in France he had no adequate understanding. He failed to realize that the
French people were asserting their most elementary rights against an
oppression a hundred times more intolerable than anything that the
Americans had suffered; his imagination had long before been dazzled during
a brief stay in Paris by the external glitter of the French Court; his own
chivalrous sympathy was stirred by the sufferings of the queen; and most of
all he saw in the Revolution the overthrow of what he held to be the only
safe foundations of society--established government, law, social
distinctions, and religion--by the untried abstract theories which he had
always held in abhorrence. Moreover, the activity of the English supporters
of the French revolutionists seriously threatened an outbreak of anarchy in
England also. Burke, therefore, very soon began to oppose the whole
movement with all his might. His 'Reflections on the Revolution in France,'
published in 1790, though very one-sided, is a most powerful model of
reasoned denunciation and brilliant eloquence; it had a wide influence and
restored Burke to harmony with the great majority of his countrymen. His
remaining years, however, were increasingly gloomy. His attitude caused a
hopeless break with the liberal Whigs, including Fox; he gave up his seat
in Parliament to his only son, whose death soon followed to prostrate him;
and the successes of the French plunged him into feverish anxiety. After
again pouring out a flood of passionate eloquence in four letters entitled
'Thoughts on the Prospect of a Regicide Peace' (with France) he died in
1797.

We have already indicated many of the sources of Burke's power as a speaker
and writer, but others remain to be mentioned. Not least important are his
faculties of logical arrangement and lucid statement. He was the first
Englishman to exemplify with supreme skill all the technical devices of
exposition and argument--a very careful ordering of ideas according to a
plan made clear, but not too conspicuous, to the hearer or reader; the use