to William Pitt; but the Great Commoner, under the combined influence of gout and ill-temper, refused to take office; and through the medium of the old Duke of Newcastle, the Marquis of Rockingham, a young nobleman of high character and respectable talents, was placed at the head of a Whig ministry; and the marquis immediately appointed Edmund Burke as his private sceretary. This was too Battering a distinction, and too promising a step on the ladder of preferment, not to have excited the envy of that malignant pack, who throughout his whole career were always baying at the heels of Burke. All kinds of preposterous stories were put into circulation about him; and the meddling and spiteful old Duke of Newcastle ran off with a face full of horror to Lord Rockingham, to whom Burke had until now been personally a stranger. "He is an impostor, my dear lord," was the burden of the old busybody's song; "he is a Papist, sworn to fight against the crown; a Jesuit in disguise, who got his training at St. Omer; a Jacobite, ready and willing to foster a rebellion." In some alarm, the marquis sent for his new secretary; who after contemptuously proving that he was a Protestant, educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and had never seen St. Omer in his life, boldly avowed that some of his nearest connections were Catholics; that he was, and always had been, opposed to the penal laws; and that the circumstance of his having incurred suspicion would prevent him from holding the office his lordship bad designed for him. But Lord Rockingham, delighted with Burke's spirit, would not hear of his resignation, and a perfect confidence and friendship was established between the two men, and remained unbroken until the death of Rockingham, in 1782. Not all the magnificent offers afterwards made to Burke, when he became a man to be gained at any cost, could induce him for a moment to waver in his fidelity to the chief who had trusted him.

There is an old proverb, to the effect "that of a quantity of mud thrown at a white wall, a certain amount will stick." And so it was with Burke. His enemies could not by any means be got to give up the "Jesuit" notion; and Burke, who had never seen the city of the celebrated Jesuit college in his life, was continually caricatured in the garb of a Romish priest, as "Neddy St. Omer." He treated such attacks with uniform disdain. "If I cannot live down these contemptible calumnies," he said to those who wished him to defend himself, "I shall not deign to contradict them in any other manner."

BURKE IN PARLIAMENT.

The next year saw a new and a great field opened for Burke's exertions; on the 14th of January, 1766, he took his seat as member for Wendover. He had long prepared himself for the position he had at last secured. During the last two sessions he had been a constant and interested visitor in the gallery. Thus he at once felt himself at home in the House; and on the very first day of his attendance delivered a speech of such eloquence as astonished and delighted no less a critic than the elder William Pitt, who happened to be present, and emphatically congratulated Burke on his success, and his friends on the value of the acquisition they had made. Sturdy old Johnson was delighted, and wrote off forthwith to Bennet Langton, Lanky" as he used to call him: "Burke has gained more reputation than perhaps any man at his first appearance ever gained before. He made two speeches in the House for repealing the Stamp Act, which were publicly commended by Mr. Pitt, and have filled the town with wonder." Arthur Murphy was jubilant; and William Burke wrote triumphantly, a short time after: "Ned is full of real business, intent upon doing solid good to his country, as much as if he were to receive twenty per cent. from the commerce of the whole empire which he labours to improve and extend."

There was need of honest and wise counsel in the British Parliament, pre-eminent need, at that time; for the ministers who preceded Rockingham and his party had hit upon the foolish and unjust expedient of taxing America, to wipe away the accumulation of debt from the last war. Grenville, the most opinionated and determined of ministers, had passed the Stamp Act, inflicting hardships in various ways on the Colonies, and calling forth a bitterness of feeling which the English Government entirely undervalued. It was the chief business of the Rockingham administration to repeal this enactment; and that they were enabled to do so, was in a great measure owing to the luminous and persuasive eloquence of Burke. One great characteristic in his nature was a deeply rooted hatred of oppres sion and wrong. Cruelty and injustice inflicted upon man, woman, or child, or even upon dumb animals, made his blood boil; and his vivid ima gination placed before him every wrong brought to his knowledge, as vividly as if it had been perpetrated under his very eyes. The taxing of the American Colonies by England appeared to him, not only unjust, but utterly opposed to common sense, as tending to irritate and provoke to hostility a great and powerful community,

otherwise loyally disposed towards England. He was emphatically "the tongue" of the Rockingham party, to which he adhered through evil and through good report, though offers were made to hin by the Duke of Grafton, which must have bern tempting to an ambitious man of narrow reans During the years that preceded the American war, he was the terror of the "bores"

the House, especially of George Grenville, ve lengthy and tedious harangues, which rm the king used to remember with horror, be ridiculed with infinite wit and humour, and vise cloudy logic he mercilessly overthrew. ia opponents were bewildered at the torrent of ance, imagination, and argument ready to be showered upon them at any, moment, and ring away their arguments in its headlong

The old taunts of 'Jesuit,' 'traitor,' and malcontent, had now lost credit even with the gar, though the figure of Burke in the black te of a student or a priest of a Catholic semisary might still point the meaning of the old ime, "Neddy St. Omer." The accusation dyalty to the monarch was answered with wathing sarcasm. When George Onslow, from the ministerial side, taxed him with want of "pect for the crown, Burke indignantly replied that be honoured the king as much as any

:

but added, with a most significant wave shand towards the Treasury bench, “that La feeling did not extend to his majesty's man»vit and maid-servant, his ox and his ass." me of the parliamentary amenities of those ay would not have been tolerated in our own

punctilious times; as, for instance, where is describes the minister of the day as ing down in state, attended by his creafall denominations, beasts clean and untem;" or again, when on the chairman of the Last India Company beginning to read some wl-known public papers in the House, he ply rose and begged leave to send for his trap. One of his finest pieces of sarcasm

in a speech against the employment of ed Indians in the American war. General Payne bad summoned seventeen Indian na

to repair to the king's standard," and she enjoining them to refrain from scalping

prisoners, had engaged to pay a price for the scape of the dead. Burke illustrated this

of action by the supposed instance of a not on Tower Hill. There was a menagerie at the Tower in those days, and country cousins ating Lotion generally included a visit to the beasts in the programme of London sights, vice indeed arose the popular expression of

"seeing the lions." Burke supposed the keeper of this menagerie turning his savage charges loose among the people, but saying to them emphatically: "My gentle lions, my sentimental wolves, my tender-hearted hyenas, go forth, but take care not to hurt men, women, or children." On his side, however, he had to endure language which, if used against the obscurest member of the present day, would probably lead to a speedy visit to the "clock tower." When he had been nearly twenty years in Parliament, and was acknowledged as certainly the most brilliant and probably the greatest statesman of that assembly, he was publicly designated as "that reptile Mr. Burke," by Major Scott, the nominee and thickand-thin partisan of Warren Hastings in the House of Commons.

THE "ROCKINGHAMITES " TURNED OUT; PURCHASE OF "GREGORIES."

66

George III. had submitted to Lord Rockingham's taking office, as a makeshift, to get rid of Grenville, and consequently turned Rockingham and his friends out, so soon as that purpose was answered. Going into opposition with his patron, Burke did good service by publishing a masterly vindication of the principles and policy of the Rockingham party, under the title, A Short Account of a late Short Administration; and still further, in a humorous letter to the Public Advertiser, supposed to be written by a tallowchandler and common councilman, appropriately named Whittington, who clumsily takes up the cudgels for the new ministry against that lately in office. The main design of my taking pen in hand," says Burke, in the character of the worthy cit, "was to refute the silly author of a late publication, called A Short Account of a late Short Administration. This half-sheet accomptant shows his ill-humour in the very title; he calls one year and twenty days a short administration; whereas I can prove, by the rule of three direct, that it is as much as any ministry in these times had any right to expect." This assertion the correspondent of the Advertiser makes good by enumerating the five administrations-of Pitt, of Newcastle, of Bute, of Grenville, and of Rockingham- that had been successively turned out in five years, giving a year and sixty days as the average duration of each. With a humorous and pungent attack on Lord Chatham, who was now once again in office, the letter ends. It fully answered its purpose, and set the whole town laughing.

Burke had always been, for his position, a poor man-a circumstance which supercilious

Horace Walpole does not forget, when he sneeringly remarks, in reference to his fearlessness, that insolence is more easily tolerated in an inferior than in an inferior raised above his superiors. In 1768, however, Burke became a landed proprietor. He says, in a letter to his friend Shackleton, "I have made a push with all I could collect of my own, and the aid of my friends, to cast a little root in this country. I have purchased a house with six hundred acres of land in Buckinghamshire, twenty-four miles from London, where I now am. It is a place exceedingly pleasant; and I purpose, God willing, to become a farmer in good earnest."

This "house and land" was the estate of Gregories, or Butler's Court, close to Beacons. field. It cost Burke £28,000, and many have been the conjectures as to the means by which he raised this considerable sum. Detractors hinted at secret grants of public money, bribes, and other disreputable sources; but the truth seems to have been that Lord Rockingham, who felt the obligation he was under to Burke for the most valuable political assistance, pressed upon bis brilliant coadjutor the sum necessary to make up the purchase-money after Burke had devoted to that purpose the inheritance he had received on the death of his father and his brother Garret, and as much as he could raise by way of loan from various members of his family. The Marquess never intended that the sum he lent Burke-it would have been much larger, and bestowed as a free gift, but for the refusal of the latter-should be repaid. Shortly before his death he sent for Mr. Lee, his legal adviser, and desired him to draw up a codicil to his will, cancelling every paper that might be found containing any acknowledgment of debt due to him from Edmund Burke. It was a transaction alike honourable to giver and recipient; for Burke had been a valuable adviser to Lord Rockingham in the management of that nobleman's vast estates; and had remained a poor man, in spite of offers from the ministry, because he would not quit the leader, who had valued and honoured him. He always took great interest in everything that related to his estate, retaining some 160 acres of the land in his own hands, and farming them with a good deal of discrimination. It sounds whimsical to find the orator who made his opponents tremble and falter, in the discussion of imperial questions, descending to details of the fattening of hogs, and the getting of twenty-four acres of wheat into the ground. That he made great efforts in completing the purchase of Gregories is shown, among other

circumstances, by his being compelled, a year later, to apply to his friend Garrick for the loan of a thousand pounds for a year, on his bond. No doubt the request was granted, as was a similar one made not long after by a very dif ferent kind of borrower, poor Goldsmith, who, receiving what he asks for, is profuse in acknow. ledgments to "his honest little man." Burke probably got the money, for Garrick was a friendly man enough. A couple of months later the statesman sends a present of a turtle to the actor, humorously declaring that as the turtle is declared by epicures to contain in itself all kinds of flesh, fish, and fowl, it is a fitting dish for one "who can represent all the solidity of flesh, the volatility of fowl, and the oddity of fish." Whether, on the whole, Burke would not have done better to defer his purchase for a while, or to have chosen an estate where the price was not augmented by the obligation imposed on the purchaser to take the collection of paintings and sculpture belonging to his predecessor, is a question. Certain it is that in his later career the proprietor of Gregories was frequently hampered by debt, though he practised all the economy compatible with the maintenance of a frank but plain hospitality, inviting his friends literally to a joint of mutton, and making his carriage horses take their turn at the plough. Burke had the true light-heartedness of an Irishman, in spite of the cares of statesmanship, and the fret and fever of political life. He took Johnson down to see his new purchase, and the Doctor seems to have stared at the magnitude of the house and the extent of the arrangements generally. "Non equidem invideo, miror magis," was his observation, though Boswell seems to think that a little momentary envy may have mingled with the great lexicographer's natural surprise, when he viewed his friend's broad acres and handsome country house, and thought of the comparatively small reward he had himself obtained for a life of literary toil. But he was not a man to let such a feeling as envy be more than momentary, the brave old Doctor, and knew well how to apply to himself his advice to Goldsmith against the love of outward show. "Nil te quæsiveris extra," was a motto he could act up to in his own case; and, with his simple habits, it is a question whether what he called in Mr. Thrale's case, "the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice," would have had any especial charms for him.

Burke was always fond of a jest, and appreciated a mystification with an enjoyment that was truly Irish. In the literary club, of course

Gamith was the ordinary butt of practical jokes, not always in the best taste. On one occasion a relative was dressed up to personify awid Irish authoress, anxious to get the great Mr. Goldsmith's patronage for her poems. At another time the simple poet was made to apologize for words he had never uttered; even Burke could not resist playing upon poor Goldy's credulity.

BURKE'S CONDUCT TO BARRY AND CRABBE. A passage in his life which shows him at his best is connected with the history of that restless and irritable genius, his countryman Barry, the artist. It was in the year 1763 that Barry, young, poor, and quite friendless, found out Burke in Dublin. Struck with the indications d gentas and determination in the forlorn young ma, Burke brought him to London, introduced him to various artists, found him employment in apring pictures, and subsequently, in conjunc ta with his brother Richard, sent him to Rome totaly. His letters to Barry, who, combative and tenacious, had become involved in various quares, are admirable for the kindly wisdom of their general tone. Burke advises him as a father might advise a son, and with kindly foresight sets before him the trouble and annoy

that will inevitably attend a state of extinual captiousness. "Believe me, my dear Barry," he says, "that the arms with which the A position of the world are to be combated, and the qualities by which it is to be reconciled tos and we reconciled to it, are moderation,

eness, a little indulgence to others, and a great deal of distrust of ourselves. ... Nothing

be so unworthy of a well-composed soul as to pass away life in bickerings and litigations, inarling and scuffling with every one about us. Agan and again, my dear Barry, we must be at peace with our species; if not for their sakes, Je very much for our own." Then he gently forecasts the effect, in Barry's own case, of this

spirit; and it is remarkable how entirely his words were verified by the event. He supposes Barry to have returned from Italy: "By degrees you will produce some of your own

ks; they will be variously criticised. You defend them; you will abuse those that have attacked you; expostulations, discussions, es possibly challenges, will go forward; you stan your brethren; they will shun you. In the meantime, gentlemen will avoid your friendship, for fear of being engaged in your quarres; you will be obliged for maintenance to do anything for anybody; your very talents

will depart for want of hope and encouragement, and you will go out of the world fretted, disappointed, and ruined. Nothing but my real regard for you could induce me to set these considerations in this light before you. Remember, we are born to serve and to adorn our country, and not to contend with our fellowcitizens; and that, in particular, your business is to paint, and not to dispute." It would have been well for Barry had he taken this wise advice to heart; but his combative temper was too much for him, and he managed to offend nearly everybody with whom he came in contact. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the most courtly of men, of whom Goldsmith wrote,

"To coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering,

When they talked without sense, he was still hard of hearing; "

even polite Sir Joshua could not endure petulant Barry, who in his turn hated the president of the Royal Academy, and even expected Burke to withdraw his friendship from Reynolds in deference to his own dislike. He rose to eminence, for his talents were too great to be altogether kept down, even by such a character; but he did not achieve half of what he might have done, if, following his wise friend's counsel, he had been content to take men as they were, and to paint instead of disputing. To Burke himself he was impertinent; and at one time, when his friend and patron was sitting to him for a portrait, to be presented to an old friend, Dr. Brocklesby, Barry chose to play the occupied man, and to declare that the statesman, who at some inconvenience was devoting to him the hours he could snatch in the intervals of parliamentary business, should send a day's notice of his coming; and on his arriving unexpectedly, was too much engaged to give him a sitting. Whereupon Burke, in an ironical yet exceedingly temperate letter, made Barry somewhat ashamed of himself. Burke was too generous altogether to withdraw his countenance, even where his forbearance was so sorely tried. He continued to visit Barry, and to assist him, with valuable suggestions, when pecuniary aid was no longer necessary; but the cordiality of their intercourse was gone; and in the correspondence the hearty "My dear Barry" of other days is replaced by the ceremonious "Sir," or "Mr. Burke's compliments." But the wayward and contentious painter in secret cherished a sense of the noble character of the man whose patience he had often tried. When he heard of the statesman's death, he felt, perhaps not without remorse, what this man had been to him.

"The

peace of God be ever with Edmund Burke," he tearfully exclaimed ; "he was my first, my best, and my wisest friend; and I behaved, indeed, too harshly to him."

Burke

Among the works ascribed to Burke's eloquent pen were those remarkable letters, signed "Junius," that. appeared in Mr. Woodfall's newspaper, The Daily Advertiser, from 1769 to 1770, containing bitterly adverse criticism of the deeds of ministers, and in some instances, as in the celebrated "Letter to the King," using the language of warning and reproof to royalty itself. The authorship of the Junius letters has never been fully proved, though the great preponderance of evidence is towards Sir Philip Francis, for whom Lord Macaulay, for instance, marshals a formidable array of facts. was believed by Sir William Blackstone, Lord Mansfield, and other good judges of evidence, to have been the author; but, on the other hand, it must be remembered that he not only gave "his word and honour" that he was not the writer, but long afterwards spoke of the Junius letters as written in a flashy and meritricious style, calculated to mislead the ignorant. He would hardly have done this if they had proceeded from his pen. Barry was not the only man of genius who had reason to bless the day when he first looked on the face of Edmund Burke. In 1779 there came to London, from Aldborough, in Suffolk, a young surgeon's assistant, named George Crabbe. He was full of literary aspirations, and hoped, like Chatterton, to find in London a field whence he should glean fame and profit. Five pounds, borrowed from a sympathising friend, formed his whole stock of money; and by the time he reached London the five pounds had dwindled to three. Like Chatterton, he wrote assiduously, and sent manuscripts to booksellers, who would none of his work, An application for assistance to Lord North, the Prime Minister, remained unanswered; and no wonder, for Lord North, with the American war on his hands, had little leisure to devote to Crabbe's woes and wishes. A copy of verses addressed to Lord Chancellor Thurlow procured from "Old Gruff" only a dry intimation that his avocations left him no time to read poetry. At last, when he was reduced literally to his last shilling, when arrest for a small debt stared him in the face, and he knew not whence to procure his next meal, the unfortunate poet addressed a manly and pathetic letter to Burke, a man proverbial for sympathy and helpfulness. The warm heart of Burke was touched by the modest, manly fortitude and quiet bravery of the unknown,

friendless man of letters, struggling so gallantly against adverse fortune. He received Crabbe into his house, employed all his powerful interest for him, read and revised his poems, and carried two of them to Dodsley, who published one of them, introduced the young poet to Fox, Rey. nolds, and other men of influence, helped him to enter the Church, and procured him the post of domestic chaplain to the Duke of Rutland. Thurlow also seems to have thought that Burke's protégé had something in him, and very practically apologised for his gruffness by the gift of a hundred-pound note to Crabbe, and afterwards by bestowing two small livings upon him. Crabbe used to speak of Burke with hearty gratitude as the founder of his modest fortunes. Various men of minor ability had also cause to thank Burke for substantial help; and this was the more praiseworthy from the fact that his position was far superior to his means, and brought him much more honour than emolument; and frequently he was giving away what he could ill spare.

REPRESENTATION OF BRISTOL. BURKE AS A MINISTER.

At the general election of 1774, Burke was returned for the borough of Malton, in Yorkshire; but just as he was returning thanks to his constituents, came a deputation from Bristol, to inform him that he had been put in to nomination for that important borough, and begging him to lose no time in presenting himself to the electors. Journeying night and day, with the concurrence of his friends at Malton, he presented himself at Bristol within forty-eight hours-three hundred and fifty miles in two days was not bad travelling a century ago-and after a hard contest of three weeks was returned triumphantly.

Already, at the commencement of his connection with Bristol, he took care to set himself right upon a very important point, the question, namely, whether he would vote in Parliament according to his own opinion or to the wishes of his constitutents. Thereupon he spoke out boldly and manfully, and pointed out in a masterly way the difference between a representative and a delegate. He declared himself ready to devote his time and his energies to the benefit of his constituents, and to prefer their interests to his ; but reserved to himself full freedom of action according to his unbiassed opinion and his conscience. "Your representative owes you not his industry only," he bravely said, "but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion." He