with the respect, sympathy, and veneration of all parties and all nations. This great, intrepid, and admirable man, went down to his grave in peace and honor in the year 1799, leaving to his country and mankind a glorious heritage, in a name unsullied by crime or rapacity, and an example to be held in everlasting remembrance by all future generations. BURKE. The knowledge of Burke was of the most profound, various, and extensive kind; and his excellence in almost every species of prose composition conducted him to an eminent rank among writers. Moreover, his fame as an orator and statesman is not inferior to that of any man who ever appeared upon the theatre of political affairs; and he is justly entitled to the credit of having formed and sustained his vast reputation by genius, energy, and resolution. His own fearless pen has recorded, for the edification of posterity, that he possessed not one of the qualities, nor cultivated one of the arts, that recommend aspiring intellect to the favor of the powerful; he was not made for a minion or a tool; and he did not follow the trade of winning the hearts by imposing on the understandings of the people. At every step in his life he was traversed and opposed; and at every turnpike he was obliged to show his passport, and prove a title to the honor of serving his country. The memory of such a person surely merits a larger share of popular attention than it has hitherto received. [Illustration: BURKE READING TO HIS MOTHER.] According to biographers, the family of Burke, which was ennobled in several of its branches, could boast of ancient lineage and a respectable position. His grandfather is stated to have been proprietor of a considerable estate, which was inherited and disposed of by the illustrious individual who made the name familiar to England and Europe. This fine old Irish gentleman resided near Limerick; but his son, having been educated to the profession of the law, carried on a very large business as an attorney in the city of Dublin. There, on the 1st of January, 1730, Edmund Burke entered upon his checkered and extraordinary existence; yet hardly any event could have appeared more improbable than that the child then born on Arran Quay should, as years rolled on, become “the philosopher of one era, and the prophet of the next.”