HIS PRIVATE LIFE. 339 imagination, and so capable of treating happily every subject that came before him. Burke was a deeply religious man, not indeed in the sense in which religion is understood by zealots of the Calvinistic school; but his faith was firm, and his piety cheerful and unaffected. Towards Romanists and Dissenters, he was naturally disposed to be tolerant by the strength of his understanding and the wealth of his culture; but his attachment to the Church of England was unquestionably sincere. His integrity has never been doubted; his moral character is as spotless as the shield of a Bayard. The dice and the bottle which misled so many of his contemporaries, had for his lofty nature no attractions. As he himself said, he had no time to be idle; for the hours not given to public business or social intercourse were devoted to literary labour, relieved, in the country, by agricultural pursuits. His charity was extensive; no worthy applicant ever made known to him his distress in vain. Not one of the least brilliant features of a brilliant career was his warm and steady patronage of Barry the artist, who was indebted to him for prudent counsel as well as for liberal pecuniary help. To his versatility of genius we have already alluded. He was not only eloquent as an orator, not only foremost as a statesman, not only an historical scholar of remarkable erudition, not only a successful conversationalist, but an inquiring philosopher and a judicious critic. If his imagination sometimes overpowered his judgment, it must nevertheless be admitted that few men have excelled him in political prescience. He was never super 340 EFFECT OF A POWERFUL IMAGINATION. ficial; he seldom touched a subject on which he did not pour a flood of fresh light; and astonishing as was the copiousness and luxuriance of his eloquence, still more astonishing was this prodigality of ideas. His writings would furnish the material for a commonplace book of remarkable variety and value. It was, perhaps, this plenitude of thought and suggestion that rendered him as a practical statesman inferior to Pitt and Fox. He could not stoop to study expediency. The rush of his imagination carried him far beyond the goal at which minds more prudent, and less concerned with the future than the present, were content to halt. It was this quality which affected his conduct in regard to the French Revolution. He could not remember the good it had done, and was calculated to do, by releasing Europe from the thraldom of ancient prejudices, and sweeping aside the lingering traditions of feudalism; because his vivid fancy saw in it a destructive movement which would shake the very foundations of society, and involve the civilized world, with all its law and all its religion, in irretrievable ruin. As is not uncommon with men of an imaginative disposition, he was at heart a Conservative. He could not shake off the spell of the past. He looked back with regret to the " age of chivalry." For all established institutions he felt a tender affection, investing them with the brightest associations and the most pleasing memories. In person, and we all of us delight to know the personal characteristics of great men, -Burke was five feet ten inches high, erect, well-made, but not robust. In his earlier years he was fond of rural sports; and HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 341 until his last illness his activity was considerable. Though inclined to embonpoint, he was not corpulent. His features were good, but his countenance was chiefly remarkable for its benevolence of expression. His manners were very charming; happily combining frankness with dignity, and simplicity with ease. The reader may be interested to learn, since one of Burke's biographers thinks it worth recording, that his usual dress was a light brown coat, which seemed to restrict his power of movement, and a little bob-wig with curls. Such was Edmund Burke. |