tion. In the meantime the captains of the host acquiesce in their church's degradation, confident that a few years of patience must undo the work of three bundred; talking about persecution and of chains, when, before their very eyes, the Free Kirk of a poor but hardy land tells them how easily golden chains are flung off by men who are of one mind, and who know their own mind. But what Church is that which for ages and everywhere has braved the powers of this world, withstanding alike the violence of princes, and the madness of the people? Under whose auspices is it that an Archbishop of Cologne in the nineteenth century emulates the constancy of an Archbishop of Canterbury in the twelfth; and that the prelate of Posen, or Cagliari, in our day fears a royal frown as little as, at Milan, St. Ambrose feared a Theodosius? What fold is that, free only because it is universal and one, in which prelates may be imprisoned, exiled, or beheaded, and in which lawlessness may pull down the fanes which ancient or modern piety reared, but in which the Faith is ever safe, and in which the Ark that sustains it is lifted to the summit of the mountains by the deluge that overwhelms all beside? It is that fold in which a single appeal to Rome causes the whole might of the universal Church, collected ever at its centre, to pass at once, with electric swiftness, into the decayed branch or diseased member. It is that Church also in which the separate light of every grace and gift cheers the wayfaring man benignly from road-side oratory or village shrine; and in whose firmament the collective glory of the Saints shines from heaven to heaven, an endless "Milky Way." Surely those who shrink from an ideal philosophy will recognise in such facts something more solid than either their own theories or prepossessions, and cease to stigmatise as a fancy that which is authenticated by the consent of centuries of a united Christendom, and fourfifths of the present Christian world.

ART III.-The Works and Correspondence of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke. 8 vols. 8vo. London, Rivington: 1851-2.

I

T was during the height of the Papal Aggression fever that this edition of the works of our illustrious countryman, by far the most complete that has yet been attempted, was commenced. As each successive volume appeared, we could not repress the feeling, that it was like a solemn voice from the tomb, rebuking the bigotry and laying bare the injustice of that unhappy time. Amid its empty declamation, or angry clamour, we could not help turning to the calm and enlightened philosophy of this truly great man. From the arrogant denunciations of Catholicity, or the contemptuous sneers levelled against it by the ephemeral leaders of the great party to which Burke once belonged, we gladly reverted to the reverential and almost submissive homage to its spirit which he did not disdain to offer; and we consoled ourselves for the indifference, and even hostility, of those who should have inherited his principles, by the recollection of his warm and generous sympathy with our principles, our feelings, and, alas, our wrongs. We could well afford to listen to the eternal protestations of the "essentially Protestant institutions of England," and of the incompatibility of "the narrow system of Popery" with the genius of her free constitution, while in him we could point to one who was a thorough British Statesman in the largest sense of the word, and who yet could and did recognize the principle of Catholicity acting in the fullest harmony with the genius of the British people, and receiving its most complete development in the spirit of the British constitution.

We have already, on a former occasion, dwelt at some length on this (to us most interesting) view of the character of Edmund Burke, as exhibited in his Correspondence. We purpose, in the following pages, to pursue the same view through the whole range of his works, and the entire history of his intellectual development.

For it is not simply the harmonious completeness of his political philosophy, or the scattered treasures of his maxims, or the orderly variety of his almost limitless knowledge, that constitute for us the value of his writings and oratory. It is not alone the lofty play of his fancy,

or the inspiration of his eloquence, we admire; but, over and above the natural truth and beauty of his mind as there reflected, we can perceive a Catholic spirit pervading and informing everything, a respect for Catholic doctrine, a knowledge and appreciation of Catholic practice, a tenderness for Catholic dignity, and a sympathy for Catholic suffering, that distinguish him not more from the unfriendly, than from those of our friends whose regard for us is less nobly derived. To account for this Catholic tone of mind and feeling, no more is necessary than to state those qualities of intellect which he shared in kind with the very fewest, in degree with scarce any of his own or subsequent times, and to connect those with the moral excellencies which serve to discriminate him from the generality of Protestant statesmen; but which are divided with him by many of our own.

It is not easy, perhaps hardly possible, to determine what process of reasoning he followed with most success, or to say whether he was more remarkable in the development of his own argument, or the exposure of an opponent'swhether it was more his talent to reduce a system to principles, or to elaborate principles into a system. At one time he brings his reasoning level with our understanding, as you might suppose a lecturer of the present day to evolve the principle of some mechanical contrivance, by taking it to pieces, exhibiting its joints, and springs, and fittings, the harmony of its parts, and their mutual sustainment, and proceeding from more to less complex, till the beautiful simplicity of the fundamental idea becomes evident to all.

At another we find him building up into an induction, principle after principle, proof after proof, precedent after precedent, neglecting no detail of strength or ornament, and pouring round the shapely structure the many-coloured light of his illustrations. And here lay the secret of his success in the consideration of points in dispute between Protestant and Catholic. True reasoning powers, as distinguished from the mere dexterity of chicane, involve a candour of disposition, a love of truth, and a philosophic dread of prejudice, such as he uniformly exhibited. It is not surprising, therefore, if all, or indeed any, of our arguments were not completely lost upon him; and it is still less surprising, that an imagination like his, so delicately perceptive of the sublime and beautiful in litera

ture and art, should be open to their impressions, when coming from religion. With a judgment so serene, and so exquisite a sense of the fitness of things in life and manners, with so much to guide and enlighten him in the investigation of truth, his was the mould of intellect best fitted for its reception, if to receive or to refuse were in our own choice.

To qualities of mind such as we have attempted to describe, he united those feelings and those principles which are supposed to belong more exclusively to the Catholic. Fox, in what may be called a posthumous attack upon his old friend, and in a passage meant to be sneering, has touched them with singular felicity, when lie points out Burke as the statesman "who taught the pride of submission and the dignity of obedience." It would be difficult to furnish a more complete embodiment of Catholic sentiment, a more ready key to Catholic practice, or a more pithy and eloquent epitome of the character of Burke, than this remark contains. We are at no loss for an appropriate commentary upon a text that might suggest so many, but we are enabled to supply one infinitely more authoritative than our own. The Père Lacordaire, in speaking of a religious vow, certainly the most solemn and irrevocable act of submission known to the human will, enquires, whether "to make the law and obey it voluntarily be not the most sovereign exercise of liberty?" This is unquestionably to teach the "pride of submission ;" and on further reference to Father Lacordaire, we shall learn in what way obedience comes to acquire dignity. "Obedience, he says, "is active, liberal and glorious then only when it results from an acquiescence of the understanding and the will." It does appear impossible to adopt more unreservedly, or affirm more energetically the inculpated principle, the teaching of which is ascribed to Burke's doctrine, and whose application, it might have been added, is conspicuous in his example.

It would be an easy thing to apply these tests to the submission which Burke yielded to conscience and honour in himself, to high station and great worth in others.

* Mémoire pour le Rétablissement en France de l'Ordre des Frères Précheurs, p. 16. + Ib. p. 23.

His adhesion to principle and to party was in the highest degree intelligent and voluntary. Devoted in the first instance to the general order of things under which he was born, his works exhibit throughout, the most enlightened admiration, and even enthusiastic affection for that order; and when he took up a set of fixed principles, (fixed for him, however they might fluctuate for others) he constantly referred them to the more general principles by which that order was regulated, and valued than in so far only as they were subordinate and auxiliary to these. As a natural consequence, he attached himself to the men who were the depositaries and exponents of these principles, and they became his party. But though thrown amongst them by chance, he remained from choice, and though he did not require from other members as rigorous an account of the faith that was in them as he exacted from his own conscience, and though he did not expect to find hereditary politicians as familiar with the theory of their doctrines as a new man like himself, yet he took care at a later period to remind them, when they had wandered from principles never perhaps rightly understood, that he had not like them been "rocked and dandled into a legislator," but had adopted their doctrines on full deliberation and assured premisses; in fact that his was "an acquiescence of the understanding and the will." True to a mature choice, though he never would consent to push a political principle to its extreme and hazardous consequences, he maintained its substantial integrity at every risk and every sacrifice; subordinating his own interests to the interest of his party, but withdrawing his obedience when it jarred with his convictions.

66

His deference, to authority, tradition, and prescription, will abide the same test. Surely if anything can exalt the pride of submission, or enhance the dignity of obedience, it is they. Alexander bequeathed his empire" to the most worthy," Elizabeth would have a king and no rascal," to succeed her. And for our part, we hold it more honourable with Burke, to surrender an opinion or a prejudice to the consent of time, and the reverend authority of tradition, than to the petulant assumption of a vain glorious age that continually stuns us with the empty boast of Sthenelus:

* Vol. i. p. 54.