Among Burke's dinner guests was Goldsmith, who used to plunge into art discussions with Barry, when the latter returned from abroad; and would punish Barry's dislike of Sir Joshua Reynolds, manifested even so early, by disputing the subtlest dogmas with that irritable genius. With Burke himself, Northcote says, he overheard him sharply disputing one day in his brother's painting-room about the character of the King, when so grateful was he for some recent patronage of his comedy of She Stoops to Conquer, and so outrageous and unsparing were Burke's anti-monarchical invectives, that unable any longer to endure it, he took up his hat and left the room.

Mr. Burke appears invariably to have studied Dr. Johnson's feelings; and Johnson exhibited due consideration for those of Burke. When Goldsmith once talked of the difficulty of living on very intimate terms with any one with whom you differed on an important topic, Johnson replied: "Why, Sir, you must shun the subject as to which you disagree. For instance, I can live very well with Burke; I love his knowledge, his genius, his diffusion, and effulgence of conversation; but I would not talk of him to the Rockingham party."

In 1773, after Burke's return from France, in company with Goldsmith, he visited the exhibition of The Puppets, in Panton-street, in the Haymarket. Great was the celebrity of these small, well-pulled, ingenious performers, for nobody could detect the wires. Burke praised the dexterity of one puppet in particular, which tossed a pike with military precision; and "Psha!" remarked Goldsmith, with some warmth, "I can do it better myself." Boswell would have us believe that he was seriously jealous of these so famous fantoccini ! "He went home with Mr. Burke to supper, and broke his shins by attempting to exhibit to the company how much better he could jump over a stick than the puppets." "The anecdote, says Mr. Forster, (Life of Goldsmith, p. 609,) is too pleasant to be gravely objected to; but might he not only mean that the puppets jumped even worse than he did? The actual world and the puppet-show are moreover so much

alike, that what was meant for a laugh at the world might have passed for an attack on the puppet-show."*

BURKE AND HUME.

Burke first met Hume at the table of Garrick. On religion and politics their sentiments were too diametrically opposed ever to approach agreement. A difference of opinion respecting the Irish massacre of 1641 gave rise to some animated discussions between them; Burke maintaining, from documents existing in Dublin University, that the common accounts of the event were overcharged; Hume, that the statements in his history were correct.

Mr. Burke used to tell his friends, speaking of Hume familiarly, that in manners he was an easy, unaffected man, previous to going to Paris, as Secretary to Lord Hertford, the British Ambassador; but that the adulation and caresses of the female wits of that capital had been too powerful even for a philosopher. The result was, he returned a literary coxcomb.

He likewise remarked that Hume had taken very little pains with his History, particularly in the earlier accounts of Britain; and Hume himself, being pushed pretty hard in conversation, acknowledged to Boswell, on one occasion, that he

On the Panton-street puppets Foote founded The Primitive PuppetShow at the Haymarket. When the town was all tiptoe to welcome it, "Will your figures be as large as life, Mr. Foote ?" asked a titled dame. "Oh, no, my lady," said Foote, "not much larger than Garrick." His entertainment consisted of a comedy called the Handsome Housemaid, or Piety in Pattens, which was a satire on sentimental comedy, and gave it a shock which it never recovered.

The Panton-street Puppets, it is believed, were exhibited in the premises on the south side of the street, formerly Hickford's great Auction-room, the back door of which opened into St. James's-street, Haymarket, facing the Tennis-court. In this room De Loutherbourg exhibited his Eidophusicon, with its beautiful scenic effects, which attracted Sir Joshua Reynolds, Gainsborough, and other leading artists of the day; and here, in 1799, the property having passed into other hands, a learned Dog, Musical Glasses, and a Monologue by John Britton, were added to the entertainments. The premises and their contents were consumed by fire in March, 1800. Strutt probably refers to the Panton-street Puppets exhibited a few years before his time (1801), with the Italian title Fantoccini.

had not paid much attention to the older historians on controverted points. Yet Hume, who was already in receipt of a pension, received a considerable increase of it, with significant intimation of the royal wish that he should apply himself to the continuation of his English History.

Mr. Forster, contrasting Hume's good fortune with the fate of some of his contemporaries, says: "At a grand dinner-table, round which were seated two dukes, two earls, Mr. Garrick, and Mr. Hume, a footman in attendance was announcing Sterne's lonely death in a common lodging-house in Bond-street, but Goldsmith does not yet see the shadow of his own early decay."

BURKE MEETS WARBURTON.

"I was in a large private company, (says Burke,) in which it so happened that I did not hear the names of the persons who sat on either side of me. One of them, however, attracted my attention in a very particular manner by the variety and depth of his conversation, carried on in an easy, good-humoured tone, and sometimes he was even amusing. From the latter circumstance, so contrary to what might be supposed from the violence of the controversialist, I must confess I was for some time in doubt; but at length exclaimed, Sir, I think I cannot mistake; you must be the celebrated Dr. Warburton: aut Erasmus aut Diabolus.' Warburton smiled, and we had much interesting conversation during the remainder of the evening."

To Sir Joshua Reynolds and Wilkes Burke related that Blakey, the artist, having been employed by Warburton to design the frontispiece to his edition of Pope, received directions to make him (Warburton) the principal and foreground figure in the composition, and the poet only secondary. This was done, and in the plate the light proceeds upward from Warburton to Pope, in opposition to the usual rules of art. Wilkes wittily observed: "It was not merely on that, but on all occasions, that the bishop and the poet had been looking different ways."

BURKE PURCHASES A SEAT AT BEACONSFIELD.

Burke, like his great contemporaries, Lord Chatham and William Pitt, was fond of rural quiet, and enjoyed its pure and calm delights as a relief to the care and excitement of public life, and that most unquiet phase of it- the statesman's

career.

In early manhood, Burke was fond of excursions into the country. When settled in life, at one period he resided with his family at Parsons' Green, a hamlet of Fulham, where Samuel Richardson wrote his domestic novels. Burke next went to live at Plaistow, in Essex; and in the year 1768, he purchased for

23,0007., an estate in Buckinghamshire, called Gregories, or Butler's Court, half a mile from the market-town of Beaconsfield. The property, in the previous century, formed a portion.

* Burke's address, as he used to give it himself, was simply "Beaconsfield," or "Beconsfield."

of the estate of the poet, Edmund Waller, whose family possessed the whole manor of Beaconsfield, which once belonged to Burnham Abbey. Waller built for himself on the manor a seat called Hall Barn, where he lived on his return from exile: he died here in 1687, and his widow continued to dwell here until her death in 1708.

The name of Gregories had been given to that part of the estate which Burke had purchased, by the family of Gregory, formerly its owners. Mistress Martha Gregory, who was buried at Beaconsfield, in 1704, erected the mansion, which Burke partly rebuilt, and improved. It was mostly of red brick, and consisted of a centre connected with two wings, by semicircular colonnades, and in general design resembling Buckingham House, in St. James's Park; and the county historian describes Gregories as placed amidst a "diversified combination of woods, hills, valleys, and beautiful enclosures,” reminding one of Chilton, Cliefden, and Wotton. With the mansion, Burke was compelled to take the vendor's collection of pictures and sculpture, as appears by a letter written to his friend Barry. He also writes to Shackleton: "I have made a push with all I could collect of my own and the aid of my friends to cast a little root into this country. I have purchased a house with 600 acres of land in Buckinghamshire, twenty-four miles from London, where I now am. (May 1st, 1768.) It is a place exceedingly pleasant; and I purpose, God willing, to become a farmer in good earnest."

A great portion of Gregories was wood-land, and there was a detached farm; but surrounding the house, which was large and handsome, there was a considerable extent of arable and pasture land, which Burke delighted to cultivate, seeking in that occupation the most agreeable retreat from the toils and vexations of politics. Some of his letters to the well-known agriculturist, Arthur Young, printed in his Correspondence, show with what earnestness Burke entered into the details of his farm; which he turned to economical account: when in town he had his mutton and poultry, and all other meats, except beef, and the produce of the dairy and