Of course he shocked and startled many, but none through flippancy or irreverence. He was capable of a holy indignation, and even occasionally, it would seem, of bitterness of tone, when he knew, by a divining spirit which no sham or hypocrisy could blind, that he was challenged not in the interests of truth, but of falsehood. Like all great and searching souls, he had a dark shadow of melancholy often cast over him. He is another witness to us of a well-certified truth, that deep thoughts, while they are in process, not in repose, are sad thoughts. What sort of friends he had, and by what tenacity of love, reverence, and gratitude he held them, and how the delicate ties which bound them to his heart were felt by him as inspirations to fidelity in such lofty trusts, a score of letters in these volumes will touchingly illustrate. As we have been enjoying their perusal with a rare delight, we have anticipated the same experience as multitudes around us will share in. _The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke._ Revised Edition. Vols. I.-III. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. It is interesting to know that Burke was not really accounted among the attractive orators of his day, and that people had a habit of going out of Parliament when he rose to his feet. It illustrates the compensations of time, atoning to the literary man for the immediate superiorities of the public speaker. Fox said, that, the better a man spoke, the harder it usually was for him to compose; and that brilliant orator now lingers only as a name, while his laborious adversary still holds his own in literature, and resumes his career in this admirable American edition. It shows the intellectual comprehensiveness of our people, that they are ready to be taught by this great man, so resolute an opponent of our most fundamental ideas. Everything that American institutions affirm Burke denied, except the spirit of truth and faith which alone give any institutions their value. Grattan said of him, that, so great was his love for arbitrary power, he could not sleep comfortably on his pillow, unless he thought the king had a right to take it from under him. He demonstrated to his own satisfaction that it was far more congenial to the human mind to yield to the will of one ruler than of a majority, and stated it as a "ridiculous" theory, that "twenty-four millions should prevail over two hundred thousand." Regarding it as the very essence of property that it should be unequal, he could conceive of no safeguard for it but that it should be "out of all proportion predominant in the representation."