ish language." The delight of
the host must have been at least equalled by the delight of the guest
in conversation which was thus ever taking new turns, branching into
topical surprises, and at all turns and on every topic was luminous,
high, edifying, full.

No guest was more welcome than the friend of his boyhood, and Richard
Shackleton has told how the friendship, cordiality, and openness with
which Burke embraced him was even more than might be expected from
long love. The simple Quaker was confused by the sight of what seemed
to him so sumptuous and worldly a life, and he went to rest uneasily,
doubting whether God's blessing could go with it. But when he awoke on
the morrow of his first visit, he told his wife, in the language
of his sect, how glad he was "to find no condemnation; but on the
contrary, ability to put up fervent petitions with much tenderness on
behalf of this great luminary." It is at his country home that we like
best to think of Burke. It is still a touching picture to the historic
imagination to follow him from the heat and violence of the House,
where tipsy squires derided the greatest genius of his time, down to
the calm shades of Beaconsfield, where he would with his own hands
give food to a starving beggar, or medicine to a peasant sick of the
ague; where he would talk of the weather, the turnips, and the hay
with the team-men and the farm-bailiff; and where, in the evening
stillness, he would pace the walk under the trees, and reflect on the
state of Europe and the distractions of his country.

CHAPTER VII

THE NEW MINISTRY--WARREN HASTINGS--BURKE'S PUBLIC POSITION

The six years which followed the destruction of the Coalition were, in
some respects, the most mortifying portion of Burke's troubled career.
Pitt was more firmly seated in power than Lord North had ever been,
and he used his power to carry out a policy against which it was
impossible for the Whigs, on their own principles, to offer an
effective resistance. For this is the peculiarity of the king's first
victory over the enemies who had done obstinate battle with him for
nearly a quarter of a century. He had driven them out of the field,
but with the aid of an ally who was as strongly hostile to the royal
system as they had ever been. The king had vindicated his right
against the Whigs to choose his own ministers; but the new minister
was himself a Whig by descent, and a reformer by his education and
personal dispo