to make it a successful satire. Much that Burke urges against civil society he could urge in good faith, and his mind works soberly upon it. It is only the main thesis that he does not seriously mean. The rest he might have meant as Bolingbroke would have meant it. The essay on The Sublime and Beautiful, though much admired by so great a master as Lessing, has not worn very well as philosophy. It is full, however, of acute and interesting observations, and is adorned in parts with touches of rich color put on with the authentic strokes of a master. We preserve it, perhaps, only because Burke wrote it; and yet when we read it we feel inclined to pronounce it worth keeping for its own sake. Both these essays were apprentice work. Burke was trying his hand. They make us the more curious about the conditions of what must have been a notable apprenticeship. Young Burke must have gone to school to the world in a way worth knowing. But we cannot know, and that’s the end on ’t. Probably even William Burke, Edmund’s companion, could give us no very satisfactory account of the matter. The explanation lay in what he thought and not in what he did as he knocked about the world. The company Burke kept was as singular as his talents, though scarcely so eminent. _We_ speak of “Burke,” but the London of his day spoke of “the Burkes,” meaning William, who may or may not have been Edmund’s kinsman, Edmund himself, and Richard, Edmund’s younger brother, who had followed him to London to become, to say truth, an adventurer emphatically not of the elevated sort. Edmund was destined to become the leader of England’s thought in more than one great matter of policy, and has remained a master among all who think profoundly upon public affairs; but William was for long the leader and master of “the Burkes.” He was English born; had been in Westminster School; and had probably just come out from Christ Church, Oxford, when he became the companion of Edmund’s wanderings. He was a man of intellect and literary power enough to be deemed the possible author of the “Letters of Junius;” he was born moreover with an eye for the ways of the world, and could push his own fortunes with an unhesitating hand. It was he who first got public office, and it was he who formed the influential connections which got Edmund into Parliament. He himself entered the House at the same time, and remained there, a useful party member, for some eight years. He made those from whom he sought favors dislike him for his audacity in demanding the utmost, and more than the utmost, that he could possibly hope to get; but he seems to have made those whom he served love him with a very earnest attachment. He was self-seeking; but he was capable of generosity, to the point of self-sacrifice even, when he wished to help his friend. He early formed a partnership with Richard Burke in immense stock-jobbing speculations in the securities of the East India Company; but he also formed a