the new fields which have thus been opened, will find valued
help, either of cheering encouragement, or of wise, restraining caution,
in his passing comments on their materials or methods. He was wholly
free of that conceit and superciliousness of temper by which most of the
rash and blatant empirics of "advanced thought" manage to disgust the
slow and conservative makeweights of moderation. If we should attempt to
express in a single phrase the charm and loftiness of Mr. Robertson's
personal and representative manifestation, we should say, that he, more
than any other man of the age, was the saint of the new liberalism, even
of the extreme radicalism. More than any other conspicuous man who had
cast aside and spurned the old traditionalisms of credulity, ignorance,
and prejudice, he consecrated free-thinking. For each single negation he
offers a positive belief, or a tenable ground of belief, which
substitutes an efficient and quickening tenet for a faith such as will
satisfy and sanctify. 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 h