enjoy life
or to endure it. His frequently do both.

EDMUND BURKE.

_A Lecture delivered before the Edinburgh Philosophical Society_.

Mr. John Morley, who amongst other things has written two admirable books
about Edmund Burke, is to be found in the Preface to the second of them
apologizing for having introduced into the body of the work extracts from
his former volume--conduct which he seeks to justify by quoting from the
Greek (always a desirable thing to do when in difficulty), to prove that,
though you may say what you have to say well once, you cannot so say it
twice.

A difficulty somewhat of the same kind cannot fail to be felt by everyone
who takes upon himself to write on Burke; for however innocent a man's
own past life may be of any public references to the subject, the very
many good things other men have said about it must seriously interfere
with true liberty of treatment.

Hardly any man, and certainly no politician, has been so bepraised as
Burke, whose very name, suggesting, as it does, splendour of diction, has
tempted those who would praise him to do so in a highly decorated style,
and it would have been easy work to have brought together a sufficient
number of animated passages from the works of well-known writers all
dedicated to the greater glory of Edmund Burke, and then to have tagged
on half-a-dozen specimens of his own resplendent rhetoric, and so to have
come to an apparently natural and long-desired conclusion without
exciting any more than the usual post-lectorial grumble.

This course, however, not recommending itself, some other method had to
be discovered. Happily, it is out of the question within present limits
to give any proper summary of Burke's public life. This great man was
not like some modern politicians, a specialist, confining his activities
within the prospectus of an association; nor was he, like some others, a
thing of shreds and patches, busily employed to-day picking up the facts
with which he will overwhelm his opponents on the morrow; but was one
ever ready to engage with all comers on all subjects from out the stores
of his accumulated knowledge. Even were we to confine ourselves to those
questions only which engaged Burke's most powerful attention, enlisted
his most active sympathy, elicited his most bewitching rhetoric, we
should still find ourselves called upon to grapple with problems as vast
and varied as Economic Reform, the Status of our Colon