this time contain many and pathetic allusions to his loss; and in conversation were still more frequent. He called the departed" the hope of his house," "the prop of his age," "his other and better self." Writing to a relative on the birth of a son, he said, " 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. (the late Baron) Smith he writes: "So heavy a calamity has fallen upon me as to disable me for business and to disqualify me for repose. The existence I have I do not know that I can call life * *. Good nights to you-I never can have any." In a private letter to the same gentleman, he says, "Yes; the life which has been so embittered cannot long endure. The grave will soon close over me and my dejections." To Sir Hercules Langrishe he talks of the remainder of his "short and cheerless existence in this world." To Lord Auckland, he says, "For myself or for my family (alas! I have none) I have nothing to hope or to fear in this world." The Letter to a noble Lord speaks of the "sorrows of a desolate old man.' And again, "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." "I am alone. I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. I greatly deceive myself if in this hard season of life I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honour in the world." To Mr. William Elliot, he writes, " desolate at home, stripped of my boast, my hope, my consolation, my helper, my counsellor, and 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," and numberless others of a similar sorrowful import are scattered through his subsequent writings. It was a matter of small consideration that except for this heavy affliction Mr. Burke was to have been raised to the honours of the peerage; but infirm, childless, and desponding, every feeling of ambition became extinguished in his breast as the preceding expressions plainly intimate. Notwithstanding this, perhaps the honour should have been bestowed and accepted. It would have been a satisfaction if not to himself, at least to his friends and to his admirers as a testimony of national gratitude to a man of such singular and varied talents exerted with extraordinary vigour in every department of the public service; and as a passport to the greater favour and consideration of that numerous class of the community (and those too not of the least rank or influence), who would estimate at a very dif ferent value the exertions and services of plain Mr. Burke, and those of Lord Burke or Lord Beaconsfield. In person, young Burke was neither so tall nor so muscular as his father, but well formed and active, his features smaller and more delicate, though handsome and expressive, supposed to bear some resemblance to those of his uncle Richard, and his complexion florid. A picture of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds is an admirable likeness, "as exact," said a literary lady, a friend of the family, who saw it at the painter's before it was sent home, "as the reflection of a mirror." From this portrait his father, soon after his death, caused a print to be engraved, which preserves much of the spirit of the original. Underneath it, after his name, age, and the date of his death, are the following lines, altered in a slight degree from Dryden's elegiac poem of Eleonora "As precious gums are not for common fire, Adding to these, as at once characteristic of his grief and his pride, "O dolor atque decus."* An affectionate but not overchanged character of his friend -for whom Opposision said the Clerkship of the Pells had been once designed-was drawn up for the newspapers by Dr. Walker King. Letters of sympathy and condolence came in from many quarters, among the more distinguished of which were those of the Comte D'Artois, Count De Serent, He was disposed to believe in some indisposition on the part of those in power to bring his son forward in public life. The hint is dropped in the letter to Mr. William Elliot, 1796. "Had it pleased Providence to have spared him for the trying situations that seem to be coming on, notwithstanding that he was sometimes a little dispirited by the disposition which we thought shown to depress him and set him aside; yet he was always buoyed up again; and on one or two occasions, he discovered what might be expected from the vigour and elevation of his mind, from his unconquerable fortitude, and from the extent of his resources for every purpose of speculation and of action." Eari Fitzwilliam, Mr. Grattan, Mr. Windham, and other acquaintance in political life. Several were deterred from expressing their feelings by the pain to the parent inseparable from touching on such a subject, or in the expressive words of Count Do Serent " I felt that though I had inclination, I had no right to mix my grief with yours. I stood mute before the grief of a father!" Toward the earlier part of this year, he had been summoned by the Duke of Portland to a meeting of Old Whigs to discuss public affairs in relation to their conduct in Parliament and to Government. His general correspondence does not appear to have been extensive. To Mr. Windham, he wrote, condemning the non-employment of Frenchmen for French objects; to Mrs. Crewe on the state of the emigrants; to his son expressing some hope that Fox may join the moderates of the Whigs, though "the last thing in the world which Fox will do is to reconcile himself to me," and to Mr. Woodford, who communicated to him for consideration a paper alleged to contain the sentiments of Mr. Fox on the cause and principles of the war, though Burke doubted whether it was expressiy meant for his eye or not. He sees however, he says, no material variation in it from that gentleman's former opinions; he does not wish him for an adversary, but cannot agree for a moment in his belief that peace is or was practicable; and then restates his own opinion, so remarkably fulfilled by its deadly nature and progress"cannot persuade myself that this war bears any the least resemblance, other than it is a war, to any that has ever existed in the world. I cannot persuade myself that any examples or any reasonings drawn from other wars and other politics are at all applicable to it; and I truly and sincerely think that all other wars and all other politics have been the games of children in comparison to it." CHAPTER XIV. Rumoured appointment to the Provostship of Trinity College, DublinBishop of Auxerre-Grant of a Pension-Correspondence with Mr. William Smith-Second Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe-Letter to Mr. William Elliott-Letters to Mrs. Haviland-Letter to Lord AucklandThoughts on Scarcity-Anecdotes-Letter to a Noble Lord. EXTREME as was the grief or rather despair for an only and beloved son, efforts were not wanting on his own part to overcome it. One of the first arose from a general rumour in Ireland regarding himself, that of the intention of Ministers being to make him Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. He immediately wrote off to Mr. Windham to say, that were such design even intended, he would not accept it -that no favour or arrangement of Government should give it to any one out of the body of Fellows-and then "for a thousand reasons, only to an ecclesiastic." Such an office, he reiterated to the Duke of Portland, should never be made as it had been made, and as most things in Ireland were made, a job--and that the recommendation of the members of the Collegiate body, not that of the local administration, should alone determine the choice. Some letters on this subject were also exchanged with Grattan. Strong no less in grateful than in other feelings, he understood about this time that the Bishop of Auxerre, who, as we have seen, had been kind to his son in France more than twenty years before, was with his brother Viscount De Cicé and nephews, as emigrants, pressed for the means of existence. He contrived, however, amid his own serious straits to send one of them (Abbé De La Bintinnaye) fifty pounds-confessing to having raised the money with difficulty. In real life, as in fiction, we sometimes meet with the due fulfilment of poetical justice; and the present proved one of these agreeable occasions. Nearly at the moment of performing this act of generosity, a letter arrived from Mr. Pitt, announcing in the following terms the consideration extended by the Crown to his long and meritorious service. "Downing Street, August 30th, 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 £1200 per annum (being the largest sum which His Majesty is entitled to fix) either in your own name or in 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." A second communication about three weeks afterward mentions that the annuity should commence from January, 1793; and that as the remaining part of the arrangement required the sanction of Parliament "it will be a very honourable and gratifying part of my duty to take the first opportunity of conveying the King's recommendation for carrying it into effect." The intention thus voluntarily announced by the Minister-for no application whatever had been made on the part of Mr. Burke he did not exactly fulfil; -on what account is not known. But he advised the King to grant in lieu of the Parliamentary provision, £2500 per annum in annuities for lives payable out of the West Indian four and a half per cent fund, then at the disposal of the Crown, in order to enable Mr. Burke to discharge some serious debts contracted during a long course of important though unrequited public duties. The measure was not finally settled till October, 1795. His Majesty, not Mr. Pitt, is said to have been its first proposer. But the manner in which it came, formed no object of consideration with the party holding opposite political views. The simple fact of being accepted was deemed sufficient to justify unworthy animadversion in Parliament; while from the less respectable portion of party writers in newspapers and pamphlets came rancorous abuse and the most ungenerous imputations, persevered in long after his death, and even to a recent period by the more furious and irreclaimable revolutionary spirits of the day. It was in vain to urge that it had been deserved by iengthened and very remarkable public services-by personal disinterestedness on many occasions-by surrendering about £20,000 per annum as his perquisites from the Pay Office -by his economical Reform bill which for twelve years past had saved the country nearly £80,000 annually in hard money, as well as the extinction of offices which might have been converted to undue influence in Parliament-by refor mation of the Pay Office in guarding against serious deficits so frequently experienced there, and rendering available to |