At midnight hour, when culverin

And gun and bomb were sleeping,
Before the camp with mournful mien
The loveliest embassy were seen,

All kneeling low and weeping.
So sweetly, plaintively they prayed,
But no reply save this was made:

"The women have free leave to go,

Each with her choicest treasure;

But let the knaves their husbands know
That unto them the King will show

The weight of his displeasure."
With these sad terms the lovely train
Stole weeping from the camp again.
And when the morning gilt the sky,

What happened? Give attention:The city gates wide open fly,

And all the wives come trudging by,

Each bearing-need I mention? Her own dear husband on her back, All snugly seated in a sack!

Full many a sprig of court, the joke

Not relishing, protested,

And urged the King; but Conrad spoke :"A monarch's word must not be broke!"

And here the matter rested.

"Bravo!" he cried, 66

Ha, ha!

Bravo!

Our lady guessed it would be so."

He pardoned all, and gave a ball
That night at royal quarters.
The fiddles squeaked, the trumpets blew,
And up and down the dancers flew,
Court sprigs with city daughters.
The mayor's wife - O rarest sight!-
Danced with the shoemaker that night!
Ah, where is Weinsberg, sir, I pray?
'Tis sure a famous city:

It must have cradled in its day
Full many a maid of noble clay,
And matrons wise and witty;
And if ever marriage should happen to me,
A Weinsberg dame my wife shall be.

EDMUND BURKE.

EDMUND BURKE, an illustrious British statesman, orator, and essayist, born at Dublin (most probably on Jan. 12, 1729); died at his acquired estate of Beaconsfield, in England, July 8, 1797. He was the son of an attorney in large practice and of some estate. In 1743 Burke went to the Dublin University, where in 1748 he took the degree of B.A. Being destined by his father for the English bar, he went to London in 1750, to keep his terms at the Temple. But he inclined to letters rather than to law, and in 1750 began literary work. Elected to Parliament, he made his first speech in 1766; and from that date until 1790 was one of the chief guides and inspirers of the revived Whig party.

In 1788 the House of Commons voted that Warren Hastings, late Governor-General of India, should be impeached before the House of Lords for high crimes and misdemeanors, and Burke was placed at the head of the commission charged with conducting the impeachment. The trial of Hastings, formally begun in February, 1788, was protracted for more than six years, memorable in history as the era of the French Revolution.

Hastings was found Not Guilty by the House of Lords, and shortly afterward (in June, 1794) Burke gave up his seat in the House of Commons. He was broken in health, and soon suffered a severe domestic loss in the death of Richard Burke, his only surviving son. His speeches and pamphlets are still considered the most striking and suggestive manuals of political philosophy in modern times. They, with his miscellaneous writings, are all included in his "Works and Correspondence" (8 vols., 1852). (8 vols., 1852). Among his most important works aside from his speeches are: "A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful" (1756); "Reflections on the French Revolution" (1790); and "Letters on a Regicide Peace."

66

FROM THE SPEECH ON CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA."

SIR,It is not a pleasant consideration; but nothing in the world can read so awful and so instructive a lesson as the conduct of the Ministry in this business, upon the mischief of

not having large and liberal ideas in the management of great affairs. Never have the servants of the State looked at the whole of your complicated interests in one connected view. They have taken things by bits and scraps, some at one time and one pretense and some at another, just as they pressed, without any sort of regard to their relations or dependencies. They never had any kind of system, right or wrong; but only invented occasionally some miserable tale for the day, in order meanly to sneak out of difficulties into which they had proudly strutted. And they were put to all these shifts and devices, full of meanness and full of mischief, in order to pilfer piecemeal a repeal of an act which they had not the generous courage, when they found and felt their error, honorably and fairly to disclaim. By such management, by the irresistible operation of feeble counsels, so paltry a sum as Threepence in the eyes of a financier, so insignificant an article as Tea in the eyes of a philosopher, have shaken the pillars of a commercial empire that circled the whole globe.

you

Do you forget that in the very last year you stood on the precipice of general bankruptcy? Your danger was indeed great. You were distressed in the affairs of the East India Company; and you well know what sort of things are involved in the comprehensive energy of that significant appellation. I am not called upon to enlarge to you on that danger; which thought proper yourselves to aggravate, and to display to the world with all the parade of indiscreet declamation. The monopoly of the most lucrative trades and the possession of imperial revenues had brought you to the verge of beggary and ruin. Such was your representation - such, in some measure, was your case. The vent of ten millions of pounds of this commodity, now locked up by the operation of an injudicious tax and rotting in the warehouses of the company, would have prevented all this distress, and all that series of desperate measures which you thought yourselves obliged to take in consequence of it. America would have furnished that vent which no other part of the world can furnish but America, where tea is next to a necessary of life and where the demand grows upon the supply. I hope our dear-bought East India Committees have done us at least so much good as to let us know that without a more extensive sale of that article, our East India revenues and acquisitions. can have no certain connection with this country. It is through the American trade of tea that your East India conquests are