came in 1750 to London to study
law, armed with a cultivated curiosity and no desperate
determination to make his fortune; immediately, like the
sensible Irishman he was, fell in love with Peg Woffington; for
six years rambled everywhere his purse permitted, read
everything he could lay his hands on, and talked everlastingly;
in 1756 published an 'Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful,' and
married Miss Jane Mary Nugent; in 1758 dared at David Garrick's
dinner table to contradict Dr. Johnson; in 1765 became a member
of Parliament; and for the next sixteen years was the life and
soul of the Whig party. When that party, in 1782, finally came
into power, Burke's only reward, however, was a minor office, a
fact which, in view of his great merits, has amazed posterity.
The explanation is that his contemporaries probably knew him,
not as a commanding genius, but as an Irishman who was always in
debt, whose relatives were rather disreputable, whose judgment
was often wrong, and whose temper was violent. His significance
for us grows from the fact that he applied the imagination of a
poet of the first order to the business of life. He saw
organized society steadily and saw it whole. Perceiving that
only a thin crust of conventionality protects organized society
from the volcanic heats of anarchy, he was afraid of reformers.
He could not agree to dispense with the protection afforded by
the huge mountains of prejudice and the ancient rivers of
custom. He was the High Priest of Order. He loved justice and
hated iniquity. The world needs his wisdom to-day."

Mr. Birrell's lecture was full of good phrases. For instance:

1. We have the spectacle of Burke in his old age, like another
Laocooen, writhing and wrestling with the French Revolution.

2. Lubricating religious differences with the sweet oil of the
domestic affections.

3. Quaint old landladies wonder maternally why he never gets drunk,
and generally mistake him for an author until he pays his bill.

4. I love him for letting me warm my hands at it (his wrath at
Gerard Hamilton) after a lapse of a hundred and twenty years.

5. His letters to Arthur Young on the subject of carrots still
tremble with emotion.

6. This is magnificent, but it is not farming.

V. Queries

1. What part of the task of reportin