me
With such convicting sense and suddenness
As that plain-spoken homily, so brief,
Of the unletter'd man.

"That's what we are!"--
Repeating after him, I murmur'd low
In deep acknowledgment, and bow'd the head
Profoundly reverential. A deep calm
Came over me, and to the inward eye
Vivid perception. Set against each other,
I saw weigh'd out the things of time and sense,
And of eternity;--and oh! how light
Look'd in that truthful hour the earthly scale!
And oh! what strength, when from the penal doom
Nature recoil'd, in _His_ remember'd words:
"_I am the Resurrection and the Life_."

And other words of that Divinest Speaker
(Words to all mourners of all times address'd)
Seem'd spoken to me as I went along
In prayerful thought, slow musing on my way--
"_Believe in me_"--"_Let not your hearts be troubled_"--
And sure I could have promised in that hour,
But that I knew myself how fallible,
That never more should cross or care of this life
Disquiet or distress me. So I came,
Chasten'd in spirit, to my home again,
Composed and comforted, and cross'd the threshold
That day "a wiser, _not_ a sadder, _woman_."

C.

EDMUND BURKE.[14]

Burke died in 1797, and yet, after the lapse of almost half a century,
the world is eager to treasure every recollection of his name. This is
the true tribute to a great man, and the only tribute which is worth
the wishes of a great man. The perishable nature of all the memorials
of human hands has justly been the theme of every moralist, since
tombs first bore an image or an inscription. Yet, such as they are,
they ought to be given; but they are all that man can give. The nobler
monument must be raised by the individual himself, and must be the
work of his lifetime; its guardianship must be in the hands, not of
sacristans and chapters, but in those of the world; his panegyric must
be found, not in the extravagance or adulation of his marble, but in
the universal voice which records his career, and cherishes his name
as a new stimulant of public virtue.

We have no intention of retracing the steps by which this memorable
man gradually rose to so high a rank in the estimation of his own
times. No history of intellectual eminence during the latter half of
the nineteenth century--the most troubled, important, and productive
period of human annals sinc