon this advance is interrupted, and he stops to display his powers of description, when the boldness of his design is only matched by the beauty of his colouring. He then skirmishes for a space, and puts in motion all the lighter arms of wit; sometimes not unmingled with drol But as perfectly beautiful bodies are not composed of angular parts, so their parts never continue long in the same right line. They vary their direction every moment, and they change under the eye by a deviation continually carrying on, but for whose beginning or end you will find it difficult to ascertain a point. The view of a beautiful bird will illustrate this observation. Here we see the head increasing insensibly to the middle, from whence it lessens gradually until it mixes with the neck; the neck loses itself in a larger swell, which continues to the middle of the body, when the whole decreases again to the tail; the tail takes a new direction; but it soon varies its new course; it blends again with the other parts; and the line is perpetually changing, above, below, upon every side. In this description I have before me the idea of a dove; it agrees very well with most of the conditions of beauty. It is smooth and downy; its parts are (to use that expression) melted into one another; you are presented with no sudden protuberance through the whole, and yet the whole is continually changing. Observe that part of a beautiful woman where she is perhaps the most beautiful, This and the three following extracts are from Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful. about the neck and breasts; the smoothness; the softness; the easy and insensible swell; the variety of the surface, which is never for the smallest space the same: the deceitful maze, through which the unsteady eye slides giddily, without knowing where to fix or whither it is carried. Is not this a demonstration of that change of surface, continual, and yet hardly perceptible at any point, which forms one of the great constituents of beauty? It gives me no small pleasure to find that I can strengthen my theory in this point by the opinion of the very ingenious Mr. Hogarth, whose idea of the line of beauty I take in general to be extremely just. But the idea of variation, without attending so accurately to the manner of the variation, has led him to consider angular figures as beautiful: these figures, it is true, vary greatly; yet they vary in a sudden and broken manner; and I do not find any natural object which is angular and at the same time beautiful. Indeed few natural objects are entirely angular. But I think those which approach the most nearly to it are the ugliest. I must add too, that, so far as I could observe of nature, though the varied line is that alone in which complete beauty is found, yet there is no particular line which is always found in the most completely beautiful, and which is therefore beautiful in preference to all other lines. At least I never could observe it. VARIATION, WHY BEAUTIFUL. Another principal property of beautiful objects is, that the line of their parts is continually varying its direction; but it varies it by a very insensible deviation; it never varies it so quickly as to surprise, or by the sharpness of its angle to cause any twitching or convulsion of the optic nerve. Nothing long continued in the same manner, nothing very suddenly varied, can be beautiful; because both are opposite to that agreeable relaxation which is the characteristic effect of beauty. It is thus in all the senses. A motion in a right line is that manner of moving, next to a very gentle descent, in which we meet the least resistance; yet it is not that manner of moving which, next to a descent, wearies us the least. Rest certainly tends to relax yet there is a species of motion which relaxes more than rest; a gentle oscillatory motion, a rising and falling. Rocking sets children to sleep better than absolute rest; there is indeed scarce anything at that age which gives more pleasure than to be gently lifted up and down; the manner of playing which their nurses use with children, and the weighing and swinging used afterwards by themselves as a favourite amusement, evince this very sufficiently. Most people must have observed the sort of sense they have had on being swiftly drawn in an easy coach on a smooth turf, with gradual ascents and declivities. This will give a better idea of the beautiful, and point out its probable cause better, than almost anything else. On the contrary, when one is hurried over a rough, rocky, broken road, the pain felt by these sudden inequalities shows why similar sights, feelings, and sounds are so contrary to beauty: and with regard to the feeling, it is exactly the same in its effect, or very nearly the same, whether, for instance, I move my hand along the surface of a body of a certain shape, or whether such a body is moved along my hand. But to bring this analogy of the senses home to the eye: if a body presented to that sense has such a waving surface that the rays of light reflected from it are in a continual insensible deviation from the strongest to the weakest (which is always the case in a surface gradually unequal), it must be exactly similar in its effects on the eye and touch; upon the one of which it operates directly, on the other indirectly. And this body will be beautiful if the lines which compose its surface are not continued, even so varied, in a manner that may weary or dissipate the attention. The variation itself must be continually varied. SIZE AN ELEMENT OF BEAUTY. To avoid a sameness which may arise from the too frequent repetition of the same reasonings, and of illustrations of the same nature, I will not enter very minutely into every particular that regards beauty, as it is founded on the disposition of its quantity, or its quantity itself. In speaking of the magnitude of bodies there is great uncertainty, because the ideas of great and small are terms almost entirely relative to the species of the objects, which are infinite. It is true, that having once fixed the species of any object, and the dimensions common in the individual of that species, we may observe some that exceed, and some that fall short of, the ordinary standard: those which greatly exceed are by that excess, provided the species itself be not very small, rather great and terrible than | monstrous. The large and gigantic, though beautiful; but as in the animal world, and in very compatible with the sublime, is contrary a good measure in the vegetable world like- to the beautiful. It is impossible to suppose wise, the qualities that constitute beauty may a giant the object of love. When we let our possibly be united to things of greater dimen- imagination loose in romance, the ideas we sions; when they are so united, they constitute naturally annex to that size are those of tyra species something different both from the anny, cruelty, injustice, and everything horrid sublime and beautiful, which I have before and abominable. We paint the giant ravagcalled Fine; but this kind, I imagine, has not ing the country, plundering the innocent such a power on the passions, either as vast traveller, and afterwards gorged with his halfbodies have which are endued with the cor- living flesh: such are Polyphemus, Cacus, and respondent qualities of the sublime, or as the others, who make so great a figure in romances qualities of beauty have when united in a and heroic poems. The event we attend to small object. The affection produced by large with the greatest satisfaction is their defeat bodies adorned with the spoils of beauty is a and death. I do not remember, in all that tension continually relieved, which approaches multitude of deaths with which the Iliad is to the nature of mediocrity. But if I were to filled, that the fall of any man, remarkable for say how I find myself affected upon such oc- his great stature and strength, touches us with casions, I should say that the sublime suffers pity; nor does it appear that the author, so less by being united to some of the qualities well read in human nature, ever intended it of beauty than beauty does by being joined should. It is Simoisius, in the soft bloom of to greatness of quantity or any other pro- youth, torn from his parents, who tremble perties of the sublime. There is something so for a courage so ill-suited to his strength; it is overruling in whatever inspires us with awe, another hurried by war from the new embraces in all things which belong ever so remotely to of his bride, young and fair, and a novice to terror, that nothing else can stand in their the field, who melts us by his untimely fate. presence. There lie the qualities of beauty Achilles, in spite of the many qualities of either dead or unoperative; or at most exerted beauty which Homer has bestowed on his to mollify the rigour and sternness of the ter- outward form, and the many great virtues ror which is the natural concomitant of great- with which he has adorned his mind, can ness. Besides the extraordinary great in every never make us love him. It may be observed, species, the opposite to this, the dwarfish and that Homer has given the Trojans, whose fate diminutive, ought to be considered. Littleness, he has designed to excite our compassion, inmerely as such, has nothing contrary to the finitely more of the amiable social virtues idea of beauty. The humming-bird, both in than he has distributed among his Greeks. shape and colouring, yields to none of the With regard to the Trojans, the passion he winged species, of which he is the least; and chooses to raise is pity; pity is a passion founded perhaps his beauty is enhanced by his small- on love; and these lesser, and if I may say ness. But there are animals which, when they domestic virtues, are certainly the most amiare extremely small, are rarely (if ever) beauti- able. But he has made the Greeks far their ful. There is a dwarfish size of men and superior in politic and military virtues. The women, which is almost constantly so gross counsels of Priam are weak; the arms of and massive in comparison of their height, that Hector comparatively feeble; his courage they present us with a very disagreeable image. far below that of Achilles. Yet we love But should a man be found not above two or Priam more than Agamemnon, and Hector three feet high, supposing such a person to more than his conqueror Achilles. Admiration have all the parts of his body of a delicacy is the passion which Homer would excite in suitable to such a size, and otherwise endued favour of the Greeks, and he has done it by with the common qualities of other beautiful bestowing on them the virtues which have bodies, I am pretty well convinced that a but little to do with love. This short digresperson of such a stature might be considered sion is perhaps not wholly beside our purpose, as beautiful; might be the object of love; where our business is to show that objects of might give us very pleasing ideas on viewing great dimensions are incompatible with beauty, him. The only thing which could possibly the more incompatible as they are greater; interpose to check our pleasure is, that such whereas the small, if ever they fail of beauty, creatures, however formed, are unusual, and this failure is not to be attributed to their are often therefore considered as something size. |