e the birth of the European kingdoms--can
be written, without giving some testimonial to his genius in every
page. But his progress was not limited to his Age. He is still
progressive. While his great contemporaries have passed away, honoured
indeed, and leaving magnificent proofs of their powers, in the honour
and security of their country, Burke has not merely retained his
position before the national eye, but has continually assumed a
loftier stature, and shone with a more radiant illumination. The great
politician of his day, he has become the noblest philosopher of ours.
Every man who desires to know the true theory of public morals, and
the actual causes which influence the rise and fall of thrones, makes
his volumes a study; every man who desires to learn how the most
solemn and essential truths may not merely be adorned, but
invigorated, by the richest colourings of imagination, must labour to
discover the secret of his composition; and every man who, born in
party, desires to emancipate his mind from the egotism, bitterness,
and barrenness of party, or achieve the still nobler and more
difficult task of turning its evils into good, and of making it an
instrument of triumph for the general cause of mankind, must measure
the merits and success of his enterprise by its similarity to the
struggles, the motives, and the ultimate triumph of Edmund Burke.

The present volumes contain a considerable portion of the
correspondence which Burke carried on with his personal and public
friends during the most stirring period of his life. The papers had
been put in trust of the late French Lawrence the civilian, and
brother to the late Archbishop of Cashel, with whom was combined in
the trust Dr King, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, both able men and
particular friends of Burke. But Lawrence, while full of the intention
of giving a life of his celebrated friend, died in 1809, and the
papers were bequeathed by the widow of Burke, who died in 1812, to the
Bishop of Rochester, the Right Hon. W. Elliot, and Earl Fitzwilliam,
for the publication of such parts as had not already appeared. This
duty chiefly devolved upon Dr King, who had been made Bishop of
Rochester in 1808. Personal infirmity, and that most distressing of
all infirmities, decay of sight, retarded the publishing of the works;
but sixteen volumes were completed. The bishop's death in 1828, put an
end to all the hopes which had been long entertained, of an authentic