Burke’s marriage was a very happy one. Mrs. Burke’s thoroughly sweet temperament acted as a very grateful and potent charm to soothe her husband’s mind when shaken by the agitations of public affairs; her quiet capacity for domestic management relieved him of many small cares which might have added to his burdens. Her affection satisfied his ardent nature. He speaks of her in his will as “my entirely beloved and incomparable wife,” and every glimpse we get of their home life confirms the estimate. After his marriage the most serious part of his intellectual life begins; the commanding passion of his mind is disclosed. He turns away from philosophical amusements to public affairs. In 1757 appeared “An Account of the European Settlements in America,” which William Burke had doubtless written, but which Edmund had almost certainly radically revised; and Edmund himself published the first part of “An Abridgment of the History of England” which he never completed. In 1758, he proposed to Dodsley, the publisher, a yearly volume, to be known as the “Annual Register,” which should chronicle and discuss the affairs of England and the Continent. It was the period of the Seven Years’ War, which meant for England a sharp and glorious contest with France for the possession of America. Burke was willing to write the annals of the critical year 1758 for a hundred pounds; and so, in 1759, the first volume of the “Annual Register” appeared; and the plan then so wisely conceived has yielded its annual volume to the present day. Burke never acknowledged his connection with this great work,--he never publicly recognized anything he had done upon contract for the publishers,--but it is quite certain that for very many years his was the presiding and planning mind in the production of the “Register.” For the first few years of its life he probably wrote the whole of the record of events with his own hand. It was a more useful apprenticeship than that in philosophy. It gave him an intimate acquaintance with affairs which must have served as a direct preparation for the great contributions he was destined to make to the mind and policy of the Whig party.