force up a new verdure and laughing harvests, annually increasing for new generations! Popular he is now, but popular he was not in his own generation. And how could Schlosser have the face to say that he was? Did he never hear the notorious anecdote, that at one period Burke obtained the sobriquet of "dinner-bell?" And why? Not as one who invited men to a banquet by his gorgeous eloquence, but as one that gave a signal to shoals in the House of Commons for seeking refuge in a literal dinner from the oppression of his philosophy. This was, perhaps, in part a scoff of his opponents. Yet there must have been some foundation for the scoff, since, at an earlier stage of Burke's career, Goldsmith had independently said, that this great orator

"Went on refining,

And thought of convincing, whilst they thought of dining.”

I blame neither party. It ought not to be expected of any popular body that it should be patient of abstractions amongst the intensities of party strife, and the immediate necessities of voting. No deliberative body would less have tolerated such philosophic exorbitations from public business than the agora of Athens or the Roman Senate. So far the error was in Burke, not in the House of ComYet also, on the other side, it must be remembered, that an intellect of Burke's, combining power and enormous compass, could not, from necessity of nature, abstain from such speculations. For a man to reach a remote

mons.

I do not believe that at any time he was so designated, unless playfully and in special coteries. That the young, who were wearied, that the intensely practical, who distrusted him as a speculator, that the man of business, natus rebus agendis, who viewed him as a trespasser on the disposable time of the House, should combine intermittingly in giving expression to their feelings is conceivable, or even probable. The rest is exaggeration.

posterity, it is sometimes necessary that he should throw his voice over to them in a vast arch-it must sweep a parabola; which, therefore, rises high above the heads of those that stand next to him, and is heard by the bystanders but indistinctly, like bees swarming in the upper air before they settle on the spot fit for hiving.

See, therefore, the immeasurableness of misconception. Of all public men that stand confessedly in the first rank as to splendour of intellect, Burke was the least popular at the time when our blind friend Schlosser assumes him to have run off with the lion's share of popularity. Fox, on the other hand, as the leader of opposition, was at that time a household term of love or reproach from one end of the island to the other. To the very children playing in the streets, Pitt and Fox, throughout Burke's generation, were pretty nearly as broad distinctions, and as much a war-cry, as English and French, Roman and Punic. Now, however, all this is altered. As regards the relations between the two Whigs whom Schlosser so steadfastly delighteth to misrepresent,

"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer"

as respects that intellectual potentate, Edmund Burke, the man whose true mode of power has never yet been truly investigated; whilst Charles Fox is known only as an echo is known; and, for any real effect of intellect upon this generation, for anything but the "whistling of a name,” the Fox of 1780-1807 sleeps where the carols of the larks are sleeping that gladdened the spring-tides of those years -sleeps with the roses that glorified the beauty of their summers.*

A man in Fox's situation is sure, whilst living, to draw after him trains of sycophants; and it is the evil necessity of newspapers the most

JUNIUS.

Schlossser talks of Junius, who is to him, as to many people, more than entirely the enigma of an enigma, a vapoury likeness of Hermes Trismegistus, or a dark shadow of the medieval Prester John. Not only are most people unable to solve the enigma, but they have no idea of what it is that they are required to solve. Schlosser is in that predicament. I have to inform Schlosser that there are three separate questions about Junius, of which he has evidently never heard, and cannot, therefore, have many chances to spare for settling them. The three questions are these:-A. Who was Junius? B. What was it that armed Junius with a power over the public mind so unaccountable at this day. C. Why, having actually exercised such a power, and gained under his mask far more than he ever hoped to gain, did this Junius not come forward in his own person, when all the legal danger had long passed away, to claim a distinction that for him (among independent that they must swell the mob of sycophants. The public compels them to exaggerate the true proportions of such people, as we see or hear every hour in our own day. Those who for the moment modify, or may modify, the national condition, become preposterous idols in the eyes of the gaping public; but with the sad necessity of being too utterly trodden under foot after they are shelved, unless they live in men's memory by something better than speeches in Parliament. Having the usual fate, Fox was complimented, whilst living, on his knowledge of Homeric Greek, which was a jest: he knew neither more nor less of Homer and his Ionic Greek than most English gentlemen of his rank; quite enough, that is, to read the "Iliad" with unaffected pleasure, far too little to revise the text of any ten lines without making himself ridiculous. The excessive slenderness of his general literature, English and French, may be seen in the letters published by his secretary, Trotter. But his fragment of a history, published by Lord Holland at two guineas, and currently sold for two shillings (not two pence, or else I have been defrauded of one shilling and tenpence), most of all proclaims the tenuity of his knowledge. He looks upon Malcolm Laing as a huge oracle; and having read even less than Hume-a thing not very easy-with great naïveté, cannot guess where Hume picked up his facts.

the vainest of men) must have been more precious than his heart's blood? The two questions B and C I have examined in past times, and I will not here repeat my conclusions further than to say, with respect to the last. that the reason for the author not claiming his own property was this-because he dared not; because, for that man who was Junius, it would have been mere infamy to avow himself as Junius; because it would have revealed a crime, and would have published a crime in his own earlier life, for which many a man is transported in our days, and for less than which many a man has been, in neighbouring lands, hanged, broken on the wheel, burned, gibbeted, or impaled. To say that he watched and listened at his master's key-holes, is nothing. It was not key-holes only that he made free with, but keys; he tampered with his master's seals; he committed larcenies— not like a brave man risking his life on the highway, but petty larcenies-larcenies in a dwelling-house-larcenies under the opportunities of a confidential situation-crimes which formerly, in the days of Junius, our bloody code never pardoned in villains of low degree. Junius was in the situation of Lord Byron's Lara, or-because Lara is a foul plagiarism-of Harriet Lee's Kruitzner. All the world over, or nearly, Lara moved in freedom as a nobleman, haughtily and irreproachably. But one-spot there was on earth in which he durst not for his life show himself-one spot in which instantly he would be challenged as a criminal-nay, whisper it not, ye forests and rivers! challenged as a vile midnight thief. But this man, because he had money, friends, and talents, instead of going to prison, took himself off for a jaunt to the Continent. From the Continent, in full security, and in possession of the otium cum dignitate, he negotiated with the govern

ment, whom he had alarmed by publishing the secrets which he had stolen. He succeeded. He sold himself to great advantage. Bought and sold he was; and of course it is understood that if you buy a knave, and expressly in consideration of his knaveries, you secretly undertake, even without a special contract, not to hang him. “Honour bright!" Lord Barrington might certainly have indicted Junius at the Old Bailey, and had a reason for wishing to do so: but George III., who was a party to the negotiation, and all his ministers, would have said, with fits of laughter, "Oh, come now, my lord, you must not do that. For since we have bargained for a price to send him out as a member of council to Bengal, you see clearly that we could not possibly hang him before we had fulfilled our bargain. Then it is true we might hang him after he comes back; but since the man (being a clever man) has a fair chance in the interim of rising to be Governor-General, we put it to your candour, Lord Barrington, whether it would be for the public service to hang his excellency?" In fact, Sir Philip might very probably have been Governor-General, had his vile temper not overmastered him. Had he not quarrelled so viciously with Mr Hastings, it is ten to one that he might, by playing his cards well, have succeeded him. As it was, after enjoying an enormous salary, he returned to England, not Governor-General certainly, but still in no fear of being hanged. Instead of hanging him, on second thoughts, government gave him a red riband. He represented a borough in Parliament; he was an authority upon Indian affairs; he was caressed by the Whig party; he sat at good men's tables. He gave for toasts-Joseph Surface sentiments at dinner-parties-" The man that betrays" [something or other]" The man that sneaks into "