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figure under the various garbs given to them by the preju-" dices of party faction. Burke appears here as the concealed Jesuit, the character which the extreme Protestant party had conferred upon him ever since his exertions for Catholic emancipation.

Caricatures of himself were a great source of amusement to Mr. Burke. One day, dining at Lord Tankerville's, he said they did not give him the least uneasiness. "I have, I believe, seen them all, laughed at them all, and pretty well remember them all;" and he then repeated the different characters in which he had figured in the shops, and this so humorously as to keep the table for a considerable time in continual laughter.

DEATH OF DR. JOHNSON.

When Johnson lay in his last illness, he was visited by Mr. Burke, with some other friends, when Edmund observed that the presence of strangers might be oppressive to him. "No, sir," said the dying moralist, "it is not so; and I must be in a wretched state indeed when your company would not be a delight to me." It will be recollected that Johnson and Burke had enjoyed twenty-seven years' unbroken friendship. Johnson died, Dec. 13, 1784, at his house in Bolt-court, Fleetstreet, in the back room of the first floor. His remains were buried in Westminster Abbey, on Dec. 20, with a numerous attendance of his friends, Burke following as one of the pallbearers. In 1790, he became one of the committee formed to erect a statue to his memory. Sir Joshua Reynolds proposed that it should be placed in St. Paul's Cathedral: while Sir Joseph Banks, Boswell, and others, preferred Westminster Abbey: Burke was of the former opinion, observing that "it would be, indeed, robbing Peter to pay Paul," (alluding to the saints to which the two churches are dedicated,)" but still the reasons for transfer were so forcible as to make him think it rather an exchange than robbery."

COUNT DE MIRABEAU AT BEACONSFIELD.

In 1785, Count de Mirabeau was introduced by his schoolfellow, Sir Gilbert Elliot, to Burke, and paid him a short visit at Beaconsfield. He had come to England on some literary project, and one of the results of his visit may have been his unscrupulous and unacknowledged appropriation of whole speeches of Burke, in which borrowed plumes the Count afterwards lorded it over the National Assembly. In 1791, Burke wrote jocularly of the revolutionist's visit, in allusion to his receiving the Abbé Maury: "I have had the Count de Mirabeau in my house; will he (the Abbé) submit afterwards to enter under the same roof? I will have it purified and expiated, and I shall look into the best formulas from the time of Homer downwards for that purpose. I will do everything but imitate the Spaniard, who burned his house because the Connétable de Bourbon had been lodged in it. That ceremony is too expensive for finances."

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REFORMERS SILENCED.

In the Session of 1785, Mr. Fox's motion for reform drew from Burke some strong animadversions, demanding how he of all men could assume that the people were not sufficiently represented, when he daily boasted that his own place and preponderance there were solely owing to the voice of the people. The argument was unanswerable. On the Government bill for regulating the public offices, which Sheridan termed a mere rat-catching measure, he was equally severe, and continuing the allusion to matters of petty reform, ludicrously quoted:

Mice and rats, and such small deer,

Had been Tom's food for seven long year.

BURKE AS A COMPANION.

When Mr. Hardy, the biographer of Lord Charlemont, visited Mr. Burke in 1787, he was charmed with his social,

hospitable, and agreeably communicative qualities. "One of the most satisfactory days," he writes, " perhaps that I ever spent in my life was going with him tête-à-tête from London to Beaconsfield. He stopped at Uxbridge whilst his horses were feeding, and happening to meet some gentlemen of I know not what Militia who appeared to be perfect strangers, he entered into discourse with them at the gateway of the inn. His conversation at that moment completely exemplified what Johnson said of him: That you could not meet Burke under a shed without saying that he was an extraordinary man.' He was altogether uncommonly attractive and agreeable. Every object of the slightest notoriety, as we passed along, whether of natural or local history, furnished him with abundant materials for conversation. The house at Uxbridge, where the treaty was held during Charles the First's time; the beautiful undulating grounds of Bulstrode, formerly the residence of Chancellor Jeffries; and Waller's tomb in Beaconsfield churchyard, which before we went home we visited, and whose character as a gentleman, a poet, and an orator, he shortly delineated, but with exquisite felicity of genius,—altogether gave an uncommon interest to his eloquence; and although one-and-twenty years have elapsed since that day, I entertain the most vivid and pleasing recollections of it."

A POLITICAL GAME.

In 1787 there were in Parliament nine Members said to be returned by a noble Earl, and who were thence called the nine-pins. One evening, Mr. Fox entering the House at the moment of a cheer, inquired of Mr. Sheridan the cause of it. "Oh! nothing of consequence," replied Sheridan; "only Burke knocking down one of the nine-pins!"

THE PRINCE OF WALES'S DEBTS.

When, in 1787, the Prince applied to Parliament for an increase of income for the liquidation of his debts, Mr.

Sheridan urged the hardship of the case, and went so far as to state that if the assistance was not granted, the Prince must discontinue the necessary repairs of Carlton House, and retire from the dignity of his station. into the obscurity of private life. Mr. Burke, who was present, with several members of Opposition, saw no satisfactory reason for adopting the threatened alternative, which might be regarded as petulance rather than necessity; that it would be better to submit to inconvenience than resort to retirement; "while many would be induced to question whether dignity thus easily and voluntarily thrown aside might not in time be dispensed with altogether. Besides, submission is in itself a virtue, and ultimately will have its effect." It was then urged that the expenses of the public establishment alone would absorb the whole of the Prince's income, leaving nothing for private enjoyments. "Taking the question even on this showing," replied Burke, "if we inquire very minutely, something may be found even for that purpose. But I must continue to think, that a Royal personage ought, in some cases, to make this among his other sacrifices. My idea is (alluding to the paramount duty of supporting the royal dignity in preference to any private gratification,) that we should starve the man in order to fatten the prince, rather than starve the prince in order to fatten the man."

Burke then proceeded to trace on paper the outline of a proper royal establishment-the chapel, library, and ridinghouse the chaplain also to perform the duty of librarian; and suggested as becoming, if not politically useful, for the Prince to give a dinner once a fortnight to all the leading members of Parliament, without distinction of party. He then went into the details of a royal establishment-the description and quality of the officers of the household; the number of servants, horses, and carriages, (the latter limited to two;) the necessary annual repairs of the royal residence; and every other item of probable expense. His calculation showed that after paying all state expenses, there would still

be a residue of 10,000l., which might be appropriated to private purposes. "I always knew Burke's capacity to comprehend great things," said Mr. Courtenay, who was present on the occasion; "but I was not so well aware that he had leisure enough to master the small."

The above was communicated by Lord Crewe to Mr. Haviland Burke, and is given in Prior's Life. The requisite knowledge for this estimate Burke had, doubtless, acquired in perfecting his plan of Economical Reform, submitted by him to Parliament in 1779, and printed in his Correspondence.

A HOMELY SIMILE.

One of the happiest of Burke's homely similes is contained in his reply to Pitt, on the subject of his commercial treaty with France, in 1787. Pitt, he contended, had contemplated the subject with a narrowness peculiar to limited minds-" as an affair of two little counting-houses, and not of two great nations. He seems to consider it as a contention between the sign of the fleur-de-lis, and the sign of the old red lion, for which should obtain the best custom." In replying to the argument, that the Americans were our children, and should not have revolted against their parent, he said: "They are our children, it is true, and when children ask for bread, we are not to give them a stone. When those children of ours wish to assimilate with their parents, and to respect the beauteous countenance of British liberty, are we to turn to them the shameful parts of our Constitution? Are we to give them our weakness for their strength, our opprobrium for their glory, and the slough of slavery, which we are not able to work off, to serve them for their freedom ?"

DR. BROCKLESBY'S GIFT TO BURKE.

Brocklesby will be recollected as a school-fellow of Edmund at Ballitore. He came to London, practised many years with success and profit, lived in handsome style, and was much attached to the society of men of letters. He kept

his friendship with Burke, and in 1788, gave him an un

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