suitable to matter which is not known at all unless it is known distinctly.  Yet the natural ardour which impelled Burke to clothe his judgments in glowing and exaggerated phrases, is one secret of his power over us, because it kindles in those who are capable of that generous infection a respondent interest and sympathy.  But more than this, the reader is speedily conscious of the precedence in Burke of the facts of morality and conduct, of the many interwoven affinities of human affection and historical relation, over the unreal necessities of mere abstract logic.  Burke’s mind was full of the matter of great truths, copiously enriched from the fountains of generous and many-coloured feeling.  He thought about life as a whole, with all its infirmities and all its pomps.  With none of the mental exclusiveness of the moralist by profession, he fills every page with solemn reference and meaning; with none of the mechanical bustle of the common politician, he is everywhere conscious of the mastery of laws, institutions, and government over the character and happiness of men.  Besides thus diffusing a strong light over the awful tides of human circumstance, Burke has the sacred gift of inspiring men to use a grave diligence in caring for high things, and in making their lives at once rich and austere.  Such a part in literature is indeed high.  We feel no emotion of revolt when Mackintosh speaks of Shakespeare and Burke in the same breath as being both of them above mere talent.  And we do not dissent when Macaulay, after reading Burke’s works over, again, exclaims, “How admirable!  The greatest man since Milton.”

The precise date of Burke’s birth cannot be stated with certainty.  All that we can say is that it took place either in 1728 or 1729, and it is possible that we may set it down in one or the other year, as we choose to reckon by the old or the new style.  The best opinion is that he was born at Dublin on the 12th of January 1729 (N.S.) His father was a solicitor in good practice, and is believed to have been descended from some Bourkes of county Limerick, who held a respectable local position in the time of the civil wars.  Burke’s mother belonged to the Nagle family, which had a strong connection in the county of Cork; they had been among the last adherents of James ii., and they remained firm Catholics.  Mrs. Burke remained true to the Church of her ancestors, and her only daughter was brought up in the same faith.  Edmund Burke and his two brothers, Garret and Richard, were bred in the religion of their father; but Burke never, in after times, lost a large and generous way of thinking about the more ancient creed of his mother and his uncles.