growth, have misrepresented and exaggerated, must not be passed over. By them, Burke is reported to have, in the midst of a violent philippic against the French revolutionists, drawn forth a dagger, and to have thrown it on the floor of the House of Commons, à propos de rien, as a kind of abstract theatrical flourish to give additional effect to his words. Whether what he really did was or was not in good taste is questionable; but it was not any thing so irrational or unmeaning as that charged against him. The true facts were these. On the 19th December, 1792, Lord Grenville introduced a bill, which forthwith passed into a law, for placing aliens under strict supervision, and for confining to certain districts those foreign emigrants who had taken refuge in England, and who received temporary assistance from government. Many causes called for this cautionary measure; one in particular made it imperative. Among certain murderous plans started by the Parisian insurgents, a wretch had proposed that each citizen should carry about his person a concealed poniard, ready to plunge it into the heart of an aristocrat whenever a safe opportunity should occur. The suggestion was received with approbation and applause. Intelligence of this had reached the British government, already aware that some of the refugees in England were spies and agents of the Jacobins and various other incendiary clubs of Paris. A circumstance, too, had come to light to confirm the information. It was discovered that orders had been sent from certain parties in France to a manufactory in Birmingham for the making of three thousand daggers, and that these weapons were actually in the course of construction. Burke happened to procure one of them; and he looked on it as damnatory proof of what he imputed to the revolutionists. When, therefore, a discussion had arisen on the very subject of the danger to be dreaded from France in its then condition, Burke took with him this dagger to the House; and on the 28th of November, 1792, the actual evening that the news had come of the commencement of the infamous trial of Louis XVI., Burke made a long oration, one not at all wild

THE DAGGER-SCENE IN THE COMMONS.

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or irrational, but, on the contrary, most able and argumentative, and very much to the purpose of the debate. In the course of his address he produced, too abruptly perhaps, but not inappropriately, the dagger intended for the grasp of some sans-culotte assassin, and threw it indignantly down, saying, "This is what you may gain by any alliance with France. Wherever these new principles of Frenchmen are introduced, their practices follow; you must equally proscribe their tenets and their persons from our shores." He then continued a discourse which had the effect in the House of bringing over some of the wisest to his own views. Burke's assailants, however, ridiculed, at the time, this circumstance of the dagger, as a violation of that usual good taste so characteristic of the great orator. Gilray, as the engraving on the next page shows, caricatured the scene with his wonted humour; but even in this sketch, which Burke himself much enjoyed, the fun, it will be observed, is not made to turn on any irrationality of Burke, but on the visible dismay of Dundas, Pitt, Sheridan, and Fox, whom the artist would represent, in connexion with the French Revolution, the two former on account of their hesitation, and the two latter on account of their approbation,—to form part of the gang whose detection the production of the dagger has accomplished. The affair was at the utmost treated by those who objected to it as a passing joke; but no one dreamt for a moment of imputing, from the act, frenzy or folly to a man whom King, Lords, and Commons were consulting and conferring with as a guide. Burke, in fact, never acted, wrote, or spoke more sensibly than at this period. France by no means monopolised or dis⚫tracted his attention; he was as alive as usual to other matters, public and private.

In 1791 Burke had co-operated most earnestly with Mr. Wilberforce in another attempt to lessen the horrors of the slave-trade, and to abolish them if possible. Burke sent to Mr. Dundas a "Sketch of a Negro Code”—a series of regulations for the protection of the unfortunate subjects of the African traffic. Every line

of this document demonstrates the calm practical sense and benignant spirit of its author, intent as ever on the true cause of freedom. He once more also exerted himself on behalf of the Irish

Catholics against the severity of the penal laws. On the 3d January, 1792, he wrote his first letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, one of the ablest essays on Catholic claims and on the state of Ireland

ever produced. It abounds in unimpassioned and prophetic wisdom. Not content with this, he had his son appointed agent to the Catholics; and he sent him to Ireland, introducing him as "his other and better self" to his old friend, Lord Charlemont, in a letter, in which he says, "In the prosperity of your country, I include the most valuable interest of this." Burke's efforts were successful. One act that passed soon after in the Irish parliament conferred upon the Catholics the privileges of practising law, intermarrying with Protestants, together with further important advantages in connexion with education and commerce. Another act, in 1793, gave Catholics the elective franchise. Burke, notwithstanding, was now more than ever opposed to Parliamentary Reform, as he showed in his earnest speech against Charles (afterwards Earl) Grey's ineffectual attempt on the 30th April, 1792, in the Commons, in favour of that measure.

Early in 1792 the angel of death cast a shade over the social life of Burke, which, in the grief and despondency it caused him, seemed to forebode that there were darker and sadder shadows to come. On the 23d of February, in that year, he lost his eminent friend Sir Joshua Reynolds, and in him almost the last of the literary and convivial associates of his early years. Sir Joshua had always regarded Burke as the first of men, and was in turn loved, esteemed, and respected by his illustrious ally. Reynolds had assisted Burke when embarrassed; and by his will, after cancelling a bond for 2000l., he bequeathed him 2000l. more, and appointed him guardian to his niece and heiress, Miss Mary Palmer, of Torrington, in the county of Devon, who became, in the autumn after her uncle's death, the second wife of Burke's friend, Murrough, fifth Earl of Inchiquin, afterwards, in 1800, first Marquess of Thomond. Burke and Reynolds had been so continually together as to have most of their ideas in common. From the fulness of Burke's mind, Sir Joshua confessedly borrowed much, and made use of it in his own writings and academical addresses. "Burke," said Malone, "was to Reynolds what Scipio was to

Lelius." Burke wrote in one of the public journals the following beautiful character of the friend whose departure he so bitterly lamented:

"The illness of Sir Joshua Reynolds was long, but borne with a mild and cheerful fortitude, without the least mixture of any thing irritable or querulous, agreeably to the placid and even tenour of his whole life. He had, from the beginning of his malady, a distinct view of his dissolution; and he contemplated it with that entire composure which nothing but the innocence, integrity, and usefulness of his life, and an unaffected submission to the will of Providence, could bestow. In this situation he had every consolation from family tenderness, which his own kindness to his family had indeed well deserved.

"Sir Joshua Reynolds was on very many accounts one of the most memorable men of his time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. In portrait he went beyond them; for he communicated to that department of the art, in which English artists are the most engaged, a variety, a fancy, and a dignity derived from the higher branches, which even those who professed them in a superior manner did not always preserve when they delineated individual nature. His portraits remind the spectator of the invention of history and of the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits, he appears not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it from a higher sphere. His paintings illustrate his lessons, and his lessons seem to have been derived from his paintings. He possessed the theory as perfectly as the practice of his art. To be such a painter, he was a profound and penetrating philosopher.

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'In full happiness of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art and by the learned in science, courted by the great, caressed by sovereign powers, and celebrated by distinguished