the North. About this period he paid his last visit to Dr. Johnson, then on his death-bed. On this occasion, the Doctor tendered a most touching tribute to the conversational powers of his friend.—"I fear,” said Burke, "the presence of strangers is oppressive to you." "No, sir," was the reply, "it is not so: and I must be in a wretched condition indeed, when your company would not be a delight to me.”

The session of 1785 found Mr. Burke still foremost in opposition. He resisted with spirit the ministerial proposals for a sinking fund, as well as those respecting Ireland. But India now became the scene which was to occupy, for many years, Burke's untiring eloquence. On the twenty-eighth of February, he delivered his celebrated speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts. This, however, was but prelude and preparation for those more gigantic efforts, which he afterwards made to expose to the people of England the whole system of our eastern tyranny, and to obtain, if possible, a severe but salutary exercise of retributive justice.

In 1786 he moved for the prosecution of GovernorGeneral Warren Hastings. Despite of all obstacles Mr. Burke entered fearlessly upon the almost desperate enterprise of this accusation. By his persevering eloquence he gradually won over the nation to his views, and even forced the minister, who had previously betrayed partiality for the accused, to maintain a rigid neutrality. The conduct of the trial of Hastings was committed, by the house of commons, to a body of managers, the chief of whom were Burke, Fox, and Sheridan, and the first of these the animating soul of all. In the session of 1786, Burke declared his intention to proceed by impeach

ment and in the session of 1787-8, the trial commenced in Westminster Hall, in the presence of almost all that was august and imposing in the empire.

Never did eloquence so delight the ear as on this occasion. The greatest orators of an age of oratorical splendour exerted themselves to the utmost. Burke, Fox, Sheridan, Windham, followed each other in apparently endless succession, and, to use the striking language of Mr. Erskine, "shook the walls of Westminster Hall with anathemas of superhuman eloquence." Mr. Burke never spoke with such transcendent effect as on this memorable occasion.— The description of the enormities of DEBI SING,* one of the worst agents of Indian tyranny, excited a thrill of ungovernable horror and suppressed mutters of execration through the whole assembly, while many of the female part of the audience fainted. Even the sternness of Lord Thurlow was for a moment melted, and he observed, in reference to the effect of the speech, that" their lordships all knew the effect upon the auditors, many of whom had not to that moment, and, perhaps, never would, recover from the shock it had occasioned." Owing to a variety of causes, but to nothing more than the sheer weariness of the national mind from the length of the trial, Hastings was acquitted in 1795, and he stands legally absolved. It is for posterity to judge of the existence and extent of his offences. The firmest conviction of his guilt remained on Mr. Burke's mind to the end of his life.

In the autumn of 1788 the alarming state of the king's health forced the Regency question on the attention of Parliament. Burke opposed Mr. Pitt on this measure with continued wit, sarcasm, argu

* See p. 117.

ment, and ridicule. The rapid improvement of the royal invalid at the end of February 1789, rendered it unnecessary to pursue the unhappy topic further.

The closing and most conspicuous scene of Mr. Burke's political career now approached-the year 1790, and the French revolution—the period when, to use his own metaphorical language, his splendid orb went down, and left the western horizon in a blaze with his descending glory. The great convulsion in France had amazed and stupified mankind. An ancient and powerful nation rose suddenly from a state of oppression to one of the wildest freedom. In the neighbouring countries the multitude, who looked no deeper than the surface, applauded : many even among the wisest, and the best yielded to the popular feeling. Charles James Fox, whose gallant, generous mind worshipped liberty in every shape and every clime, surrendered himself entirely to this apparent consecration of his idol. When the plot thickened, and horrors accumulated upon horrors, men still stood bewildered, and knew not what to do. But from the very first, the prophetic eye of Edmund Burke went beyond ordinary mortal vision, penetrated the outward covering, and perceived the danger that lurked beneath. Irreligion, anarchy, cruelty, and mob-dominion, and beyond that again the dread fury of conquest and aggrandisement that had seized the French and threatened the slavery of Europe-he saw it all, and he addressed the civilised world in a voice of thunder. The recollection of the loss of British America sanctified his warning: the people dared no longer hesitate to hear him, and the continental struggle commenced. Yet in the beginning there was no energy, and Pitt himself showed

vacillation in an undertaking so terrible. Burke alone grew more animated as the difficulty increased. Louder and louder did he proclaim, "Let there be no compact or alliance with revolutionary France !war upon the regicide!" until his expiring voice had roused his country and the nations that depended upon her to continue a contest, which, as he foretold, happily ended in victory, security, and peace.

In the beginning of February 1790, Mr. Fox took occasion, in the debates on the army estimates, to give unequivocal utterance to his admiration of the French Revolution, and was lavish in praise of those very points which were considered in England of most dubious character. These sentiments met with strong censure from several persons, but from none more than from Mr. Burke, who no longer hesitated to reprobate the whole Revolution in the strongest language. At an earlier stage, Mr. Pitt had been surprised into feelings somewhat favourable to its progress; he now, however, renounced all sympathy with it, and expressed admiration of Mr. Burke's speech. Mr. Fox's reply to Mr. Burke was calm. It contained the memorable acknowledgment, that "he had gained more by the conversation of Mr. Burke, than by all other men and books put together;" and it even acknowledged that his speech on this very occasion, "with the exception of a few observations, was one of the wisest and most brilliant flights of oratory ever delivered in that house."

Mr. Burke now produced that book, which, as a literary effort at least, went far to eclipse the fame of his previous productions,-the work was the "Reflections on the Revolution in France."

Throughout the greater part of the year 1790 he was perpetually employed upon this celebrated performance, and he laboured at it with his accustomed ardour and diligence. It appeared in the month of November 1790. The circulation of the book corresponded with its fame. Not less than thirty thousand copies were disposed of within a year of its publication, a sale unprecedented; for at that time the demands on literature were considerably less than at the present day. Nor was its celebrity confined to England. M. Dupont, the friend of Burke, trans! lated it into French, and extended its reputation to the greater part of civilized Europe. Even monarchs condescended to read and patronise a book, which promised to be an effectual safeguard to their thrones. The Emperor of Germany, the Princes of the House of Bourbon, Catherine of Russia, Stanislaus of Poland, George the Third, all expressed their approbation to the author, or gave him presents still more flattering. Trinity College, Dublin, the University of Oxford, and numberless distinguished individuals both at home and abroad, were equally loud in their praises. "I shall take care," said Erskine, "to put Mr. Burke's work on the French Revolution into the hands of those whose principles are left to my formation. I shall take care that they have the advantage of doing, in the regular progression of youthful studies, what I have done even in the short intervals of laborious life; that they shall transcribe, with their own hands, from all the works of this most extraordinary person, and from the last among the rest, the soundest truths of religion; the justest principles of morals, inculcated and rendered delightful by the most sublime eloquence;