coming through Beaconsfield, he took a cross road behind an eminence which intercepted the view of the church. Although he sought relief in literary composition, yet the loss of his beloved son was never absent from his mind. The Bishop of Meath, on seeing Burke soon after this affliction, observed that his countenance betrayed traces of decay and extreme mental anguish, the chest had obviously sunk, and altogether he exhibited the appearance of one bowed down both in frame and spirit by the severest affliction.

His private letters, and even his publications, and his everyday conversation, were chequered with expressions of his grief. He spoke of the departed "hope of his house," "the prop of his age," ""his other and better self." What can be more touching than those words which he addressed to a relative on the birth of a son: "May he live to be the staff of your age and close your eyes in peace, instead of, like me, reversing the order of nature, and having the melancholy office to close his." To Mr. C. Baron Smith, he writes in despair: "Yes; the life which has been so embittered cannot long endure. The grave will soon close over me and my dejections:" and to Sir Hercules Langreish he complains of the remainder of his short and cheerless existence in this world. To Lord Auckland, he writes: "For myself or for my family (alas! I have none) I have nothing to hope or fear in this world." To Mr. William Elliot, he laments: "Desolate at home, stripped of my boast, my hope, my consolation, my helper, my counsellor, my guide. You know in part what I have lost, and would to God I could clear myself of all neglect and fault in that loss."

We have said that his grief found vent in his published works: even in his political letter to a Noble Lord, he speaks of "the sorrows of a desolate old man,”—in reply to the Duke of Bedford's mean reproach for his acceptance of a pension,-in this touching lament:

“Had it pleased God to continue to me the hopes of succession, I should have been, according to my mediocrity, and the mediocrity of the age I live in, a sort of founder of a

family; I should have left a son who, in all the points in which personal merit can be viewed, in science, in erudition, in genius, in taste, in honour, in generosity, in humanity, in every liberal attempt, in every liberal accomplishment, would not have shown himself inferior to the Duke of Bedford, or to any of those whom he traces in his line. His Grace very soon would have wanted all plausibility in his attack upon that provision which belonged more to mine than to me.

He would soon have supplied every deficiency and symmetrised every disproportion. It would not have been for that successor to resort to any stagnant wasting reservoir of merit in me, or in any ancestry. He had in himself a salient living spring of generous and manly action. Every day he lived, he would have repurchased the bounty of the Crown, and ten times more, if ten times more he had received. He was made a public creature, and had no enjoyment whatever but in the performance of some duty. At this exigent moment the loss of a finished man is not easily supplied.

"But a Disposer, whose power we are little able to resist, and whose wisdom it behoves us not at all to dispute, has ordained it in another manner, and (whatever my querulous weakness might suggest) a far better. The storm has gone over me; and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me: I am stripped of all my honours; I am torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth! There, and prostrate there, I must unfeignedly recognise the Divine justice, and in some degree submit to it. But whilst I humble myself before God, I do not know that it is forbidden to repel the attacks of unjust and inconsiderate man. The patience of Job is proverbial. After some of the convulsive struggles of our irritable nature, he submitted himself and repented in dust and ashes. But even so, I do not find him blamed for reprehending, and with a considerable degree of verbal asperity, those ill-natured neighbours of his, who visited his dunghill to read moral, political, and economical lectures on his misery. I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. Indeed, my Lord, I greatly deceive

myself, if in this hard season I would give a peck of refuse of wheat for all that is called fame and honour in the world. This is the appetite but of a few. It is a luxury, it is a privilege, it is an indulgence for those who are at ease. But we are all of us made to shun disgrace, as we are made to shrink from pain, and poverty, and disease. It is an instinct; and under the direction of reason instinct is always in the right. I live in an inverted order. They who ought to have succeeded me have gone before me. They who should have been to me as posterity, are in the place of ancestors. I owe to the dearest relation (which ever must subsist in memory) that act of piety, which he would have performed to me; I owe it to him to show that he was not descended, as the Duke of Bedford would have it, from an unworthy parent."

Of this lamented son, who was neither so tall nor muscular as his father, his features smaller and more delicate, and his complexion florid, Sir Joshua Reynolds painted an admirable portrait. This picture, soon after his death, Mr. Burke had engraved; underneath, after his age, name, and the date of his death, are the following lines, slightly altered from Dryden's elegiac poem of Eleonora:

As precious gums are not for common fire,
They but perfume the temple and expire;
So was he soon exhaled and banished hence,
A short sweet odour at a vast expense.

Adding to them this characteristic apostrophe:
O dolor atque decus.

Dr. Laurence speaks of a paragraph in the handwriting of a female, which was sent to certain newspapers for insertion immediately after Richard Burke's death; which communication is said to be explained as follows:

"Why," (asks Mr. Sergeant Burke,) "knowing the deep anxiety of his father to leave direct representatives, did Mr. Richard Burke remain unmarried till the age of thirty-six, the time of his death? The cause was owing to a romantic incident. Mrs. Burke had brought up at Beaconsfield a young lady, the daughter of neighbours in humbler life than

herself, whom she had retained near her as a friend and con stant companion. This girl, who was very amiable, clever, and agreeable, became a great favourite with the whole Burke family; and a tender attachment eventually sprung up between her and the son of the house, Richard, whose playmate and associate she had been from childhood. The discovery of these sentiments of Richard Burke caused much anxiety to his parents. They could not concur in so unequal a marriage; and he, all filial obedience, yielded to their wishes. The lady left Beaconsfield; and shortly afterwards, through the influence of the Burkes, formed an advantageous matrimonial alliance. Her descendants, from whom this story comes, are now living in the enjoyment of ease and respectability. Richard Burke, it seems, loved deeply; for, after her marriage, he would never himself think of wedlock; and we find his father, in one of his letters to him while in Dublin, gently chiding him for his somewhat remarkable absence from the assemblies, balls, and company of the ladies there. Richard's premature and melancholy death, whether or not having one of its sources in this love-affair, aroused, no doubt, some expressions of feeling on the part of the object of his affections or her friends; and it is to this that Dr. Laurence most probably alludes, in his notice of the paragraph."

GRANT OF A PENSION TO MR. BURKE.-HIS DEFENCE OF IT.

In the autumn of 1794, he received a letter from the Minister, announcing, in the following terms, the consideration extended by the Crown to Mr. Burke's long and meritorious service:

"Downing-street, Aug. 30, 1794.

"Dear Sir, I have received the King's permission to acquaint you that it is His Majesty's intention to propose to Parliament in the next Session to enable His Majesty to confer on you an annuity more proportioned to His Majesty's sense of your public merit than any which His Majesty can at present grant; but being desirous, in the interval, not to leave you without some, though inadequate mark of the

sentiments and dispositions which His Majesty entertains towards you, he has further directed me to prepare an immediate grant out of the Civil List of 1200l. per annum, (being the largest sum which His Majesty is entitled to fix,) either in your own name or that of Mrs. Burke, as may be most agreeable to you. I shall be happy to learn your decision on this subject, that I may have the satisfaction of taking the necessary steps for carrying his Majesty's intentions into immediate execution.-I have the honour to be, with great esteem and regard, dear Sir, your most faithful and obedient servant, W. PITT."

This favour, so generously offered, and entirely unsolicited, Mr. Burke, by the advice of his friends, did not refuse. The intention, however, was not carried into effect precisely as originally proposed; Mr. Pitt advising the King to grant, in lieu of the Parliamentary provision, 2500l. per annum, in annuities for lives payable out of the West India Four and a half per cent. fund, then at the disposal of the Crown, in order to enable Mr. Burke to discharge some large debts. The measure was not finally settled till October, 1795; but long before this, animadversions upon the subject became loud in Parliament; and the rancorous abuse of the party hackwriters of the day-the curs of low degree-was started in all quarters, and kept up with ceaseless clamour.

Burke treated the majority of these attacks with contempt; but he could have placed against them a public life of thirty years of purity, which, in the language of an eminent Whig, when alluding to the fact, "was proof against his own embarrassed circumstances."

In the above year, however, there came an attack upon the meritorious public servant, which led him to treat the assailants as higher game. These were the Duke of Bedford and the Earl of Lauderdale, in the House of Lords: they were answered by a spirited defence by Lord Grenville there, and Mr. Windham in the Commons; Burke himself, in his celebrated Letter to a Noble Lord, also replying to their illiberality, as already mentioned.