present state of affairs; but as I may never be able to finish it, I regard this matter of defence as so much the most important of all considerations at this moment, that it supersedes all concern of my bodily and mental weakness, and urges me, by an impulse I cannot resist, to spend at least my last breath in laying before you some part of the anxious thoughts with which I have been oppressed, and which, more than any bodily distemper, have sunk me to the condition in which you know I am. I have no hand to write, but I am able to dictate from the bed on which I pass my nights and days*.

What I say may have no weight; but it is possible that it may tend to put other men of more ability, and who are in a situation where their abilities may be more useful, into a train of thinking. What I dictate may not be pleasing either to the great or to the multitude; but looking back on my past public life, though not without many faults and errors, I have never made many sacrifices to the favour of the great, or to the humour of the people. I never remember more than two instances in which I have given way to popularity; and those two are the things of which, in the whole course of my life, now at the end of it, I have the most reason to repent. Such has been the habit of my public life, even when individual favour and popular countenance might be plausibly presented to me as the means of doing my duty the more effectually.

* This unfinished letter, which was dictated from his deathbed by Mr. Burke, was one of the last, if not the very last, that he ever wrote.

But now, alas! of what value to me are all those helps or all those impediments? When the damp chill sweat of death already begins to glaze our visage, of what moment is it to us whether the vain breath of man blows hot or cold upon it? But our duties to men are not extinguished with our regard to their opinions. A country which has been dear to us from our birth ought to be dear to us, as from our entrance, so to our final exit from the stage upon which we have been appointed to act; and in the career of the duties which must in part be enjoyments of our new existence, how can we better start, and from what more proper post, than the performance of those duties which have made the occupations of the first part of the course allotted to us?

*****

MR. CURRAN TO THE REV. HENRY WESTON, NEWMARKET, COUNTY CORK.

London, 31, Chandos Street, July 10, 1773.

I WOULD have taken a last farewell of my dear Harry from Dublin, if I had not written so shortly before I left it, and, indeed, I was not sorry for being exempt from a task for which a thousand causes conspired to make me at that juncture unqualified. It was not without regret that I could leave a country, which my birth, education, and connexions had rendered dear to me, and venture alone, almost a child of fortune, into a land of strangers. In such moments of despondence, when fancy plays the self-tormentor, she

commonly acquits herself to a miracle, and will not fail to collect in a single group the most hideous forms of anticipated misfortune. I considered myself, besides, as resigning for ever the little indulgences that youth and inexperience may claim for their errors, and passing to a period of life in which the best can scarce escape the rigid severity of censure; nor could the little trivial vanity of taking the reins of my own conduct alleviate the pain of so dear-bought a transition from dependance to liberty. Full of these reflections as I passed the gate, I could not but turn and take a last lingering look of poor Almamater; it was the scene of many a boyish folly, and of many a happy hour. I should have felt more confusion at part of the retrospect, had I not been relieved by a recollection of the valuable friendships I had formed there. Though I am far from thinking such a circumstance can justify a passed misconduct, yet I cannot call that time totally a blank, in which one has acquired the greatest blessing of humanity. It was with a melancholy kind of exultation I counted over the number of those I loved there, while my heart gave a sigh to each name in the catalogue; nay, even the fellows, whom I never loved, I forgave at that moment; the parting tear blotted out every injury, and I gave them as hearty a benediction as if they had deserved it; as for my general acquaintance (for I could not but go the round), I packed their respective little sighs into one great sigh, as I turned round on my heel. My old friend and handmaid Betty, perceiving me in motion, got her hip under the strong-box,

with my seven shirts, which she had rested against the rails during the delay, and screwed up her face into a most rueful caricature, that might provoke a laugh at another time; while her young son Denny, grasping his waistband in one hand, and a basket of sea provisions in the other, took the lead in the procession, and so we journeyed on to George's Quay, where the ship was just ready to sail. When I entered, I found

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my fellow passengers seated round a large table in the cabin; we were fourteen in number. young highland lord had taken the head of the table and the conversation, and with a modesty peculiar to himself, gave a history of his travels, and his intimate connexions with the princes of the empire. An old debauched officer was complaining of the gout, while a woman, who sat next to him (good Heaven! what a tongue!) gave a long detail of what her father suffered from that disorder. To do them all justice, they exerted themselves most zealously for the common entertainment. As for my part, I had nothing to say; nor, if I had, was any one at leisure to listen to me; so I took possession of what the captain called a bed, wondering with Partridge, 'how they could play so many different tunes at the same time without putting each other out.' I was expecting that the seasickness would soon give those restless mouths different employment, but in that I was disappointed; the sea was so calm that one only was sick during the passage, and it was not my good fortune that the lot should fall on that devil who never ceased chattering. There was no cure but patience; accordingly I

never stirred from my tabernacle (unless to visit my basket) till we arrived at Parkgate. Here, after the usual pillage at the custom-house, I laid my box down on the beach, seated myself upon it, and, casting my eyes over the Welsh mountains, I began to reflect on the impossibility of getting back without the precarious assistance of others. "Poor Jack!" thought I, "thou wert never till now so far from home, but thou mightest return on thine own legs. Here now must thou remain, for where here canst thou expect the assistance of a friend?" Whimsical as the idea was, it had power to affect me; until, at length, I was awakened from this reverie by a figure which approached me with the utmost affability; methought his looks seemed to say, ' Why is thy spirit troubled?' He pressed me to go into his house, and to eat of his bread,' and to' drink of his drink.' There was so much good-natured solicitude in the invitation, 'twas irresistible. I rose therefore, and followed him, ashamed of my uncharitable despondence. "Surely," thought I, "there is still humanity left amongst us," as I raised my eyes to the golden letters over his door, that offered entertainment and repose to the wearied traveller. Here I resolved to stay for the night, and agreed for a place in his coach next morning to Chester; but finding my loquacious fellow passenger had agreed for one in the same vehicle, I retracted my bargain, and agreed for my box only; I perceived, however, when I arose next morning, that my box was not sent, though the coach was gone. I was thinking how I should remedy this unlucky disappointment,