potent in arousing patriotic enthusiasm in a lover of Ireland, than those in the proceedings of this Society which are a record of its officers. Although the oratory of Burke signally failed, on the great occasions upon which it was displayed, to alter the determination or the policy of the majority of those to whom it was addressed, he stands by general consent--to make no wider comparison--at the head of the orators who spoke the English tongue. “Saturated with ideas” and magnificent in diction as Burke’s oratory was, it is not as orator merely that he claims the attention of students of history, nor as “our greatest English prose writer” (as Matthew Arnold calls him) the attention of students of literature; the nobility of the man commands a deeper admiration. “We who know Mr. Burke know that he will be one of the first men in the country,” said Dr. Johnson, with that magnanimous appreciation of merit so characteristic of him; and the estimate was not an exaggerated one. By far the most sagacious and chivalrous statesman of his time, the high-minded disinterestedness and moral fervour of the man, in an age such as that in which his lot was cast, give him a far-shining pre-eminence. Again and again in his utterance rings the splendid note that stirs the blood as with the sound of a trumpet--the note which only the brave man to whom belongs the _mens conscia recti_ can dare to utter. Take this: “I know the map of England as well as the noble Lord or any other person, and I know that the path that I take is not the way to preferment;” or this, when a purblind electorate complained of his Parliamentary policy: “I do not here stand before you accused of venality or of neglect of duty. It is not said that in the long period of my service I have, in a single instance, sacrificed the slightest of your interests to my ambition or to my fortune--No! the charges against me are all of one kind, that I have pushed the principles of general justice and benevolence too far--further than a cautious policy would warrant, and further than the opinions of many would go along with me. In every accident which may happen through life--in pain, in sorrow, in depression and distress--I will call to mind this accusation, and be comforted.” To read the speeches of Burke is, I think, a liberal education in literature, in ethics, and in political philosophy. No man can rise from a study of them uninstructed or unennobled. To say that in his later years many of the finest qualities of his head and heart failed him, is but to give trite expression to the familiar fact that man too has his “winter of pale misfeature.” There is no figure in the history of English politics at once so great and so noble as that of Edmund Burke.