is curious to see, in the letters of those early correspondents, most
of them accomplished and practical men, how fully they were possessed
with a sense of his promised superiority. "You are now, I am certain,"
says Leland, "a man of business, deeply immersed in public affairs,
commercial and political. You will show yourself a man of business in
the House of Commons, and you will not, I am certain, build your
reputation and consequence there upon a single studied manufactured
piece of eloquence, and then, like the brazen head, shut your mouth
for ever. I trust I shall hear of your rising regularly, though
rapidly; that I shall hear of ministers begging that you would be
pleased to accept of being vice-treasurer of Ireland, and then of your
soaring so high as to be quite out of view of such insects as I--and
so good-night, my dear Ned. If ever chance should bring us together,
we are quite ruined as companions. The saunterings, the readings, the
laughings, and the dosings in Mount Gallagher (his country-seat) are
all over. Your head is filled with questions, divisions, and
majorities. My thoughts are employed on Louth and Warburton."

Burke began his parliamentary triumphs with but little delay. The
colonies were the grand subject of the time, and Burke instantly
devoted himself to that subject with the whole force of his capacious
intellect. He was regarded by the House, on the first speech which he
made on this voluminous topic, as exhibiting extraordinary knowledge,
combined with a power of language unequalled save by Chatham himself.
One of the letters of congratulations is from Dr Marriott, who was
afterwards judge of the court of admiralty. "Permit me to tell you
that you are the person the least sensible of the members of the House
of Commons, how much glory you acquired last Monday night; and it
would be an additional satisfaction to you that this testimony comes
from a judge of public speaking, the most disinterested and capable of
judging of it. Dr Hay assures me that your speech was far superior to
that of any other speaker on the colonies that night. I could not
refrain from acquainting you with an opinion, which must so greatly
encourage you to proceed, and to place the palm of the orator with
those which you have already acquired of the writer and the
philosopher." Hay was afterwards judge of the admiralty. At his death
he was succeeded by Marriott. He was of the Bedford party, which, as
it was wholly oppo