of this document demonstrates the calm practical sense and benignant spirit of its author, intent as ever on the true cause of freedom. He once more also exerted himself on behalf of the Irish

Catholics against the severity of the penal laws. On the 3d January, 1792, he wrote his first letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, one of the ablest essays on Catholic claims and on the state of Ireland

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ever produced. It abounds in unimpassioned and prophetic wisdom. Not content with this, he had his son appointed agent to the Catholics; and he sent him to Ireland, introducing him as "his other and better self" to his old friend, Lord Charlemont, in a letter, in which he says, "In the prosperity of your country, I include the most valuable interest of this." Burke's efforts were successful. One act that passed soon after in the Irish parliament conferred upon the Catholics the privileges of practising law, intermarrying with Protestants, together with further important advantages in connexion with education and commerce. Another act, in 1793, gave Catholics the elective franchise. Burke, notwithstanding, was now more than ever opposed to Parliamentary Reform, as he showed in his earnest speech against Charles (afterwards Earl) Grey's ineffectual attempt on the 30th April, 1792, in the Commons, in favour of that measure.

Early in 1792 the angel of death cast a shade over the social life of Burke, which, in the grief and despondency it caused him, seemed to forebode that there were darker and sadder shadows to come. On the 23d of February, in that year, he lost his eminent friend Sir Joshua Reynolds, and in him almost the last of the literary and convivial associates of his early years. Sir Joshua had always regarded Burke as the first of men, and was in turn loved, esteemed, and respected by his illustrious ally. Reynolds had assisted Burke when embarrassed; and by his will, after cancelling a bond for 2000l., he bequeathed him 20007. more, and appointed him guardian to his niece and heiress, Miss Mary Palmer, of Torrington, in the county of Devon, who became, in the autumn after her uncle's death, the second wife of Burke's friend, Murrough, fifth Earl of Inchiquin, afterwards, in 1800, first Marquess of Thomond. Burke and Reynolds had been so continually together as to have most of their ideas in common. From the fulness of Burke's mind, Sir Joshua confessedly borrowed much, and made use of it in his own writings and academical addresses. "Burke," said Malone, "was to Reynolds what Scipio was to

Lelius." Burke wrote in one of the public journals the following beautiful character of the friend whose departure he so bitterly lamented:

"The illness of Sir Joshua Reynolds was long, but borne with a mild and cheerful fortitude, without the least mixture of any thing irritable or querulous, agreeably to the placid and even tenour of his whole life. He had, from the beginning of his malady, a distinct view of his dissolution; and he contemplated it with that entire composure which nothing but the innocence, integrity, and usefulness of his life, and an unaffected submission to the will of Providence, could bestow. In this situation he had every consolation from family tenderness, which his own kindness to his family had indeed well deserved.

"Sir Joshua Reynolds was on very many accounts one of the most memorable men of his time. He was the first Englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. In taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. In portrait he went beyond them; for he communicated to that department of the art, in which English artists are the most engaged, a variety, a fancy, and a dignity derived from the higher branches, which even those who professed them in a superior manner did not always preserve when they delineated individual nature. His portraits remind the spectator of the invention of history and of the amenity of landscape. In painting portraits, he appears not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it from a higher sphere. His paintings illustrate his lessons, and his lessons seem to have been derived from his paintings. He possessed the theory as perfectly as the practice of his art. To be such a painter, he was a profound and penetrating philosopher.

"In full happiness of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art and by the learned in science, courted by the great, caressed by sovereign powers, and celebrated by distinguished

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poets, his native humility, modesty, and candour never forsook him even on surprise or provocation, nor was the least degree of arrogance or assumption visible to the most scrutinising eye in any part of his conduct or discourse.

His talents of every kind, powerful from nature, and not meanly cultivated by letters-his social virtues in all the relations and in all the habitudes of life-rendered him the centre of a very great and unparalleled variety of agreeable societies, which will be dissipated by his death. He had too much merit not to provoke some jealousy, too much innocence to provoke any enmity. The loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow.

"Hail! and farewell!"

Some time prior to the July of 1792, when the Duke of Brunswick issued his rash manifesto against the French nation, and the war began between the German potentates and the Gallic Republic, Burke, with the knowledge and approbation of the British government, sent, in the autumn of 1791, his son to the princes of the House of Bourbon, and the other royal personages assembled at Coblentz, in order to know the dispositions of the allied powers. The news brought by Mr. Richard Burke, who came back in company with M. Cazalés, was not very encouraging. From the apparent want of concert which he learned existed between the belligerents, Edmund Burke did not augur highly of the success of their efforts. Hence his opinion that nothing short of a universal combination of established governments, co-operating with the royalists of France, could subdue a system which, if not crushed, he conceived would be destructive to all existing society. Soon after the retreat from France of the armies of Austria and Prussia, and the alarming successes of the republicans, Burke wrote, in November 1792, a memorial, entitled "Heads for consideration on the Present State of Affairs." In it he exhorted this country to take the lead in forming a general union with other nations for

the repression of French aggression. In this pamphlet occurs the following remarkable passage:

"There never was, nor is, nor ever will be, nor ever can be, the least rational hope of making an impression on France by any continental powers, if England is not a part, is not the directing part, is not the soul of the whole confederacy against it. This, so far as it is an anticipation of future, is grounded on the whole tenour of former history."

The republican government hastened the conclusion to which Burke would have England come. The acts of France to promote her own aggrandisement, and her measures and decrees tending to interfere with the internal government of this country, hurried on the rupture. On the 21st January, 1793, Louis XVI. was murdered; and before the month ended, the war with England was begun. Burke, as may be supposed, became intensely interested. His eagerness in the cause forcibly appeared in an incident that is told of him. In July 1793, the cheering news came that Valenciennes was taken by the Duke of York. The minister, Mr. Dundas, dispatched a messenger to communicate the tidings to Mr. Burke, who was found at the play at a country theatre at Chalfont St. Peter's, two or three miles from Beaconsfield. Burke, after perusing Dundas's letter, went upon the stage, and read it to the audience with every mark of delight.

Valenciennes proved, however, but a transitory success; disasters followed, and the prospect grew dark and gloomy. Men were dejected, and ministers perplexed. Still Burke wrote on undismayed. His pamphlets of prophetic encouragement to England, and of determined denunciation to France, followed one another in rapid succession. His letter to the Duke of Portland on the conduct of the minority came out in August 1793, his "Remarks on the Policy of the Allies" in the October of the same year, and his preface to a translation of M. Brissot's address to his constituents in 1794. His four famous "Letters on a Regicide Peace" are of somewhat later date, being published in 1796 and 1797 : ·