stage, it is sunk, in my opinion, into the lowest degree; I mean with regard to the trash that is exhibited on it; but I don't attribute this to the taste of the audience, for when Shakspeare warbles his native wood-notes,' the boxes, pit, and gallery are crowded-and the gods are true to every word, if properly winged to the heart."

Burke must have found forensic study irksome toil, for he writes: "The law causes no difficulty to those who readily understand it, and to those who never will understand it; and for all between these extremes, God knows, they have a hard task of it." He passed the vacations, and any intervals of leisure, in travelling about England, generally in company with his friend and distant relative, Mr. William Burke. Upon these excursions he fixed his quarters occasionally in a country town or village, leading a life of great temperance, keeping early hours, taking gentle exercise, and amusing himself with books and writing. His constitution became stronger, and enabled him to endure much severe study and active employment, to nearly the close of his life.

Writing to Shackleton, from Monmouth, August 31, 1751, whither he had gone from Bath and Bristol, he alludes playfully to his more juvenile efforts; hopes his present exercises (alluding to the law) may be attended with better success than his literary studies, on the ground that "though a middling poet cannot be endured, there is some quarter for a middling lawyer."

The two friends, while staying at Monmouth and Turlaine, were curiously watched by the inhabitants. At Monmouth "they were supposed to be fortune-hunters, and when they left the place without carrying away wives with them, they were set down as French spies. At Turlaine, they were supposed to be authors, because they read so many books; then they were thought to be merchants, because they received so many letters; and at last they were believed to be Spanish spies, because they paid attention to the manufacture of fine cloth for which Turlaine was distinguished. Their landlady was an old Jacobite, who, having

seen better days, dated all her misfortunes from the accession of the House of Hanover. The inhabitants were all hearty Jacobites, 'a sort of people,' says Burke, who thus evinced his own attachment to the House of Hanover, and his own tolerant sentiments, 'whose politics consist in wishing that right may take place; and their religion in heartily hating Presbyterianism.'"-(Macknight.)

Burke was not called to the Bar; nor does it appear on what account he declined the profession for which he was intended, and for the practice of which he had, to a certain degree, prepared himself. For some time, he thought of removing to America, but gave up the project on its being objected to by his father; it was said that he was offered some considerable employment in the State of New York. The dutiful letter in which Burke surrendered his own decided conviction of the propriety of accepting this "place of credit," which some persons whom he consulted, "all to a man" highly approved of-was rescued, among several others of Burke's letters, from the lining of an old family arm-chair, by some relative in the county of Galway; and transmitted to Mr. Haviland Burke, who communicated the original to Mr. Prior, who has printed the above letter in his work.

Burke now abandoned his legal studies, which he never loved, and at last abhorred. In later life, he ever spoke of the law as the noblest of sciences, the accumulated experiences of ages; but he ever maintained that its study does not liberalize the mind so much as it sharpens it; elsewhere he calls it " a narrow and inglorious study." He never returned to it for the purpose of qualifying himself for the profession; but how finely his intellect could work upon it is proved by the Report on the Lords' Journals, about the proceedings on the trial of Hastings, which is allowed by the best judges to stand alone as a masterly criticism on the law of evidence. (Edinburgh Review.) Macknight, vol. i. p. 57.

BURKE AND HIS ARMENIAN AMANUENSIS.

A touching instance of Burke's kindness to the houseless and the wretched occurred in the year 1756. A poor Armenian, called Joseph Emin, whose family and fortunes had been blighted by Shah Abbas, fled for life with his father to Calcutta. Here he beheld, for the first time, the effects of European civilization; he was already a man in body and mind, though only in the eighteenth year of his age, when he resolved to visit Europe, to learn the arts and sciences of the great Western world, and be the regenerator of his beloved Armenia. His father, however, refused to aid him in going to England, but an English captain, after the most passionate supplications, permitted him to work his passage to these shores. He endured many hardships and insults as a lascar, on the voyage. The ship at last arrived at Wapping; and here, with the little money he received as wages, he put himself to school. He then became a servant, but his master failed, and Emin was thrown destitute into the streets. He then became a porter, and next a copying-clerk to an attorney, but fell into misery and misfortune, when his father sent him sixty pounds, on condition to pay his voyage back to Calcutta. This, however, he declined, and did not receive a farthing of his father's remittance. One Sunday afternoon he wandered into St. James's Park, and there, to his great joy recognised, walking opposite Buckingham House, a lawyer whom he had seen in Calcutta, and who was accompanied by Mr. Burke. Emin related to them minutely the singular circumstances of his life. After the party had partaken of some milk and rusks in the Little Wilderness in the Park, the lawyer went his way, and Burke took the destitute Asiatic home to his rooms, up two pair of stairs, above a bookseller's shop bearing the sign of "Pope's Head." After some further conversation, Emin desired to

The shop of Jacob Robinson, under the west side of the Inner Temple gateway in Fleet-street, where Pope and Warburton first met; and Robinson becoming Pope's publisher, adopted the poet's head as a sign.

know the name of the gentleman who had taken so much interest in him: the reply was, Sir, my name is Edmund Burke, at your service. I am a runaway son from my father, as you are!" He then presented Emin with half-aguinea, saying: "Upon my honour, this is all I have at present; please accept it." The Armenian showed him in return three guineas and a half, adding: "I am worth this much; it will not be honest to accept of that; not because it is a small sum, if it were a thousand pounds I would not. I am not come away from my friends to get money; but if you will continue your kind notice of me, that is all I want; and I shall value it more than a Prince's treasure." Burke then put a volume of the Tatler into Emin's hands, and after he had read two or three paragraphs, said: "Very well; I am friend as much as it lies in my power." your

Burke wrote down Emin's address, called upon him the next day, gave him advice as to what books he should read, and lent him many volumes from his own collection. Edmund subsequently introduced Emin to William Burke, who employed him in copying manuscripts.

The Armenian was grateful to his patron, and afterwards declared, that "had not Burke seen him every day, comforted him in his misery, and exhorted him to put his trust in God, he must have sunk down in despair." Better days followed. He was, by the influence of the Duke of Northumberland and the Duke of Cumberland, sent to Woolwich, and there learnt the "art military." On the breaking out of the war, he crossed over to the Continent, and distinguished himself in eighteen skirmishes; accompanied the expedition to St. Malo, and was the first man who set fire to the French ships. He then went to Georgia in the hope that Prince Heraclius would assist him in endeavouring to raise from their degradation the neighbouring Armenians. In this he was frustrated; and after many years' struggle, he settled in Calcutta, where his great qualities were, even to the last, acknowledged by the Indian Administration. Mr. Macknight has narrated the Armenian's career from his Autobiography,

revised by Sir William Jones, and published in 1792. His friendship with Burke ended only with their lives; " and it is very probable that the intense interest which the statesman always took in Eastern affairs, was first excited by his acquaintance with the brave and high-minded Armenian." Thirty-four years after their first meeting, Burke wrote to Emin: "Who could have thought, the day I first saw you in St. James's Park, this kingdom would rule the greater part of India? But kingdoms rise and pass away. Emperors are captive and blinded; pedlars become emperors."

BURKE'S MARRIAGE.

love with, and shortly afterBut the register cannot be hence it is thought that the Mrs. Burke, it is generally

In the winter of 1756, or early in the following year, Burke went to Bath for his health, where his countryman, Dr. Nugent, practised as a physician, and taking his patient into his own house, he fell in wards married, his daughter. found in either Bath or Bristol; marriage took place in London. believed, was, like her father, a Roman Catholic, and if so, the marriage may have taken place at the Roman Catholic chapel at Bath, which, with its registers, was burnt in the the riots of 1780. Then, relatives and others state Miss Nugent to have been brought up as a Presbyterian by her mother; yet Richard Shackleton distinctly states that Mrs. Burke was of the Church of Rome before her marriage; and among much other abuse vented against her husband, was that he kept a Popish priest in the house for her, upon whom he exercised his love for deistical raillery. "These," These," says Prior, are sad evidences of political malice, but form an epitome, of that hunt of obloquy,' in Burke's own words, 'which has ever pursued me in full cry through life.'"

Whatever may have been Mrs. Burke's religious creed, she proved an excellent wife. Mr. Hardy and Sir Philip Francis spoke of her as all that was beautiful and amiable among women; and so shrewd a critic of her own sex (says Mac