onglomeration but a nation.

Maria Theresa had reached the age of sixty-three when the brave
religious spirit, over which flattery had had no power, was waiting in
pain and anguish but not in fear the hour of its release. The generous
and open hand could no longer give; the heart so keenly sensitive to
criticism was to dread it no more; the eyes that, as she had written to
Marie Antoinette, had shed so many relieving tears were nevermore to
need that relief. "You are all so timid," she said, "I am not afraid of
death. I only pray to God to give me strength to the end." She did not
forget Poland, she gratefully remembered Hungary, and then, with the
cry, "To Thee! I am coming!" she sank back dead, in the arms of the son
whom, as a little baby, she had held up in her brave arms to plead for
the loyalty of the Hungarian nobles. The high imperial heart had ceased
to beat, the house of Hapsburg had come to an end, and Joseph II., of
the house of Hapsburg-Lorraine, was the sovereign ruler of Austria.

[Signature of the author.]

EDMUND BURKE[2]

By DR. HEINRICH GEFFCKEN

(1730-1797)

[Footnote 2: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]

[Illustration: Edmund Burke. [TN]]

Edmund Burke, the great British politician, and one of the greatest
political philosophers that ever lived, was born at Dublin, January 1,
1730, as son of a petty attorney. Conformably to the wishes of his
father, he began to study law in London, but found it so little
attractive that, encouraged by eminent men, particularly by Johnson, he
turned to literary pursuits. His first work, "Vindication of Natural
Society" (1756), which at once won him fame, is a keen satire on
Bolingbroke, showing that the attacks of that writer upon revealed
religion might as well be turned against all social and political
institutions. His reputation was still enhanced by the "Philosophical
Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful"
(1757); and at the same time he showed, by publishing "Dodd's Annual
Register," that he was equally gifted for politics. As a preliminary for
practical activity in that domain, he became private secretary of Gerard
Hamilton, the lieutenant-general's assistant for Ireland, but soon found
that his chief's smart mediocrity only wanted to turn to advantage the
secretary's scantily rewarded talent. He returned to London (1764), and
at once entered upon the political career in which he was to play so
eminent a p