When he published his speech on the Nabob of Arcot, Burke prefixed
to it an admirable quotation from one of the letters of the Emperor
Julian. And Julian too, as we all know, had a strong feeling for the
past. But what in that remarkable figure was only the sentimentalism
of reaction, in Burke was a reasoned and philosophic veneration for
all old and settled order, whether in the free Parliament of Great
Britain, in the ancient absolutism of Versailles, or in the secular
pomp of Oude and the inviolable sanctity of Benares, the holy city and
the garden of God.

It would be out of place here to attempt to follow the details of the
impeachment. Every reader has heard that great tale in our history,
and everybody knows that it was Burke's tenacity and power which
caused that tale to be told. The House of Commons would not, it is
true, have directed that Hastings should be impeached, unless Pitt had
given his sanction and approval, and how it was that Pitt did give
his sanction and approval so suddenly and on grounds ostensibly so
slender, remains one of the secrets of history. In no case would the
impeachment have been pressed upon Parliament by the Opposition,
and assented to by ministers, if Burke had not been there with his
prodigious industry, his commanding comprehensive vision, his burning
zeal, and his power of kindling in men so different from him and from
one another as Fox, Sheridan, Windham, Grey, a zeal only less intense
than his own.

It was in the spring of 1786 that the articles of charge of Hastings's
high crimes and misdemeanours, as Burke had drawn them, were presented
to the House of Commons. It was in February 1788 that Burke opened the
vast cause in the old historic hall at Westminster, in an oration
in which at points he was wound up to such a pitch of eloquence and
passion that every listener, including the great criminal, held his
breath in an agony of horror; that women were carried out fainting;
that the speaker himself became incapable of saying another word, and
the spectators of the scene began to wonder whether he would not, like
the mighty Chatham, actually die in the exertion of his overwhelming
powers. Among the illustrious crowd who thronged Westminster Hall in
the opening days of the impeachment was Fanny Burney. She was then in
her odious bondage at Court, and was animated by that admiration and
pity for Hastings which at Court was the fashion. Windham used to
come up from the box of