These general remarks have proceeded to an inexcusable length; but to speak of the Revolution baldly, without explaining the sense in which I use the term, and the spirit in which I understand the events included in it, would have been more inexcusable still. To talk about the Revolution is to talk by implication and allusion, of the whole course of European history, from its earliest beginning and in every one of its departments. And yet half the things that are said of it spring from one theory of life and progress, and apply to one aspect of that amazing event, while by most of those who listen they are received in some totally different sense, and applied to some quite other aspect. To avoid this as well as was possible, I have distantly indicated some of the estimates of the subject in which I do not concur. Let us turn to the great chief who led the forces of European reaction.

It must be pronounced an evil stroke of destiny, when Burke, whose whole soul was bound up in order, peace, and gently enlarged precedent, found himself face to face with this portentous man-devouring Sphinx. He, who could not endure that a few clergymen should be allowed to subscribe to the Bible instead of to the Articles, saw the ancient Church of Christendom prostrated, its possessions confiscated, its priests

proscribed, and Christianity itself officially superseded. The economical reformer, who when his zeal was hottest declined to discharge a tide-waiter or a scullion in the royal kitchen, who had acquired the shadow of a vested interest in his post, beheld two great orders stripped of all their privileges and deprived of all their lands, though the possession in each case had been sanctified by the prescription of many centuries, and by the express voice of the laws. He, who was full of apprehension and anger at the proposal to take away a member of Parliament from St. Michael's or Old Sarum, had to look on while the most august monarchy in Europe was deliberately overturned. The man who dreaded fanatics, hated atheists, despised political theorizers, and was driven wild at the notion of applying metaphysical rights and abstract doctrines to public affairs, was confident that he saw a vast kingdom given finally up to fanatics, atheists, and theorizers, who talked of nothing but the rights of man, and made it their chief aim to set as wide a gulf as ruin and bloodshed could make, between themselves and every incident or institution in their own history, or in that of any other country. The statesman who had once declared, and habitually proved, his preference for peace over even truth, who had all his life surrounded him

self with a mental paradise of order and equilibrium and belief, in a sudden and single moment found himself confronted by the stupendous and awful spectre which three centuries of accumulated effort had at length raised in their supreme hour, and which was destined not to be laid for perhaps as many centuries

to come.

Yet this unkindness of fate, embittering as it did the closing days of a noble life, was not an unalloyed misfortune for us. Burke at least rose to the height of the transactions which he abhorred and denounced. For may we not believe that the Reformation was fundamentally a progressive movement, bringing into new prominence ideas that it was not well for men to forget; and yet at the same time agree that Bossuet took a wider, loftier, more profound view, of the nature of social development, of the conditions of a rightly ordered life, of the needs and possibilities of humanity, than did any of the Protestant doctors, great and valiant men as there were among them? We may, in the same manner, while conceding and gratefully admiring the gigantic impetus which the Revolution imparted to European growth, in the points which I have too dimly and briefly tried to mark, still find in the writings of its arch-enemy a wiser, deeper,

broader, and more permanent view of the elements of social stability, of its priceless value, of its power over the happiness of men, than it was possible for his Jadversaries, disinterested and lofty as many of them were, to arrive at in the midst of the storm and convulsions that enveloped them.>

It requires no singular or extraordinary observation to perceive that men may take the wrong side in such a manner, and under the influence of such ideas, as to produce a more impressive and elevating effect than if they had taken the right side in any other manner. To be in the right as measured by wise definition and logical standard, is not all: it is necessary to be in the right with humanity and breadth. Is not the next best thing to this, to be in the wrong with humanity and breadth? There is a manner, that is to say, of espousing a wrong cause, which proves the possession of far finer qualities and a far finer general apprehension of human requirements, than we shall find in any but one or two of the very best of those who espouse the cause that for the time is right. In a moral aspect, the fineness of the material of which a friend's character is made, is surely far more important to me, than the correctness of his intellectual impressions. In the large controversies of the world,

the tone in which a man speaks may be far more important than the precise justice of his appreciation of a set of current events. Tom Paine was specifically more correct in his judgment of the transactions of the time, than Burke was. Yet nobody, I believe, pretends that the Age of Reason contains as wise, instructive, and durably useful thoughts as the Reflections. Dr. Price's treatise on Civil Liberty offers many just considerations, yet the most ardent lover of freedom, if he be sufficiently removed from these still smouldering fires, will agree that Burke's conceptions of liberty were full of a grander and higher meaning than Dr. Price's.

Romilly mentioning to a friend that the Reflections have got into a fourteenth or some other edition, wonders whether Burke is not rather ashamed of his followers. As he was inflamed with a burning anxiety to get his ideas transferred into the action of a crusade, Burke was not likely to think much about the exact degree of the enlightenment of the people who bought his book and believed in it. Still he might have suspected himself, when he found that he had given deep pleasure to such a person as the King. The leader of a reactionary movement may sometimes, as in this case, claim a measure of admiration from us. It is when we come to the rank and file of reaction, the

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