division of the Whigs, with the Marquis of Rockingham as Premier, a young nobleman of princely fortune and fascinating manners, who made up for powers of oratory, in which he was wholly deficient, by an inestimable art of attracting and securing friends. Within a week after his nomination, through the recommendation of friends, particularly Mr. William Burke, Edmund was appointed private secretary to the Marquis; and Burke's great political life began. "The British dominions," says a political writer of the times, "did not furnish a more able and fit person for that important and confidential situation; the only man since the days of Cicero, who has united the talents of speaking and writing with irresistible force and eloquence."

In his Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, (written in July, 1791,) speaking of himself in the third person, he says: "This July it will be twenty-six years since he became connected with a man whose memory will ever be precious to Englishmen of all parties, as long as the ideas of honour and virtue, public and private, are understood and cherished in this nation. That memory will be kept alive with particular veneration by all rational and honourable Whigs. Mr. Burke entered into a connexion with that party, through that man, at an age far from raw and immature; at those years when men are all they are ever likely to become; when he was in the prime and vigour of his life; when the powers of his understanding, according to their standard, were at the best; his memory exercised, his judgment formed, and his reading much fresher in the resolution, and much readier in the application than it now is."

BURKE A JESUIT."

When the Prime Minister and his Secretary became connected, they were not at all known to each other. Burke knew nothing of Lord Rockingham's personal character or political principles, and Lord Rockingham knew nothing of Burke's private life, or his lofty disposition; and they had

scarcely begun to transact their business when the circulation of some vile calumnies threatened to put them asunder.

One day the old meddling Duke of Newcastle hastened in a great panic to Lord Rockingham, and informed him that he was the victim of an impostor-that he had taken a Papist, a Jesuit, a Jacobite, for his private secretary. The Marquis became alarmed, and sent for Burke, who at once proved not only that he was not a Roman Catholic, and had not been educated at a Catholic seminary, but that he had been really a student of Trinity College, Dublin, and had invariably been on the side of the House of Hanover. He admitted that his mother and sister and several of his connexions were Roman Catholics; and he strongly disapproved of the penal laws against Roman Catholics his sympathy with them is shown in a letter written on the trials and executions that followed the battle of Culloden: ""Tis, indeed," he writes, "melancholy to consider the state of these unhappy gentlemen who engaged in this affair (as for the rest, they lose but their lives)—who have thrown away their lives and fortunes, and destroyed their families for ever, in what, I believe, they thought a just cause."

Lord Rockingham avowed himself satisfied that all he had been told was a base fabrication against Burke, and assured him that every suspicion of his good faith had been completely removed. Burke, however, was much hurt, and unhesitatingly declared that he could no longer continue the Marquis's private secretary, adding: "Your lordship may tell me that you disbelieve these reports now; but a rankling of doubt must unconsciously remain in your mind, which at a future day will have some influence in your conduct towards me; and no earthly consideration can induce me to stand in such relationship with any one whose complete confidence I do not possess." Lord Rockingham was struck by this magnanimity, which strengthened Burke in his good opinion, adding that there should never afterwards be between them the slightest reserve; and never was a compact kept with more fidelity on both sides, says Lord Charlemont, the relator of the anecdote, who

adds: "Neither had he at any time, or his friends, after his death, the least reason to repent of that confidence; Burke having acted towards him with the most inviolable faith and affection, and towards his surviving friends with a constant and disinterested fidelity, which was proof against his own indigent circumstances, and the magnificent offers of those in power."

That Edmund was a Jesuit, educated at St. Omer, was a calumny invented by his detractors, and upon every occasion possible sought to be substantiated by them. When, in 1753, he made a journey to France, it was believed by many who knew the falsehood of the report of his St. Omer education, that he had simply visited that town. But even this was not the fact. He observed at his own table more than once: "He could not but consider it a remarkable circumstance (in allusion to this report), that in three or four journeys he had made in France, St. Omer happened to be the chief place in the northern provinces which he had never visited previous to the year 1773, and this not from design but accident."

Prior relates: Mr. Wilkes used pleasantly to say that this rumour reminded him of the three black crows, and gave the following account of its origin. "In reply to an argument used by Burke in the House, somebody said it was only fit for a Jesuit to urge. It was clear from his accent, name, and connexions, that he was an Irishman: an Irishman and a Papist in the opinion of some of our honest country gentlemen were synonymous: St. Omer contained a Jesuit seminary at this seminary many Irish priests were educated:ergo, it was a clear case among the wise men of Gotham, that Burke must be a Jesuit, and must have been educated at St. Omer!"

However, the calumny long clung to Burke; and, says Mr. Sergeant Burke: "It was not until after the part he took against the French Revolution that the caricaturists of his day ceased to represent him in the garb of an ecclesiastic of the Church of Rome; or that the populace withdrew from

him the nickname of Neddy 'St. Omer,' taken from the Jesuit college, a place he had actually never seen."

These rumours, and others of the same stamp, occasioned Burke's friends so much pain that they frequently begged he would give a formal contradiction to them. The reply was invariably a negative. "To people who believe such stories," said he, "it would be in vain to offer explanations." Again: "If I cannot live down theso contemptible calumnies, I shall not deign to contradict them in any other manner."

BURKE AND BARRY, THE PAINTER.

In the year 1763, about the time that Burke had parted company with Hamilton, there arrived in Dublin a young and friendless artist, from Cork, with a letter of introduction from Dr. Sleigh to Burke, and a painting of St. Patrick. The painter was James Barry, the son of a coasting trader of Cork, who often accompanied his father to sea, but who found time to store his mind with scholastic acquirements-who had a taste for hardship and privation-adopted "No cross, no crown," as watchwords, and claimed to be a martyr. Amid such hardships he taught himself the rudiments of painting; and, aided by reading historical works, he portrayed the lofty subject we have named, with which Burke was much delighted. He talked to the young painter on his art, and enunciated some critical opinions which Barry regarded as untenable, and quoted in opposition to them Burke's own anonymous work on the Sublime and Beautiful. This Edmund professed to treat as a superficial book and a poor authority, when Barry, who had been captivated with its arguments, and had transcribed it throughout, fired up in defence of the unknown author. Burke humoured the joke for some time, and then confessed that he had written the book, at which the excited painter flung his arms round Burke's neck and shed tears of delight.*

*The truth of this entire story has been reasonably doubted; since Barry could scarcely have been ignorant that Burke was the author of

Burke had now discerned such evidence of genius in Barry that he brought him to London, and at his house in Queen Anne-street introduced him to the principal artists, and procured employment for him to copy pictures under Athenian Stuart. Next year, Burke, by the recommendation of Sir Joshua Reynolds, sent the young painter on the Continent, to study the leading picture galleries of Europe, and to pass some time at Rome. An annual allowance was assigned by Edmund and his brother Richard, and regularly paid to Barry for the above purpose; and a friendly correspondence was carried on between them during the five years which Barry spent abroad. Barry sent home some intelligent letters of original criticism; and Burke sent him valuable counsel and directions. The service was invaluable; for, as Barry said, "Dr. Sleigh first put me upon Mr. Burke, who has been, under God, all in all to me." While in Rome, the painter became involved in disputes with the artists and virtuosi, which being reported to Burke, he wrote him a long letter of admonition, in which occurs this far-seeing passage: “ Believe me, my dear Barry, that the arms with which the ill disposi tions of the world are to be combated, and the qualities by which it is to be reconciled to us, and we reconciled to it, are moderation, gentleness, a little indulgence to others, and a great deal of distrust of ourselves, which are not qualities of a mean spirit, as some may probably think them; but virtues of a great and noble kind, and such as dignify our nature as much as they contribute to our repose and fortune; for nothing can be so unworthy of a well-composed soul as to pass away life in bickerings and litigations, in snarling and scuffling with every one about us. Again and again, my dear Barry, we must be at peace with our species, if not for their sakes, yet very much for our own."

The following passage is still more prophetic of what

the work, which had been published at least five or six years before this interview. It is more probable that Barry quoted Burke's own essay in reply to some of that gentleman's arguments, which circumstance has become exaggerated into the above version.