amongst whom Dr. Laurence and Mr. Windham were constant guests; that he always had four black horses to his carriage, and that he was very kind to his dependants, and charitable to the poor. The old gardener recollected an instance of his good nature, when, having found some ragged boys pilfering wood in the park, he brought them home with him, gave them refreshment, and then ordered his steward to have them properly clothed.

Burke used to amuse himself in strolling over his lawns and grounds, with a spud in his hand, digging up the plantain roots in the pastures, and spreading little heaps of manure on the spots where the grass had suffered injury.

Mr. Jesse paid a second visit to Gregories; and on inquiring at Beaconsfield for some one who remembered Mr. Burke, he was directed to a farmhouse a little beyond Gregories. In a retired spot, with a green lane leading to it, he found the farm-house (Mr. Jesse thinks,) built in the early Elizabethan style, with a hall and rooms wainscoted with black oak. The worthy farmer and his wife received him kindly; and the mother of the hostess, a venerable lady, nearly eighty years of age, seated in a carved high-backed oaken chair, discoursed of Burke with pleasing vivacity. She vividly described the tall figure of the orator, his well-bred manners, and his interesting appearance. She spoke of his extreme grief for the loss of his son; his avoiding the town of Beaconsfield after his death, and coming by a back way to Gregories; and of his never having again entered the church where his son's remains were deposited.

Mr. Jesse heard many accounts of Mr. Burke's kindness, benevolence, and popularity, among his poorer neighbours; of the numerous great men who frequented his house; and of the splendour of his funeral, which was headed by a Benefit Club, of which Burke was a member. Then there were stories of his going to town in his carriage with four horses-of a highwayman riding up to the leading postilion with a pistol in his hand, threatening to blow out his brains if he did not stop-of the men flogging their horses on, heedless of the

threat, and only mindful of their beloved master-of the carriage stopping at a village-of Burke's anxious inquiries into the cause of the rapid pace-of his blaming them for risking their lives, and then giving them ten pounds a-piece for their care of him. The old lady also related that Burke was one day let down the shaft of a chalk-pit, when his bailiff refusing to follow him, he shouted out from the bottom of the pit,-"Oh, John, what a coward you are."

Another visitor says: "The old trees on the estate are now the sole visible memorials of Burke at Gregories. Under the shade of these he often meditated on the events of the great war, then shaking the ancient kingdoms of Europe. Here Mrs. Thrale heard Johnson and Burke argue. Here, at the beginning of his eventful life, Fox paid a visit to the man who became for a time his teacher, and afterwards his opponent. Here the great French orator and versatile statesman, Mirabeau, spent a short time before the outbreak of that Revolu tion which his eloquence had excited. Here, towards the close of his life, Burke received the visits of many exiled French noblemen; and here the celebrated Madame de Genlis visited in 1791. The woman who had been the teacher of Louis Philippe, a friend to revolutionists, yet a sufferer by the Revolution, must have regarded with no common interest the man whose work on the Revolution was then exciting the attention of Europe."*

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS'S "INFANT HERCULES.”

This celebrated picture originated in one of the painter's visits to Burke, at Gregories; and when Mr. Jesse paid his visit, in 1845, he saw at the farmhouse mentioned in the preceding anecdote, the portly son-in-law of the old lady, who was the very child whom Sir Joshua Reynolds took as the model of "The Infant Hercules." His father was the farmbailiff of Mr. Burke, with whom he was an especial favourite;

* Poets and Statesmen; their Homes and Haunts, in the Neighbourhood of Eton and Windsor. By William Dowling, Esq., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law. 1857.

that great man in his happier days frequently coming to the cottage, sometimes eating potatoes roasted in the embers of a wood-fire, and once trying the merits of a rook or jackdaw pie, or rather a mixture of both. It was on one of these occasions that he saw this stout boy, then seven or eight months old, and was much struck with his appearance. Soon afterwards, Sir Joshua Reynolds came to Gregories, and informed Burke that Catherine, Empress of Russia, had commissioned him to paint her a picture, but that he was at a loss for a subject. In the course of a walk, Mr. Burke took Sir Joshua to his bailiff's cottage. The boy was in a cradle in the kitchen, and as the visitors entered, he was discovered nearly naked, having kicked off the clothes, and thus exposed his brawny chest and limbs. Sir Joshua was delighted with the subject before him. He sent to London immediately for his palette and colours, and painted his Infant Hercules strangling Two Serpents. This was supposed to be a compliment paid to the Empress-allegorically alluding to her victories over her enemies. Reynolds was so pleased with his subject, that he painted two others, at least from the same model. One was in the collection of pictures of the late Lord Northwick, at Cheltenham, and was sold on the dispersion of that gallery, in 1859.

The picture, painted in 1786, was sent to St Petersburg, with two sets of Sir Joshua's Discourses, one in French, and the other in English, in 1789; the following year the Russian ambassador, Count Woronzow, presented the painter with a gold box, having the portrait of the Empress upon the lid, set with large diamonds. His executors afterwards received 1600 guineas as the price of the picture.*

* This work, remarkable for its rich effect of colour and forcible chiaroscuro, and which "looked as if it had been boiled in brandy,' was the principal of Sir Joshua's historical pictures, and was highly commended by the critics of the day. Even the eccentric Barry approved of it: he said, "the prophetical agitation of Tiresias, and Juno enveloped with clouds, hanging over the scene like a black pestilence, can never be too much admired, and are, indeed, truly sublime." This portion of the picture Sir Joshua must have sought, in classic fable, elsewhere than at Beaconsfield. The bailiff's Herculean boy may have furnished the

GREGORIES AND HILLINGDON.

The choice of Beaconsfield as a place of residence by Burke is referred, with great probability, to his desire to be near his patron, Lord Rockingham, who had a house at Hillingdon, a few miles distant. At Beaconsfield it was whispered that! Burke's means were narrow, and that he was under heavy pecuniary obligations to Lord Rockingham. His neighbours were not, therefore, surprised at his plain and inexpensive manner of living: he saw little company, and gave no great entertainments; and his invitations to eat mutton were almost literally carried out.

Within such humble bounds, however, he was in his social hours at once so great and amiable, that at home he seemed the happiest and most enviable of men, so as even to impress the far-seeing Boswell, who, in August, 1775, writes: "It is absurd to hope for continued happiness in this life: few men, if any, enjoy it. I have a kind of belief that Edmund Burke does he has so much knowledge, so much animation, and the consciousness of so much fame."

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principal figure of the composition; but connoisseurs consider the leading features to have been taken from the "Iconic" of the younger Philo stratus on the subject, which, moreover, is beautifully treated by Cowley, in imitation of Pindar's First Nemæan Ode:

The big-limbed babe in his huge cradle lay,
Too weighty to be rock'd by nurse's hands,
Wrapt in purple swaddling bands;

When, lo! by jealous Juno's fierce commands,
Two dreadful serpents came,

Rolling and hissing loud into the room:

To the bold babe they trace their bidden way;

Forth from their flaming eyes dread lightnings went;

Their gaping mouths did forked tongues like thunderbolts present.

CHARACTERISTICS, RETROSPECTIVE OPINIONS, AND PERSONAL TRAITS.

BURKE'S BENEVOLENCE.

; as

BURKE appears to have possessed a rare stock of practical benevolence, which he exercised among his poorer neighbours in the country. He even administered medicine to them well as to his servants and family. On one occasion, he gave a wrong medicine by mistake to Mrs. Burke, which alarmed and much distressed him; in reference to which he said to Dr. Brocklesby: "I mean to leave off practice, Doctor, for I fear I am little better than a quack." He was once found busily preparing a large stock of pills for the indigent of the neighbourhood.

To beggars he was kind and charitable, especially in Ireland, where there are no poor-laws. He would not allow that persons refused to relieve beggars from policy, but maintained it to be for saving their money. When walking with two ladies about Beaconsfield, being solicited by an aged mendicant, Mr. Burke, after a few questions, gave him a shilling. As they walked on, one of the ladies said: "I wonder you should give so much to those people, who are generally worthless characters. What you have just now given will be spent in gin." "Madam," replied he, emphatically, "he is an old man, and if gin be his comfort, let him have gin."

He regarded the declamations against the use of spirits by the poor with little respect, saying with much humour: "Whether the thunder of the laws, or the thunder of eloquence, be hurled on gin, always I am thunder-proof. The alembic, in my mind, has furnished the world a far greater benefit and blessing, than if the opus maximum had been really found by chemistry, and like Midas, we could turn everything into gold."