distracting combination of active business among men. At the date of
which we are speaking, he used to seek a milder air at Bristol, or in
Monmouthshire, or Wiltshire. He passed the summer in retired country
villages, reading and writing with desultory industry, in company
with William Burke, a namesake but perhaps no kinsman. It would
be interesting to know the plan and scope of his studies. We are
practically reduced to conjecture. In a letter of counsel to his son
in after years, he gave him a weighty piece of advice, which, is
pretty plainly the key to the reality and fruitfulness of his own
knowledge. "_Reading_," he said, "_and much reading, is good. But the
power of diversifying the matter infinitely in your own mind, and of
applying it to every occasion that arises, is far better; so don't
suppress the_ vivida vis." We have no more of Burke's doings than
obscure and tantalising glimpses, tantalising, because he was then at
the age when character usually either fritters itself away, or grows
strong on the inward sustenance of solid and resolute aspirations.
Writing from Battersea to his old comrade, Shackleton, in 1757,
he begins with an apology for a long silence which seems to have
continued from months to years. "I have broken all rules; I have
neglected all decorums; everything except that I have never forgot a
friend, whose good head and heart have made me esteem and love him.
What appearance there may have been of neglect, arises from my
manner of life; chequered with various designs; sometimes in London,
sometimes in remote parts of the country; sometimes in France, and
shortly, please God, to be in America."

One of the hundred inscrutable rumours that hovered about Burke's name
was, that he at one time actually did visit America. This was just as
untrue as that he became a convert to the Catholic faith; or that he
was the lover of Peg Woffington; or that he contested Adam Smith's