No nation will be long ungrateful for eminent public services, even if he who rendered them was stained by grave defects; for it is services which make men immortal.  Much more will posterity reverence those benefactors whose private lives were in harmony with their principles,—­the Hales, the L’Hopitals, the Hampdens of the world.  To this class Burke undeniably belonged.  All writers agree as to his purity of morals, his generous charities, his high social qualities, his genial nature, his love of simple pleasures, his deep affections, his reverence, his Christian life.  He was a man of sorrows, it is true, like most profound and contemplative natures, whose labors are not fully appreciated,—­like Cicero, Dante, and Michael Angelo.  He was doomed, too, like Galileo, to severe domestic misfortunes.  He was greatly afflicted by the death of his only son, in whom his pride and hopes were bound up.  “I am like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me,” said he.  “I am torn up by the roots; I lie prostrate on the earth.”  And when care and disease hastened his departure from a world he adorned, his body was followed to the grave by the most illustrious of the great men of the land, and the whole nation mourned as for a brother or a friend.

But it is for his writings and published speeches that he leaves the most enduring fame; and what is most valuable in his writings is his elucidation of fundamental principles in morals and philosophy.  And here was his power,—­not his originality, for which he was distinguished in an eminent degree; not learning, which amazed his auditors; not sarcasm, of which he was a master; not wit, with which he brought down the house; not passion, which overwhelmed even such a man as Hastings; not fluency, with every word in the language at his command; not criticism, so searching that no sophistry could escape him; not philosophy, musical as Apollo’s lyre,—­but insight into great principles, the moral force of truth clearly stated and fearlessly defended.  This elevated him to a sphere which words and gestures, and the rich music and magnetism of voice and action can never reach, since it touched the heart and the reason and the conscience alike, and produced convictions that nothing can stifle.  There were more famous and able men than he, in some respects, in Parliament at the time.  Fox surpassed him in debate, Pitt in ready replies and adaptation to the genius of the house, Sheridan in wit, Townsend in parliamentary skill, Mansfield in legal acumen; but no one of these great men was so forcible as Burke in the statement of truths which future statesmen will value.  And as he unfolded and applied the imperishable principles of right and wrong, he seemed like an ancient sage bringing down to earth the fire of the divinities he invoked and in which he believed, not to chastise and humiliate, but to guide and inspire.