literary partnership with Edmund in the preparation of a sketch of the European settlements in America, and made himself respected as a strong party writer in various pamphlets on questions of the day. He could unite the two brothers by speculating with the one and thinking with the other. Such were “the Burkes.” Edmund’s home was always the home also of the other two, whenever they wished to make it so; the strongest personal affection, avowed always by Edmund with his characteristic generous warmth, bound the three men together; their purses they had in common. Edmund was not expected, apparently, to take part in the speculations which held William and Richard together; something held him aloof to which they consented,--some natural separateness of mind and character which they evidently accepted and respected. There can hardly be said to have been any aloofness of _disposition_ on Edmund’s part. There is something in an Irishman,--even in an Irishman who holds himself to the strictest code of upright conduct,--which forbids his acting as moral censor upon others. He can love a man none the less for generous and manly qualities because that man does what he himself would not do. Burke, moreover, had an easy standard all his life about accepting money favors. He seems to have felt somehow that his intense and whole-hearted devotion to his friends justified gifts and forgiven loans of money from them. He shared the prosperity of his kinsmen without compunction, using what he got most liberally for the assistance of others; and when their fortunes came to a sudden ruin, he helped them with what he had. We ought long ago to have learned that the purest motives and the most elevated standards of conduct may go along with a singular laxness of moral detail in some men; and that such characters will often constrain us to love them to the point of justifying everything that they ever did. Edmund Burke’s close union with William and Richard does not present the least obstacle to our admiration for the noble qualities of mind and heart which he so conspicuously possessed, or make us for a moment doubt the thorough disinterestedness of his great career.