CHAPTER VI.

Establishment of the Emigrant School at Penn.-Letters to W. H, and to J. Gahagan, Esq.-Letters on a Regicide Peace. His prophetic Spirit as opposed to that of Mr. PittReport concerning him.-Letter to Mrs. Leadbeater.-Letter on the Affairs of Ireland.-His Illness and Death.

It should have been mentioned in a previous page, that in the year 1794, Mr. Burke, commiserating the destitute condition of many of the emigrant children whose fathers had perished either by the guillotine or the sword in the general convulsion of their country, and of others whose means were inadequate to the purposes of education, applied to government for assistance in order to form an establishment adapted to supply this want, which he volunteered to superintend. This request was very liberally complied with. The house appropriated for the purpose had been the residence of his old friend General Haviland, which Mr. Burke, in the year 1793, induced government to lease from the person to whom it had been sold by the devizees of the General, in order to fit it up for the reception of several of the unhappy French clergy who, houseless and pennyless, were scattered through the country, subsisting on charity. From some unexpected difficulties which occurred, this humane design at the moment did not take effect. The house however continued in possession of the head of the barrack establishment, General de Lancey, in trust for his Majesty, by whom it was now given up, by

order of the Lords of the Treasury, to the Duke of Portland, the Marquis of Buckingham, the Lord Chancellor, Mr. Windham, Mr. Burke, Dr. Walker King, and others, as trustees for the management of the school, and it was opened immediately afterwards. The Abbé Maraine presided over this establishment, and had for his coadjutor the learned and amiable Abbé Chevallier.

An antiquarian correspondent, who was connected with this institution as treasurer, after the death of the original founder, having kindly communicated to the author some memoranda concerning it, they cannot perhaps be better given than in his own words.

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Penn, in Buckinghamshire, a bold promontory, to which Mr. Burke frequently resorted, at one time as the friend of General Haviland, and latterly as the patron of the emigrant school there, is situated about three miles north-west of Beaconsfield. Many of the residents are distinguished for patriarchal longevity, not a few of them attaining a century of years. The family of Grove trace an uninterrupted descent from the conquest as proprietors of the same estate. The last possessor, Mr. Edmund Grove, died in June 1823, at the advanced age of ninety-four; and being well known in this part of the country as a fair representative of the ancient English yeoman, may be worth noticing. When young, he had been the play-fellow of the late Viscount Curzon, and of John Baker Holroyd, who died Earl of Sheffield, and was known to most of the surrounding nobility and gentry by the name of Yeoman Grove-a name now disused for the more assuming appellation of Esquire,

but formerly applied to those who farmed their own estates. Yeoman Grove was likewise known to his late Majesty, who permitted him an unusual freedom. Whenever they met in the street at Windsor, which was not unfrequent on market-day, he would grasp the royal hand with fervour, and in a way peculiarly his own, inquire How does your Majesty do?How is the Queen?-How are all the children?' which commonly occasioned the Royal Personage a hearty good-humoured laugh.

"Tyler's Green House, the residence of General Haviland, was formerly the property and residence of the Bakers, ancestors of the Earl of Sheffield, of Sheffield Place, county of Sussex. It is now no more; nought could reprieve the tottering mansion from its fall.' In 1822 it was sold by auction in lots, of course pulled down and carried away, so that scarcely a vestige now remains to mark the spot where senators were wont to converse, and wit, whim, and eloquence to flow in no ordinary current amid the social circle formed by the Burkes. Previous to the demolition, I had a correct drawing made of the front, which I have placed among my illustrations of the county of Bucks.

"To those who are acquainted with the country, the guides to the site of the mansion are two of the largest and most lofty fir-trees in the kingdom. The General was accustomed to call them his two grenadiers; one was more lofty than the other, an unlucky monkey kept by Mrs. Haviland having ascended to the summit of the other, and cropped the leading branch. These trees may be distinctly seen from the terrace at Windsor-from Harrow-on-the-Hill

-from St. Paul's Church-and from the rising ground near Reading: in the woody neighbourhood of Penn they occasionally serve as a guide to bewildered pedestrians. I saved them from the levelling axe in 1798, by my representation of their utility, and I am assured that the present noble proprietor, Richard Earl Howe, will not suffer so grand a feature on his extensive domains in Buckinghamshire to be destroyed.

"However incredible it may appear, it is vouched for as a fact by persons of respectability in the neighbourhood, that the cannonading at the reduction of Valenciennes in 1793 was distinctly heard by the inhabitants of Penn. This no doubt will be laughed at by many as utterly beyond belief, but there are many authentic instances on record of the distance to which sound occasionally travels, depending no doubt on a peculiar state of the atmosphere at the time it is understood, beyond question, that the cannonading on that occasion was heard at Dover. During the late war, the firing of cannon when ships were engaged at sea during the night has likewise been distinguished at Penn; the time has been frequently noted, and the fact shortly afterward ascertained from the public papers.

"In April, 1796,* the emigrant school was opened, and Mr. Burke, for the remainder of his life, watched over it with the solicitude, not merely of a

This must be an error of my correspondent. The school at least existed previous to this time, but may have been removed at the time stated to the house in question, as in another communication he says he delivered up possession, on the part of government, to Mr. Burke, March 30, 1796.

friend, but of a father. His smiles might be said to have gladdened the hearts of the exiles; I have witnessed many interesting scenes there of that nature; they were doomed, alas! too soon to lose their kind protector. At the annual distribution of prizes, the senior scholar delivered a Latin oration in the presence of a large assembly of nobility and gentry in the great hall, in which Mr. Burke was always alluded to as their parent and friend.

"Mr. Burke assigned to these youths a blue uniform, wearing in their hats a white cockade inscribed • Vive le Roi;' those who had lost their fathers had it placed on a bloody label, those who had lost uncles on a black one. The Marquis of Buckingham made them a present of a small brass cannon, and a pair of colours, which were displayed on public days, and seemed a source of no little pride and gratification to those future defenders of loyalty.

"After the death of Mr. Burke I was appointed treasurer, and received from the Lords of the Treasury fifty pounds per month for the support of the establishment. Upon the restoration of legitimate monarchy in France in 1814, the money was remitted to me thence, until the dissolution of the institution on the 1st of August, 1820, when on the departure of the superior and the pupils, the colours were presented to me as a token of remembrance, and I retain them with much satisfaction, from the interesting associations they recal to mind.

"Many of the youths educated in this college so humanely founded through the influence and under the auspices of Mr. Burke, at present occupy important stations in various parts of the dominions