proper judgment of that subject. I don't think, however, there is as much respect paid to a man of letters on this side the water as you imagine. I don't find that genius, the rath primrose, which forsaken dies,' is patronized by any of the nobility, so that writers of the first talents are left to the capricious patronage of the public. Notwithstanding this discouragement, literature is cultivated in a high degree. Poetry raises her enchanting voice to heaven. History arrests the wings of Time in his flight to the gulf of oblivion. Philosophy, the queen of arts, and the daughter of heaven, is daily extending her intellectual empire. Fancy sports on airy wing like a meteor on the bosom of a summer cloud; and even Metaphysics spins her cobwebs, and catches some flies.

"The House of Commons not unfrequently exhibits explosions of eloquence that rise superior to those of Greece and Rome, even in their proudest days. Yet, after all, a man will make more by the figures of arithmetic than the figures of rhetoric, unless he can get into the trade wind, and then he may sail secure over Pactolean sands. As to the stage, it is sunk, in my opinion, into the lowest degree; I mean with regard to the trash that is exhibited on it; but I don't attribute this to the taste of the audience, for when Shakspeare warbles his native wood-notes,' the boxes, pit, and gallery, are crowded and the gods are true to every word, if properly winged to the heart.

"Soon after my arrival in town I visited West

minster Abbey: the moment I entered I felt a kind of awe pervade my mind which I cannot describe; the very silence seemed sacred. Henry the Seventh's Chapel is a very fine piece of Gothic architecture, particularly the roof; but I am told that it is exceeded by a chapel in the University of Cambridge. Mrs. Nightingale's monument has not been praised beyond its merit. The attitude and expression of the husband in endeavouring to shield his wife from the dart of death, is natural and affecting. But I always thought that the image of death would be much better represented with an extinguished torch inverted, than with a dart. Some would imagine, that all these monuments were so many monuments of folly;-I don't think so; what useful lessons of morality and sound philosophy do they not exhibit! When the high-born beauty surveys her face in the polished parian, though dumb the marble, yet it tells her that it was placed to guard the remains of as fine a form, and as fair a face, as her own. They show besides how anxious we are to extend our loves and friendships beyond the grave, and to snatch as much as we can from oblivion-such is our natural love of immortality: but it is here that letters obtain the noblest triumphs; it is here that the swarthy daughters of Cadmus may hang their trophies on high; for when all the pride of the chisel and the pomp of heraldry yield to the silent touches of time, a single line, a half-worn-out inscription, remain faithful to their trust. Blest be the man that first introduced these strangers into our islands, and

may they never want protection or merit! I have not the least doubt that the finest poem in the English language, I mean Milton's Il Penseroso, was composed in the long-resounding aisle of a mouldering cloister or ivy'd abbey. Yet after all, do you know that I would rather sleep in the southern corner of a little country church-yard, than in the tomb of the Capulets. I should like, however, that my dust should mingle with kindred dust. The good old expression family burying-ground' has something pleasing in it, at least to me."

During the first few years of his stay in London, the vacations were devoted to an examination of the interior of the country, and sometimes crossing to Ireland, where, in 1751, as already mentioned, he took his master's degree, and is believed to have made some stay in Cork. Health, as much as curiosity, formed the inducement to these excursions; the former continued delicate and ill adapted to severe study, though this does not seem to have relaxed his diligence in any degree towards general literature; and that the remedial means he adopted did not wholly fail of effect, we have his own testimony.

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Writing to Mr. Shackleton, April 5, 1751, he says, my health is tolerable, my studies too in the same degree." In another letter of the same year, dated 31st August, from Monmouth, which had then some reputation as a resort for invalids, and whither he had proceeded from Bristol, he alludes playfully to his more juvenile writings, and

hopes his present exercises (alluding to the law) may be attended with better success than his literary studies, on the ground that "though a middling poet cannot be endured, there is some quarter for a middling lawyer."

To the same correspondent, September 28, 1752, dated from the house of a Mr. Druce, at Torlin, near Bradford in Wiltshire, a few miles from Bath, where, in company with a friend, he made some stay, enjoying the amusements of the country, he describes how the preceding part of the year had been employed. "Since I had your letter I have often shifted the scene. I spent part of the winter, that is, term-time, in London, and part in Croydon in Surry; about the beginning of summer finding myself attacked with my old complaint (an affection of the chest), I went once more to Bristol, and found the same benefit; I thank God for it."

Whether he found the law, as a profession, alien to his habits, his health incompetent to its persevering pursuit, or became weaned from it by that attachment to general literature, which has in so many other instances of men of genius proved irresistible, it is certain that his views soon changed; for at the expiration of the usual time he was not called to the bar. Among his brother templers were a few old college acquaintance, who seemed to have come to the same determination; for they were afterwards more known in politics and letters than in law.

In London also he met with many other old

D

friends and college acquaintance, some of whose letters, alluding to him as a very "promising young man," ," "a remarkably clever young man," "one who possessed very superior genius and information," were extant very recently in more than one family in Ireland. With Dr. Brocklesby, then pushing his way as physician, and who soon afterwards received an appointment in the medical department of the army, he renewed his acquaintance; and with Dr. Joseph Fenn Sleigh, already mentioned, who was finishing his studies, commenced it both were Quakers, and both afterwards quitted that persuasion. It was about this period that the late Arthur Murphy, then carrying on the Gray's Inn Journal, hearing the acquirements of his young countryman, Mr. Burke, loudly praised by some mutual friends, gained an introduction to him at the chambers of Mr. Kelly, whose name appears as one of his sureties in the Temple books, and on the first interview assented to the general opinion of his being a superior young man; an impression which every succeeding meeting served to increase. The diversity of his knowledge, and the force and originality of his observations, were striking; in history, politics, polite letters, and philosophy, there seemed little with which he was not familiar; and his attachment to the latter, " queen of arts, and daughter of heaven," as he had called her in the letter to Mr. Smith, was so strong, that it is not surprising he should wish to unite his interest with his taste, in the idea entertained about this time of getting