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."

[Illustration: THE TOMB OF EDMUND BURKE.]

It was almost impossible to people, in fancy, the tattered and neglected
churchyard of Beaconsfield as it now is--with those who swelled the
funeral pomp of the greatest ornament of the British senate; to imagine
the titled pall-bearers, where the swine were tumbling over graves, and
rooting at headstones. Seldom, perhaps never, in England, had we seen a
churchyard so little cared for as that, where the tomb of Waller[6]
renders the surrounding disorder "in a sacred place" more conspicuous by
its lofty pretension, and where the church is regarded as the mausoleum
of Edmund Burke.[7] Surely the "decency of churchyards" ought to be
enforced, if those to whom they should be sacred trusts, neglect or
forget their duty. That the churchyard of Beaconsfield, which has long
been considered "a shrine," should be suffered to remain in the state in
which we saw it, is a disgrace not only to the town, but to England; it
was differently cared for during Burke's lifetime, and though, like that
of the revered Queen Dowager, his Will expressed a disinclination to
posthum