Of all the great men of his age, there were few who attained to the celebrity of Edmund Burke; there were many, however, who deserved it more and whom a more adverse fortune compelled to languish in comparative obscurity. That Burke was a man of wonderful talent it would be in vain to deny, and indeed such denial would be only a proof of our own ignorance and bad taste; but his strength was that of imagination merely,--his genius was not sufficiently counterbalanced by judgment, and he has been at all times ranked as an elegant rather than a nervous writer. In his oratory, as well us his literary composition, he was too much addicted to a florid phraseology, and his hearers, during his lifetime, as well as his readers now, were often driven to consider his meaning, and not unfrequently to make one out for themselves. This style of declamation has been not unaptly called "splendid nonsense," and it was after a display of this sort from Burke, that one of his audience made this pithy exclamation: "It is all very well, but I should like to hear it over again, that I might consider the _sense_." Burke also dealt in paradoxes occasionally; in short, he will seldom satisfy a careful reader, and his most ardent admirers have been known to confess themselves rather pleased than edified by his works. By way of specimen, as to the remarks we have ventured to make, we shall endeavour to take to pieces the following sophism, for a sophism we cannot help considering it:-- "Duties are not voluntary; duty and will are even contradictory terms."--"Men have an extreme disrelish to be told of their duty; this is, of course, because every duty is a limitation of power."