His intellectual pre-eminence, indeed, seems from the very outset to have been recognized on all hands; though he was still, in the eyes of the system, enough of an outsider to be given, in the short months during which he held office, the minor office of Paymaster-General, without a seat in the Cabinet.

The man of whom all England was the political pupil was denied without discussion a place at the council board.

Yet when Fox is little more than a memory of great lovableness and Pitt a marvellous youth of apt quotations, Burke has endured as the permanent manual of political wisdom without which statesmen are as sailors on an uncharted sea.
For it has been the singular good fortune of Burke not merely to obtain acceptance as the apostle of philosophic conservatism, but to give deep comfort to men of liberal temper.

He is, indeed, a singularly lovable figure.

"His stream of mind is perpetual," said Johnson; and Goldsmith has told us how he wound his way into a subject like a serpent.