the Psalmist he endeavored to
be comforted, but it was by an effort. His political career was shrouded
for ever--the _motive_ to his great exertions was destroyed--but his
mind, wrecked as it had been, could not remain inactive. In 1795 his
_private_ reply to Mr. Smith's letter, requesting his opinion of the
expediency of and necessity for Catholic Emancipation, got into public
circulation; and in that singular document, though he did not enter into
the details of the question with as much minuteness as he would
previously have done, he pleaded for the removal of the whole of the
disabilities of the Roman Catholic body. From time to time he put forth
a small work on some popular question. He originated several plans for
benefiting the poor in his 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 emigre 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.

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