own neighborhood. He had a windmill in his park for the purpose of supplying the poor with cheap bread, which bread was served at his own table; and, as if clinging to the memory of the youth of his son, he formed a plan for the establishment of an emigrant school at Penn, where the children of those who had perished by the guillotine or the sword amid the French convulsions, could be received, supported, and educated. He made a generous appeal to government for the benefit of these children, which was as generously responded to. The house appropriated to this humane purpose had been inhabited by Burke's old friend, General Haviland; and after his death several emigré French priests sheltered within its walls. Until his last fatal illness Mr. Burke watched over the establishment with the solicitude of a friend and the tenderness of a father. The Lords of the Treasury allowed fifty pounds per month for its sustenance: the Marquis of Buckingham made them a present of a brass cannon and a stand of colors. When the Bourbons were restored in 1814 they relieved the government from this charge, and the institution was dissolved in 1820; in 1822 "Tyler's Green House," as it was called, was sold in lots, pulled down, and carried away; thus, Burke's own dwelling being destroyed by fire, and this building, sanctified by his sympathy and goodness, razed to the ground, little remains to mark the locality of places where all the distinguished men of the age congregated around "the Burkes," and where Edmund, almost to the last, extended hospitalities, coveted and appreciated by all who had any pretensions to be considered as distinguished either by talent or fortune.

It has frequently struck us as strange, the morbid avidity with which the world seizes upon the slightest evidence of abstraction in great men, to declare that their minds are fading, or impoverished: the public gapes for every trifle calculated to prove that the palsied fingers can no longer grasp the intellectual sceptre, and that the well-worn and hard-earned bays are as a crown of thorns to the pulseless brow. It was, in those days whispered in London that the great orator had become imbecile immediately after the publication of his "Letter to a Noble Lord;" and that he wandered about his park kissing his cows and horses.

A noble friend went immediately to Beaconsfield to ascertain the truth, and was delighted to find Mr. Burke anxious to read him passages from "A Regicide Peace," which he was then writing; after a little delicate manœuvring on his part, to ascertain the truth, Mr. Burke told him a touching incident which proved the origin of this calumny on his intellectual powers.

An old horse, a great favorite of his son's, and his constant companion, when both were full of life and health, had been turned out at the death of his master, to take his run of the park for the remainder of his life, at ease, with strict injunctions to the servants that he should neither be ridden, nor molested by any one. While musing one day, loitering along, Mr. Burke perceived this worn-out old servant come close up to him, and at length, after some moments spent in viewing his person, followed by seeming recollection and confidence, he deliberately rested his head upon his bosom. The singularity of the action itself, the remembrance of his dead son, its late master, who occupied so much of his thoughts at all times, and the apparent attachment, tenderness and intelligence of the creature towards him—as if it could sympathize with his inward sorrow—rushing at once into his mind, totally overpowered his firmness, and throwing his arms over its neck, he wept long and loudly.

But though his lucid and beautiful mind, however agonized, remained unclouded to the last, and his affections glowed towards his old friends as warmly as ever, his bodily health was failing fast; one of the last letters he ever dictated was to Mary Leadbeater, the daughter of his old friend and master, Shackleton; this lady was subsequently well known in Ireland as the author of "Cottage Dialogues." The first literary attempt, we believe, made towards the improvement of the lower order of Irish, was by her faithful and earnest pen; to this letter, congratulating her on the birth of a son, is a PS. where the invalid says:—"I have been at Bath these four months to no purpose, and am therefore to be removed to my own house at Beaconsfield to-morrow, to be nearer to a habitation more permanent, humbly and fearfully hoping that my better part may find a better mansion!"

It would seem as if he anticipated the hour of his passing away. He sent sweet messages of loving-kindness to all his friends, entreating and exchanging pardons; recapitulated his motives of action on various political emergencies; gave directions as to his funeral, and then listened with attention to some serious papers of Addison on religious subjects and on the immortality of the soul. His attendants after this were in the act of removing him to his bed, when indistinctly invoking a blessing on all around him, he sunk down and expired on the 9th of July, 1797, in the sixty-eighth year of his age.

"His end," said his friend Doctor Lawrence, "was suited to the simple greatness of mind which he displayed through life; every way unaffected, without levity, without ostentation, full of natural grace and dignity, he appeared neither to wish nor to dread, but patiently and placidly to await the appointed hour of his dissolution."