FOX AND BURKE.

It is, or it _would_ be, if Mr. Schlosser were himself more interesting,
luxurious to pursue his ignorance as to facts, and the craziness of his
judgment as to the valuation of minds, throughout his comparison of Burke
with Fox. The force of antithesis brings out into a feeble life of
meaning, what, in its own insulation, had been languishing mortally into
nonsense. The darkness of his 'Burke' becomes _visible_ darkness under the
glimmering that steals upon it from the desperate commonplaces of this
'Fox.' Fox is painted exactly as he _would_ have been painted fifty years
ago by any pet subaltern of the Whig club, enjoying free pasture in
Devonshire House. The practised reader knows well what is coming. Fox is
'formed after the model of the ancients'--Fox is 'simple'--Fox is
'natural'--Fox is 'chaste'--Fox is 'forcible;' why yes, in a sense, Fox is
even 'forcible:' but then, to feel that he was so, you must have _heard_
him; whereas, for forty years he has been silent. We of 1847, that can
only _read_ him, hearing Fox described as _forcible_, are disposed to
recollect Shakspeare's Mr. Feeble amongst Falstaff's recruits, who also is
described as _forcible_, viz., as the 'most forcible Feeble.' And,
perhaps, a better description could not be devised for Fox himself--so
feeble was he in matter, so forcible in manner; so powerful for instant
effect, so impotent for posterity. In the Pythian fury of his gestures--in
his screaming voice--in his directness of purpose, Fox would now remind
you of some demon steam-engine on a railroad, some Fire-king or Salmoneus,
that had counterfeited, because he could not steal, Jove's thunderbolts;
hissing, bubbling, snorting, fuming; demoniac gas, you think--gas from
Acheron must feed that dreadful system of convulsions. But pump out the
imaginary gas, and, behold! it is ditch-water. Fox, as Mr. Schlosser