said, is a very fine, a very superior species of the man thoughtful. He reads books as he would listen to men talk. He stands apart, and looks on, with humorous, sympathetic smile, at the play of policies. He will tell you for the asking what the players are thinking about. He divines at once how the parts are cast. He knows beforehand what each act is to discover. He might readily guess what the dialogue is to contain. Were you short of scene-shifters, he could serve you admirably in an emergency. And he is a better critic of the play than the players.

Had I command of the culture of men, I should wish to raise up for the instruction and stimulation of my nation more than one sane, sagacious, penetrative critic of men and affairs like Walter Bagehot. But that, of course. The proper thesis to draw from his singular genius is this: It is not the constitutional lawyer, nor the student of the mere machinery and legal structure of institutions, nor the politician, a mere handler of that machinery, who is competent to understand and expound government; but the man who finds the materials for his thought far and wide, in everything that reveals character and circumstance and motive. It is necessary to stand with the poets as well as with lawgivers; with the fathers of the race as well as

with your neighbor of to-day; with those who toil and are sick at heart as well as with those who prosper and laugh and take their pleasure; with the merchant and the manufacturer as well as with the closeted student; with the schoolmaster and with those whose only school is life; with the orator and with the men who have wrought always in silence; in the midst of thought and also in the midst of affairs, if you would really comprehend those great wholes of history and of character which are the vital substance of politics.

V.

THE INTERPRETER OF ENGLISH LIBERTY.

IN the middle of the last century two Irish adventurers crossed over into England in search of their fortunes. Rare fellows they were, bringing treasure with them; but finding it somehow hard to get upon the market: traders with a curious cargo, offering edification in exchange for a living, and concealing the best of English under a rich brogue. They were Edmund Burke and Oliver Goldsmith.

They did not cross over together: 't was no joint venture. They had been fellow students at Trinity College, Dublin; but they had not, so far as we can learn, known each other there. Each went his own way till they became comrades in the reign of Samuel Johnson at the Turk's Head Tavern. Burke stepped very boldly forth into the exposed paths of public life; Goldsmith plunged into the secret ways about Grub Street. The one gave us essays upon public questions incomparable for their reach of view and their splendid power of expres

sion; the other gave us writings so exquisite for their delicacy, purity, and finish as to incline us to love him almost as much as those who knew him loved him. We could not easily have forgiven Ireland if she had not given us these men. The one had grave faults of temper; the other was a reckless, roystering fellow, with a most irrepressible Irish disposition; but how much less we should have known without Burke, how much less we should have enjoyed without Goldsmith! They have conquered places for themselves in English literature from which we neither can nor would dislodge them. For their sakes alone we can afford to forgive Ireland all the trouble she has caused us.

There is no man anywhere to be found in the annals of Parliament who seems more thoroughly to belong to England than does Edmund Burke, indubitable Irishman though he was. His words, now that they have cast off their brogue, ring out the authentic voice of the best political thought of the English race. “If any man ask me,” he cries, "what a free government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so,and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of the matter." "Abstract liberty, like other mere abstractions, is not to be found. Liberty adheres in some sensible object;

and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness." These sentences, taken from his writings on American affairs, might serve as a sort of motto of the practical spirit of our race in affairs of government. Look further, and you shall see how his imagination presently illuminates and suffuses his maxims of practical sagacity with a fine blaze of insight, a keen glow of feeling, in which you recognize that other masterful quality of the race, its intense and elevated conviction. "My hold on the colonies," he declares, "is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are the ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron. Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government, they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it once be understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation, and the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. So long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign power of this country as the sanctuary