s mind turned so strongly a little later. He left England speedily,
and came home again to Ireland after an absence of eight years. It was
in Ireland that a strange windfall came to him and amazed him. On that
fatal afternoon when Swift, with a legion of wild passions tearing at
his heartstrings, rode over to Marley Abbey to fling back at Vanessa's
feet the letter she had written to Stella, Hester Vanhomrigh received
{294} her death-blow. But she lived long enough to inflict a curious
little piece of vengeance, the only vengeance in her power, except the
nobler revenge of forgiveness, upon the false Cadenus. She had left by
will all the property she possessed to the man she had so madly
worshipped. With the hand of Death upon her, with the raging eyes of
the Dean still burning upon her brain, she performed the one little
pitiful act of retaliation which is the saddest spot in all her sad
history; she altered her will, and disinherited her idol. For the name
of Jonathan Swift, Dean of St. Patrick's, she substituted the name of
another great Irishman, another great Churchman, another great thinker
and teacher, the name of George Berkeley, Dean--only nominally so,
indeed--of Dromore. Berkeley's first idea on receiving this unexpected
windfall was to employ the money thus almost miraculously placed at his
disposal in carrying out a scheme which had long been dear to his
heart. This scheme was that he should emigrate to Bermuda, should
settle there, and devote the rest of his life to "the reformation of
manners among the English in our Western plantations, and the
propagation of the Gospel among the American savages." He was nobly
convinced of the nobility of his dream, and, which was more remarkable,
he succeeded in awaking a latent nobility in unexpected places, and in
arousing an enthusiasm for this dream of a Bermudan Utopia even in
callous hearts and unsympathetic bosoms.

[Sidenote: 1728--Berkeley's aspirations]

Bermuda became for a while the fashion in the marvellous medley of
London society over which the first of the Georges reigned. People
talked Bermuda, thought Bermuda, wrote Bermuda. He was indeed a
remarkable man whose missionary zeal and eloquence could make Bermuda
popular in London with the voice of religion. He was indeed a
remarkable man who could impress for a moment the cynical nature of
Bolingbroke with something of the fire of his own enthusiasm; who could
induce Walpole to swell from hi