says that "upon the proper working" of this engine or machine "depends the well-being of every plant and animal that inhabits the earth; and that, therefore, the management of it, or its movement, or the performance of its offices, cannot be left to chance. They are, we may rely upon it, guided by laws that make all parts, functions, and movements of the machinery as obedient to order as are the planets in their orbits." We shall refer to the book itself for the causes, the springs of action, and the prevailing course of the "wind in his circuits" "round about the world." We do not wish, nor could we if we chose to, extract all the ideas or choice bits of this volume in a brief review of it. To the comprehension of a child is it shown "why the sea is salt," why Lake Superior is fresh, why the Dead Sea, the Great Salt Lake, the Aral and the Caspian Seas are impregnated with saline particles like the ocean itself. An epitome of the book, to give a clear idea of its contents, would almost necessarily be as voluminous as the work itself, for the treatise, in its style and substance, is a model of condensation. Never obscure, never running off into reflections, rhapsodies, and speculations not pertinent to the subject, there is no ground lost, but one condensed chain of facts, arguments, and deductions. The entire work is eminently hopeful and religious, showing the Christian philosopher in every page. That we have in our naval lieutenant a diligent seeker after truth, a man of great comprehension of mind, an original thinker, and one who has as much genius in exploring the depths of philosophical research as Franklin, Herschell, or Humboldt, is already appreciated by the few, and, ere another generation has passed, will be acknowledged by the country and the world.

ART. VI.-EDMUND BURKE.

THE great men of the world are not to be considered the exclusive property of the nations in which they are born, nor of the age which witnessed and received the earliest profit of their actions. Much more is this true of those men who, springing from the middle and lower classes, are not ashamed of their relationship to the masses, but labor with unswerving devotion for the rights of our common humanity. Such men are frequently misunderstood in their own day, and partially forgotten in the age following; but as the years

roll on Truth gives them resurrection; then they live on forever, and receive the homage of the nations.

The fearless soldiers who form the front ranks, and receive the fresh, vigorous charge of the enemy, sacrificing their lives in the onset of the battle, are honored with scarcely a decent burial, while those who shout the victory are crowned with laurel. All great reformations, all triumphs of noble principles, have their precursors; men of noble minds and superior parts, whose actions often suffer an eclipse in the brightness of the period which they have ushered in. So it was with the Reformation of which Luther is the representative in the world's eye. No one would detract from his position in that triumph of religious truth, nor from his world-wide renown; but his dearest admirers are now writing the biographies of the Reformers before the Reformation.

The heart of the age in which we live is throbbing with a true endeavor to restore to humanity its rights; and, notwithstanding its many eccentricities, some of which seem to verge on madness, it is doing right nobly. We do well to honor our present leaders. But there are some names almost forgotten in this relation who deserve a passing recognition, if not a perpetual remembrance. One of these names we have placed at the head of this article. There may be persons who will be surprised to see the name of Edmund Burke on a roll of the prophets; they have heard and thought of him as a great statesman, an illustrious orator, a writer of singular and varied powers. He was all these, and much more; he was an eminent philanthropist. The true question to ask of any man, the question by which the future will judge him, is not the extent of his endowments, but the use, the consecration he has made of them. Do they center on himself, or go beyond self and identify him with the cause of humanity?

We purpose considering the labors of Mr. Burke in this light, selecting him not as a man of capacious mind, capable of communicating the results of his wisdom in the most captivating and convincing manner, but as a man of a large, warm heart. Deeply sensitive to every attempt to infringe on the rights of man, he was equally bold in their defense; always eloquent, his tongue seemed touched with live coals when pleading the cause of humanity. All nations, and parties, and sects were the same to him when their rights as men were disregarded or endangered. He could no more be silent over the wrongs of India than his own beloved Ireland. Reared a Protestant, and ardently attached to the State Church, none ever pleaded more eloquently for Christian justice toward the Dissenters and Catholics. It is not to be presumed that a pubFOURTH SERIES, VOL. X.-7

lic man could adopt and maintain such a course without making great personal sacrifices, and accepting, for a time at least, the certain opprobrium of such a position. Mr. Burke made the sacrifice without ostentation, and accepted the reproach without retaliation. When he pleaded the cause of the American colonies and Ireland against unjust commercial restrictions and taxations, his constituents complained that he opposed their interest; his friendship for these countries was construed into hatred of England; he asked toleration for the Catholics, and was caricatured as a Jesuit.

Passing over Mr. Burke's early years, we come at once to his entrance into Parliament in 1765. He was now at the ripe age of thirty years, and brought superior qualification to his position of private secretary to Lord Rockingham, who was at the head of the new ministry. There is no doubt that he had been seeking and preparing himself for a political life during a number of years. Indeed, he had held some positions, but none of any importance.

Let us glance at the times when he entered into public life. England was not only then, as now, the freest and most intelligent nation in Europe, but in the world; and, with all its reverses, this was an illustrious period of her history. Pope, Young, Swift, Middleton, Bolingbroke, and Bishops Butler and Berkeley were remembered by the older men; Johnson, Goldsmith, Hume, Blackstone, Mansfield, and Pitt were in the zenith of their well-merited fame; Sheridan, Fox, Gibbon, Warburton, Robertson, Cowper, Clarkson, and Wilberforce were men of his own age. It was not an age in which a charlatan could have succeeded. Burke proved himself more than equal to his compeers. In knowledge, eloquence, philosophy, he surpassed any one of them; his industry was equal to his ambition; and in all those nobler qualities of the heart which are a richer heritage than genius, and give nobility to the commonest actions of life, he had no superior.

In noticing his labors it will be convenient to take them up in the order of time in which he advocated the several measures upon which his reputation in the character which we claim for him must rest.

When Mr. Burke came into Parliament, the subject which had the precedence of all others was America. The infamous Stamp Act had been passed in the early part of the same year, by the Grenville administration, and the discontent of the colonies had become a subject of just alarm to thinking men. The first movement of the new administration was a motion to repeal the odious measure. In the advocacy of this motion Burke made his first speech in Parliament; and with such success that it called forth a flattering

compliment from Pitt, then the acknowledged champion of the colonies.

The position of Mr. Burke in this stage of his public life, in relation to American affairs, has been censured by our historian, Bancroft, because, while he advocated the repeal of the Stamp Act, the party with which he acted still insisted upon the right of the mother country to tax the colonies; that he urged the repeal of the act rather as a matter of policy than of right. We should remember that the party in England who disclaimed the right, were a mere handful, and impotent, except in speeches. The repeal could not have been carried on any other terms; and it does not require a great deal of charity to suppose that Burke, in this, as in many other instances, chose his position for its immediate advantages. His later speeches on American affairs should rather be taken as the exposition of his feeling toward the colonies. The exposition of his ideas of government, which we find scattered throughout his writings, show that he was not insensible to the great principles at the foundation of the difficulty, and that his sympathies were with the colonies. He opposed, in speeches that were considered among his best efforts, the employment of Indians in the American war, and the bringing of Americans guilty of treason to England for trial. Had the course been pursued which he marked out in his speeches on American Taxation and American Conciliation, the rupture would have been delayed, although it is not probable that it would have changed the final result.

He did indeed desire that the colonies should forever continue a portion of the British empire, but this was the sentiment of all parties, and held by our own fathers. No Englishman was better acquainted with the American possessions than Mr. Burke; he had written a history of America before his entrance on political life; and he saw, as with the eye of prophecy, her great commercial future; he knew that no possessions in the East could compensate for the loss of those in the West.

The day came at last when America would be satisfied with nothing less than independence, and the mother country was compelled to admit the claim. It was a sad day for him; for he loved his country, and she was now to lose her noblest child. "He felt it," he said, "as a circumstance exceedingly detrimental to the fame, and exceedingly detrimental to the interest of his country." Once, when pleading for America, he had said, “As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country [England] as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of

England worship freedom they will turn their faces toward you." England had lacked this wisdom; and our fathers had built a new shrine to her name in the mighty forests of the New World: they have the glory that he coveted for his own nation; they who worship freedom turn their faces toward America.

The labors of Mr. Burke in favor of religious toleration commenced at an early period, and continued during his parliamentary career. The government of Great Britain places all who do not adopt the faith and forms of the State Church under greater or less disabilities. Let him be Catholic, Dissenter, Presbyterian, Methodist, or Baptist, Jew, or Mussulman, it matters not, he is deprived of some privileges, and taxed, indirectly, to support the State Church besides. He is a man of some nerve who can combat with the religious prejudices of the majority. The politician who commits himself to a studied and consistent effort in such a course, must be willing to accept a reward in the future. This is probably the reason why we have so few public men who oppose popular errors and popular prejudices: it is a choice between the ready cash and a note of hand; between a wreath on one's brow while living, and one on his monument when dead.

English intoleration was far less bigoted and cruel when Burke opposed it than it had been in the age before. The time had passed when such men as Baxter and Bunyan could be fined and imprisoned for preaching the word of life; yet there were many obstacles in the path of the dissenting minister and his people. Mr. Burke made a number of speeches in favor of bills in relief of the Dissenters; indeed, we do not know of any occasion when the matter was before Parliament, that he did not take the floor in their behalf. There was, however, an instance when he gave his enemies occasion to charge him with inconsistency. Fortunately, he committed the leading arguments of his speech to writing, and we are satisfied with the explanation which it affords. It was on a petition of the Unitarians for certain privileges. The French Revolution was then raging, and he saw in it and its advocates enemies to the human race: the petitioners were almost to a man ardent supporters of the revolution, and seeing, as he thought, in the petition only a desire to legally publish doctrines which might inflame England with a like madness, he opposed it. But his own words acquit him of intolerance. He says:

"If ever there was anything to which, from nature, reason, habit, and principle, I am totally averse, it is persecution for conscientious difference in opinion.... What, then, are we come to this pass, to suppose that nothing can support Christianity but the principles of persecution? . . . I am persuaded