wondering how Ned has contrived to monopolize all the talents of the family; but then again, I remember when we were at play he was always at work." Weak health in childhood, which prevented much participation in vigorous sport, the elevating and sobering instruction of his refined mother, and the sound common sense imparted by his humble Quaker schoolmaster, Abraham Shackleton, did much to elevate his purposes in life.

Burke was a tireless worker, supplying any deficiencies in the legacy of genius by sheer force of application. To study hard and work diligently he believed constituted the foundations of all excellence and success. He knew the literature and history of the past, but best of all, he knew their vital relation to the present. "Never," he said, "may we become wiser than all the wise and good men who have lived before us." Whether Fox was right in his belief that Burke "had not any very nice critical knowledge even of Latin, still less of Greek," but was well read in Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Tacitus, and others, we need not discuss here. Suffice it to say that he was well read, that is, he had learned a healthy respect for restraint, order, deliberation, and for the wisdom and labors of the society of ancient times, convinced that the true foundations of modern society were laid in the past. Through his early and favorable contact with the Catholic faith in his home, under the influence of the spirit of conservatism and restraint imparted by the classics, and through his habit early acquired of acting only after mature deliberation and thorough investigation, Burke acquired his intense hatred for innovation, radical reform, and snap-shot judgments. Whatever we may think to-day about liberty of speech, whether we can agree or not with Carlyle that every little mind has the inalienable right to scribble itself out and proclaim to the world its absurdities, Burke never ceased to see

in vulgar reasonings on all manner of subjects a grave danger to society. He was "satisfied that a mind which has no restraint from a sense of its own weakness, of its subordinate rank in the creation, and of the extreme danger of letting the imagination loose upon some subjects, may very plausibly attack everything the most excellent and venerable; that it would not be difficult to criticise the creation itself; and that if we were to examine the divine fabrics by our ideas of reason and finesse, and to use the same method of attack by which some men have assaulted revealed religion, we might with as good colour, and with the same success, make the wisdom and power of God in His creation appear to many no better than foolishness."

This thought leads us to another characteristic of the man-his sincere religious nature. We can never cease to marvel that from the political turmoil of rebellious and oppressed Ireland sprang the foremost British statesman of the age, but we marvel still more that from a land of outlawed and oppressed Catholicism, from the midst of bitter and bigoted intolerance should come a most liberal and tolerant Protestant defender of Catholic emancipation in Ireland. From childhood to the hour of his death Burke was deeply religious. We find him at the age of fourteen carrying on theological discussions in his correspondence with Richard Shackleton -liberal even then. "I am of your opinion," he writes, "that those poor souls who never had the happiness of hearing that saving name, shall in no wise be damned." Much later in life he wrote: "I have been a steady friend, since I came to the use of reason, to the cause of religious toleration; not only as a Christian and Protestant, but as one concerned for the civil welfare of the country in which I live, and in which I have for some time discharged a public trust. I wish, with you, that we

may not be so far Englishmen and Scotchmen, as to forget we are men; or, even so far Presbyterians, or Episcopalians, or Catholics, as to forget we are Christians, which is our common bond of religion while we are distinguished into sects, as the former is when we are divided into states. I assure you that, though I am by choice, as well as education and habit, a very attached son of the Church of England, I think myself bound not to wish to persecute you, sir, who probably differ from me in many points, and full as little to persecute any Roman Catholic, who has altogether as good a right to claim a share in my respect and benevolence." "Justice, prudence, tenderness, moderation, and Christian charity, ought to become the measures of tolerance; and not a cold apathy, or indeed, rather a savage hatred, to all religion, and an avowed contempt of all those points on which we differ, and on those about which we agree." His religion was characterized by the fervent and humble spirit of piety of a primitive Christian church, for which he wished, by tolerance, and by implicit trust in an overruling Providence, whose will might be inscrutable, but who directed everything in the end to good. He could bear with fortitude the death of his only and beloved son in the belief that "a Disposer whose power we are little able to resist and whose wisdom it behoves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in another manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness might suggest) a far better." In his will we may read an unusual bequest: "I bequeath my soul to God, hoping for his mercy only through the merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." With an unfaltering trust he approached his end, "sent," as he said, "to follow those who in course ought to follow me, whom I trust, I shall yet in some inconceivable manner see and know, and by whom I shall be seen and known."

A sincere Christian, he possessed not only faith, as we have seen, but also its companion virtues: hope and charity, and especially charity. His temperament was not sanguine. He saw the near approach of no millennium. The lot of humanity to him always dubious might be made tolerable by wise government. Let those who charge him with the unprogressiveness of conservatism recall that he was never satisfied with the state of affairs as he found it, and never for a moment believed it too good to be made better, but was ever ready to institute measures of reform, with the qualification, however, that if he could not reform with equity he would not reform at all. Although he hardly showed the pessimism of Dr. Johnson in his fruitless search for happiness, Burke's outlook on life was far from bright. In the sorrow of his last days he remarked: "It is notorious that there is nothing at home or abroad, in war or in peace, that I have the good fortune to be at all pleased with." And yet he was "satisfied that there is much good in mankind at large." He had a generous respect for humble virtue, but was not democratic enough to believe all men equal, or that any man is prepared on a moment's notice to take the reins of government. He thought of man as one "whose prerogative it is, to be in a great degree a creature of his own making; and who when made as he ought to be made, is destined to hold no trivial place in creation"; but he was well aware that not many were made as he was. His career was not conducive to much optimism on his part. It takes a stout heart to continue to fight valiantly on the losing side, and yet be able to say, as he did, “I do, with all my heart, all my soul, and all my strength, support the measures I believe to be right." He enjoyed, however, what few men in high positions have, the peace that comes with the payment in full of duty's debt. "I am very happy, Sir, that you

approve my late conduct in the House of Commons. I have lost some friends by it, but I have not lost my spirits, nor my principles, and I have rather increased my inward peace." Near the close of his great speech on Conciliation he exclaimed, “If I cannot give peace to my country, I give it to my conscience." Conscience may not be an unerring guide, but somehow we feel an added degree of confidence in the man who has one.

The charity and generosity of Burke are well-known. He did not, perhaps, give with the reckless and indiscriminate prodigality of Goldsmith, yet he was always ready with true Irish open-heartedness to aid the needy. "Always," said he, "preserve the habit of giving." "To spend little and give much is the highest glory of man." In his early life he shared his last guinea with the Armenian adventurer, Joseph Emin; later he rescued the poet Crabbe from extreme poverty; and denied himself of much to give substantial but in the end unappreciated aid to the erratic painter Barry. When his son was about to visit the scenes of his father's early life, Burke divided his purse and sent half to two aged and infirm friends in Ireland. In the dark days of the French Revolution his door was ever open to the fugitive and poverty-stricken refugees of the aristocracy of France; many of them found their only means of subsistence in his home. Later he did much to establish a school for their children, not infrequently robbing his own table to add some delicacy or substantial food to the table of the school. Before his death it was predicted that the memory of Burke's philanthropic virtues would outlive the period when his shining political talents would cease

to act.

His charity indicates his unselfishness, but not how thoroughly it permeated his life. Of him it cannot be said as in the case of many a philanthropist that with