to fidelity in such lofty trusts, a score of letters in these volumes will touchingly illustrate. As we have been enjoying their perusal with a rare delight, we have anticipated the same experience as multitudes around us will share in.
It is interesting to know that Burke was not really accounted among the attractive orators of his day, and that people had a habit of going out of Parliament when he rose to his feet. It illustrates the compensations of time, atoning to the literary man for the immediate superiorities of the public speaker. Fox said, that, the better a man spoke, the harder it usually was for him to compose; and that brilliant orator now lingers only as a name, while his laborious adversary still holds his own in literature, and resumes his career in this admirable American edition.
It shows the intellectual comprehensiveness of our people, that they are ready to be taught by this great man, so resolute an opponent of our most fundamental ideas. Everything that American institutions affirm Burke denied, except the spirit of truth and faith which alone give any institutions their value. Grattan said of him, that, so great was his love for arbitrary power, he could not sleep comfortably on his pillow, unless he thought the king had a right to take it from under him. He demonstrated to his own satisfaction that it was far more congenial to the human mind to yield to the will of one ruler than of a majority, and stated it as a "ridiculous" theory, that "twenty-four millions should prevail over two hundred thousand." Regarding it as the very essence of property that it should be unequal, he could conceive of no safeguard for it but that it should be "out of all proportion predominant in the representation."
Yet, so vast were his natural abilities, his acquirements, and his aims, that he is instructive even as an antagonist, and has, moreover, left much that can now be quoted on the right side of every great question. If he can also be quoted on the other side, no matter. For instance, Buckle claims for him, that "he insisted on an obedience to the popular wishes which no man before him had paid, and which too many statesmen since have forgotten." Yet Burke himself boasted, at the time of his separation from Fox, that he was "the first man who, on the hustings, at a popular election, rejected the authority of instructions from constituents, or who in any place has argued so fully against it."
The sweet female singer who has been so warmly welcomed of late in England and America deserves to be "illustrated." "Songs of Seven" is one of her best pieces, but not her best. The "High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire" is certainly worthy of the special honor here accorded to the "Songs of Seven"; and we are somewhat surprised at the selection, by her American publishers, of these particular verses for illustration.
The wood-cuts in "Songs of Seven" vary materially, and are not in harmony throughout. Some are of the first order of excellence, while some are weak and inadequate. Nearly all the square blocks show artistic thought and skill, and really illustrate the poem. Those by another hand (the artists' names are not given) betray paucity of mind, as well as uncertain fingers.
The most attractive merit of this volume is the printer's part of it. The red borders are as beautiful in their way as any ornamental inclosures can be; and we have only to compare them with some others in books published this year in America to note how superior they are in every respect. The University Press, to which belongs the credit of this work, has justly won to itself the first praise where printing is appreciated as a fine art. We have recently seen an edition of the King's-Chapel Liturgy, with rubrics, from this press, which must rank among the best-printed books of our time.
This book can hardly be characterized as an important addition to elegant or learned
