PLAN OF ECONOMICAL REFORM CARRIED.

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which you have not had a share, and perhaps the greatest share, in the benefit. . . . . Believe me, if Ireland is beneficial to you, it is not so from the parts in which it is restrained, but from those in which it is left free, though not left unrivalled. The greater its freedom, the greater must be your advantage. If you should lose in one way, you will gain in twenty."

To further carry out amelioration, a bill was passed disqualifying revenue officers for voting in the election for members of parliament; and Mr. Burke himself brought forward and carried, with some unavoidable modifications, his great plan of reform in the civil-list expenditure. This measure entailed the regulation of his own office of Paymaster-General, and in effecting that, he voluntarily reduced his income by 1300l. a year, which he appropriated to the public service.

In the midst of these salutary changes, just as the country was reviving from its stupor, the administration was in part broken, sadly and suddenly. On the 1st July, 1782, to the grief of the nation, the Marquess of Rockingham died. Burke deeply mourned a friend-his help to fame, and the object of his warmest veneration and attachment. Some few years after, Burke joined in a lasting tribute to the remembrance of his good and generous patron. Wentworth House, the seat of the Earls Fitzwilliam, the relatives and heirs of the marquess, is about four miles north-west from Rotherham, in Yorkshire. On approaching that superb mansion, the eye is struck with a magnificent mausoleum, erected in 1788 by the marquess's nephew, the fourth Earl Fitzwilliam, in honour of his uncle. The monument occupies an elevated situation, and is itself ninety feet high. Its upper story, of the Ionic order, discloses a beautiful sarcophagus; but the most interesting part is the interior of the basement, a room covered by a dome, and supported by eight columns. In the wall of this apartment, within the pillars, are four recesses, receptacles for eight busts, the images of the marquess's able and attached associates, who seem thus to continue their alliance, and to be with him even in the silence of

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death. The busts are those of Edmund Burke, the Duke of Portland, Frederick Montagu, Sir George Saville, Charles James Fox, Admiral Keppel, John Lee, and Lord George Cavendish. In the centre stands a white marble statue of the marquess in his robes,

the size of life, by Nollekins. The statue has a square pedestal. There, as well as the titles of the good statesman, may be read his eulogium in verse and prose, by two of those whose effigies grace the space around. The poetry, by the Right Hon. Frederick Montagu, is as follows:

INSCRIPTION IN THE ROCKINGHAM MAUSOLEUM.

Angels, whose guardian care is England, spread
Your shadowing wings o'er patriot Wentworth dead :
With sacred awe his hallowed ashes keep,

Where commerce, science, honour, friendship weep
The pious hero-the deeply-sorrowing wife-
All the soft ties that blest his virtuous life.
Gentle, intrepid, generous, mild, and just ;
These heartfelt titles grace his honour'd dust.
No fields of blood by laurels ill repaid;

No plunder'd provinces disturb his shade;

But white-rob'd peace composed his closing eyes,
And join'd with soft humanity her sighs.
They mourn their patron gone, their friend no more,
And England's tears his short-lived power deplore.

The character, in prose, by Edmund Burke, is this:

"CHARLES MARQUESS OF ROCKINGHAM.

"A statesman in whom constancy, fidelity, sincerity, and directness were the sole instruments of his policy. His virtues were his arts. A clear, sound, unadulterated sense, not perplexed with intricate design, or disturbed by ungoverned passion, gave consistency, dignity, and effect to all his measures. In opposition he respected the principles of government; in administration he provided for the liberties of the people. He employed his moments of power in realising every thing which he had promised in a popular situation. This was the distinguishing mark of his conduct. After twenty-four years of service to the public, in a critical and trying time, he left no debt of just expectation unsatisfied.

"By his prudence and patience he brought together a party which it was the great object of his labours to render permanent, not as an instrument of ambition, but as a living depository of principle.

“The virtues of his public and private life were not in him of different characters. It was the same feeling, benevolent, liberal mind that, in the internal relations of life, conciliates the unfeigned love of those who see men as they are, which made him an inflex

ible patriot. He was devoted to the cause of liberty, not because he was haughty and intractable, but because he was beneficent and humane. Let his successors, who from this house behold this monument, reflect that their conduct will make it their glory or their reproach. Let them be persuaded that similarity of manners, not proximity of blood, gives them an interest in this statue.

"REMEMBER-RESEMBLE-PERSEVERE,"

On Lord Rockingham's death, the secretary of state, William second Earl of Shelburne (afterwards Marquess of Lansdowne) was appointed his successor as first lord of the treasury. The condition of the Earl's call to the premiership was that the American colonies should not be entirely severed from the mother country. This gave umbrage to Burke (who personally disliked Lord Shelburne), to Fox, Cavendish, and Sheridan: they resigned, and fell once more into the ranks of the opposition. William Pitt became chancellor of the exchequer. The administration had soon to give up the undertaking which made Shelburne premier. The 30th November, 1782, provisional articles of peace were signed at Paris between Great Britain and the United States of America on the basis of a full acknowledgment of the independence of the latter. In the following January, preliminaries of peace were also entered into with France and Spain. Thus virtually ended the American war, by Edmund Burke himself pronounced "an era of calamity, disgrace, and downfall, which no feeling mind will ever mention without a tear for England." Nevertheless, pride has since wiped that tear away-the pride of a subsequent mighty contest, whose glorious ending made the nation herself again. It should be ever borne in mind that in the one war the genius of Burke was antagonistic―assenting in the other.

BURKE'S DOMESTIC LIFE-HIS ACQUISITION OF A COUNTRY-HOUSE AT BEACONSFIELD-HIS AGRICULTURAL PURSUITS-HOSPITALITY AT GREGORIES -BURKE'S MANNERS AND HABITS-ANECDOTES-MARIE ANTOINETTEBURKE IN SCOTLAND THE LITERARY CLUB BARETTI'S TRIALBURKE'S BROTHER RICHARD-BURKE'S SON RICHARD-WILLIAM BURKE JOHN BOURKE-BURKE'S SISTER, MRS. FRENCH-DEATH OF GOLDSMITH JOHNSON'S VISIT TO BEACONSFIELD-ABRAHAM SHACKLETONMRS. LEADBEATER'S POETRY-LORD NORTH-GARRICK-MISS BURNEY -BURKE'S PHILANTHROPY-BARRY THE PAINTER-CRABBE THE POET.