operations. He was eminently a practical economists. He appears to have had an infarmer: tuitive perception of the truth of the great Farming with him (says Lord Fitzwil-principles of the science, and he embraced

liam) could hardly be called a relaxation, every opportunity of illustrating and enforofor he would enter into the business with all ing them. It is recorded of Adam Smith the eagerness, and more than the usual in- that on his return to Scotland from a visit to formation, of those who practice it for a London, he declared that Burke, of all the maintenance. He was seldom more intent public men with whom he conversed, was on any subject than when discussing ques- the only one who could comprehend, or be tions of agriculture with practical farmers induced to take the slightest interest in, hist in his neighborhood, walking over their lands theories. We cannot resist the inclination and winning their respect and regard, as to transcribe, in illustration of this remark, well by the knowledge he displayed of all the details of their profession, as by the plainness and courtesy of his mannera."

an admirable passage from the paper to which we have before referred, in which he proves the interests of the farmer and the laborer to be identical.

"I have been a farmer (Burke himself writes) for twenty-seven years, and it is a "In the case of the farmer and the laborer, trade the most precarious in its advantages, their interests are always the same, and it is the most liable to losses, and the least profit- absolutely impossible that their free contracts able of any that is carried on. It requires can be onerous to either party. It is the inten times more of labor, of vigilance, of at-terest of the farmer that his work should be tention, of skill, and, let me add, of good not be unless the laborer is well fed, and done with effect and celerity; and that canfortune also, to carry on the business with otherwise found with such necessaries of success, than what belongs to any other animal life, according to his habitudes, as trade."* may keep the body in full force, and the He was an experimental as well as a prac- mind gay and cheerful. For of all the intical farmer, and like others of that class,struments of his trade, the labor of man sometimes failed in his experiments. He (what the ancient writers have called the corresponded with Arthur Young; discussed instrumentum vocale) is that one on which with him the merits of deep ploughing and of drill cultivation; inquired why he had failed in an attempt to fatten pigs on carrots, with which vegetable, however, he was more successful in Covent-garden market, whither he sent two waggon-loads, "of a most aromatic smell, firm, and admirably tasted; for which he realized six pounds fifteen shillings, paying him better than the finest crop of wheat, and the back carriage of coal-ashes paying expenses! In explaining at a particular crisis the cause of a general rise in the price of commodities, he writes:

capital. The other two, the semivocale in
he is most to rely for the repayment of his
the ancient classification-that is, the work-
ing stock of cattle-and the instrumentum
mutum, such as carts, ploughs, spades, and
so forth, though not at all inconsiderable in
themselves, are very much inferior in utility
or in expense; or, without a given portion
things whatever, the mind is the most valu-
For in all
of the first are nothing at all.
able and most important; and in this scale
the whole of agriculture is in a natural and
just order: the beast is as an informing prin-
ciple to the plough and cart; the laborer is
as reason to the beast; and the farmer is as

a

"As to the lesser articles, they are like thinking and presiding principle to the the greater; they have followed the fortune subordination in any part is equally absurd; laborer an attempt to break this chain of of the season. Why are fowls dear? I but the absurdity is most mischievous in sold from my yard to a jobber six young and practical operation, where it is the most easy lean fowls for four-and-twenty shillings--that is, the most subject to an erroneous fowls for which, two years ago, the same judgment. man would not have given a shilling a-piece. He sold them afterwards at Uxbridge, and they were taken to London to receive the last hand! "t

Burke was one of the earliest of political

* Thoughts and Details on Scarcity. Vol. VII.

898.

+ Ibid.

that his men should thrive, than that his "It is plainly more the farmer's interest horses should be well fed, sleek, plump, and fit for use, or than that his wagon and ploughs should be strong, in good repair, and fit for service.

"On the other hand, if the farmer cease to profit of the laborer and that his capital

is not continually manured and fructified, it and his spirits never recovered the shock is impossible that he should continue that which they sustained by the death of his abundant nutriment and clothing and lodg 800. "The storm," he says, in the agony ing proper for the protection of the instru- of his grief, "has gone over me, and I lie ments he employs. "It is therefore the first and fundamental like one of those oaks which the late hurri interest of the laborer that the farmer should cane has scattered about me. I am stripped have a full incoming profit of his labor. The of all my honors, I am torn up by the roots, proposition is self-evident, and nothing but and lie prostrate on the earth!" Beacons the malignity, perverseness, and ill-governed field was to him no more the delightful abode passions of mankind, and particularly the of cheerfulness and rural cares, envy they bear to each other's prosperity, could prevent their seeing and acknowledging it, with thankfulness to the benign and wise Disposer of all things, who cbliges men, whether they will or not, in pursuing their own selfish interests, to connect the general good with their own individual success.

66

an ob

18

scure and melancholy retreat," in which, a desolate old man," he wished to hide himself from the world and die. "I have been," he wrote with touching pathos, "at Bath these four months to no purpose, and am therefore to be removed to my own house There are still a few old people living at at Beaconsfield to-morrow, to be nearer to a Beaconsfield who remember Mr., or Squire, habitation more permanent; humbly and Burke, as he is traditionally spoken of there. fearfully hoping that my better part may His poorer neighbors knew him only as the find a better mansion.' He expired on July country gentleman, the indulgent landlord, 9th. His end," said Dr. Laurence, "was the sympathizing friend, the generous bene- suited to the simple greatness of his mind factor. There was something peculiarly which he displayed through life. He apgrateful to Burke in frequent intercourse peared neither to wish nor dread, but patientlywith the poor. It enlarged his knowledge and placidly to await the appointed hour of of human character, and enabled him to his dissolution." He prohibited by his will all speak with authority on many questions af- posthumous honors, assigning as a reason fecting the interests of the humbler classes; that he had had in his lifetime "too much and he never lost an opportunity of probing of noise and compliment." Fox, to his their minds, or hesitated "to survey the honor, proposed a public funeral, which mansions of sorrow and pain-to take the would have been unanimously voted by the gauge and dimensions of misery, depression House of Commons but for the injunction of and contempt." The simple people of his the departed statesman. He had requested neighborhood appear to have had but a faint to be buried in the church of Beaconsfield, conception of the greatness of the man who close to the bodies of his son and brother. 80 familiarly conversed with them. They On a calm, summer afternoon, when the often heard indeed that he received "great slanting rays of the declining sun were gildpeople" in his house; but who or what Mr. ing the little spire of Beaconsfield church, Burke was beyond the limits of Beaconsfield, and pouring a mild radiance over the surthey little cared to know or to inquire. No rounding country, a walking procession moved knowledge of his fame could have increased slowly through the village. The remains of the their attachment to his person, and his im- great statesman had been taken the evening portance in their estimation was sufficiently before from his seat to the town, for the consymbolized in the "carriage and four horses" venience of the attendants. Seventy mem-. by which he sometimes took his journeys to bers of the benefit society which he patronthe metropolis.* ized, clad in mourning, led the way. The pall was borne by some of the most illustrious men of the day, in the list of whom, however, we discover with pain the omission of the name of Fox. Laborers from far and wide crowded the churchyard and its ap proaches, and the grief of the poor was audibly expressed; and amidst the profound sorrow of all classes, the body of the greatest.

Early in the year 1797, Burke removed from Beaconsfield to Bath, for the benefit of the waters; but the hand of death was then upon him, and he returned to his seat in May only to die. The toils and contentions of public life had long shattered his health,

*This is the result of a conversation with several of the old people of Beaconsfield.

man of that, or perhaps of any age, was consigned to the tomb.*

The peculiarity of Burke's genius has been too often discussed to need any additional elucidation; and it is not our intention to enter here upon a subject so thoroughly exhausted. Notwithstanding the vast superiority of his knowledge, his laborious life, and eminent public services, he never attained, as is well known, a seat in the Cabinet; and when his party acquired for a short time possession of power, he was placed in a subordinate office in the Government. The unbending rectitude of his

Burke had further expressed in his will a desire that no public monument should be erected to his memory, but that only a plain tablet and inscription should mark the place of his interment. It was characteristic of the nobility of his mind, and of the unaffected simplicity of his nature. We cannot, however, admit that the nation is bound in perpetuity to defer to the expressed wishes of any public man on the question of public honors. Great political characters, as they mind and the loftiness of his character unare the guide-posts and landmarks of the fitted him for co-operating cordially with orState while living, become, when dead, by dinary men. He was doubtless regarded as inheritance, emphatically the property of the "impracticable; a term of peculiar sigpeople; and they have a right to require nificance and reproach among certain polithat the reputation which has been gained in ticians. "Too fond of the right to pursue their service, and the fame which they have the expedient," he would have disdained the awarded, shall be perpetuated in a manner compromises to which public men are often most in accordance with their feelings and obliged to resort to maintain themselves in their instincts. The mind of Burke is im- power, and even to carry on the ordinary perishably enshrined in his works; but we operations of government. It is the nature ask, and we shall not ask in vain, that our of representative institutions to lower in a selves and our posterity shall be permitted to considerable degree the standard of political scan the features of the great orator as morality; and in the conflict of parties and wrought in the pale marble, and to worship the struggles for pre-eminence in a popular at the visible shrine of such lofty intellect assembly, the interest of the State and the and almost unprecedented excellence. We object of government itself too often appear know not whether a statue is designed for to be cast aside or forgotten. History teems Burke in the Palace of Westminster, but the with examples of the selfishness of party Abbey is the proper place for his earthly spirit and its unprincipled combinations, and canonization. If public 'honors have been we have too often seen in our own day that too- often awarded and statutes erected by the virus of faction is constantly working in partial friends or by an indiscriminating Leg- even the best of constitutions, and threatenislature, to inferior men, giving a false at- ing it either with chronic disease or to bring testation of their characteristics,-if ephem- it to premature decay. We see no remedy eral politicians, the faint lights of their but in the greater diffusion of political knowday, now extinguished forever, viewed through ledge, in interesting larger portions of the a deceptive medium, have had their propor- community in the concerns of the State, and tions exaggerated and belied,—if men marked perhaps in extending the franchise, and thus by no originality of genius, or grandeur or enlarging the tribunal to which public men elevation of mind, have been exalted into are responsible for their conduct and their national benefactors, and endowed with a fac-votes.

His.

titious immortality,what honors can be A study of the character of Burke would felt sufficient to mark and perpetuate our be one of the best correctives of the infirmiadmiration of that great luminary that even ties and short-comings of public men. yet warms the political atmosphere with the political writings abound in wisdom clothed rays of his departed glory, and whose light in all the splendor of eloquence, they are will never become totally extinct but with stamped with true greatness of soul, and the that of civilization and freedom? highest minds will forever draw from them See Prior's Life of Burke. We are glad to their noblest thoughts their purest princinotice a new and cheap edition of this excellent ples, their profoundest convictions. biography. It cannot fail to diffuse more widely a knowledge of Burke's character, and to extend the genius if it too often fails in its conflict with the present, asserts its dominion over the fu

taste for his works.

DCIE.

LIVING AGE. VOL. XVIII. 28

Thus

ture. To it belongs the task of forming the mind of unborn generations, of extending its influence into distant ages, and perhaps contributing at some future period to form a legislature that will submit itself entirely to the guidance of principle, and thus vindicate for itself the great prerogative of "teaching the nations how to live."

Nor is there anything in the private life of Burke, as in those of some of his illustrious contemporaries, to qualify the sentiment with which we must regard him. His home was the abode of every virtue, and while pacing with thoughtful steps the paths so familiar to him at Beaconsfield, we feel that no mere political greatness apart from moral

superiority could exercise such a permanent
influence npon the minds of men,-it is the
purity of his character, combined with his
intellect and knowledge, that enchains our
affections and excites our admiration; and if
any senator who has drawn lessons of con-
duct from the pages of Burke, or meditated
on his career, escaping from the stifling at-
mosphere of Westminster and the din of de-
bate, should seek for a few hours the shades
of Beaconsfield, and hold in spirit brief com-
munion with the mighty dead, he will return
with his sympathies enlarged, his motives
purified, and his nerves braced for the dis-
charge of every duty which his country may
require of him.
H. T

PETITION INTRODUCED INTO THE LITANY.-At reayll gys yn ymmyd ain messyn dooie y thalthe churches in the Isle of Man I found, last looin (as dy chur er-ash as dy hannaghtyn dooin summer, that a petition was always introduced bannaghtyn ny marrey), myr shen ayns nyn into the Litany, the words of which I cannot imbagh cooie dy vod mayd yn soylley oc y ghedexactly remember, but it was to this effect: dyn."]-Notes and Queries. "That it may please Thee to give and preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth, and continue to us the blessings of the sea," &c. I should be glad to see the petition correctly recorded in N. & Q.," and to know whether any thing of the sort is customary at other sea places.

ALFRED GATTY.

CLERK. This term, now exclusively applied to clergymen, was in earlier times used in describing laymen having a certain amount of scholastic learning. Thus in a deed of feoffment, dated 1647, the feoffer appoints "my well-beloved friend in Christ Samuel Brookes, [Lord Chancellor King once remarked, that clerk," to give seisin or possession of the lands if the ancient discipline of the church be lost, in question, and the indorsement stating that it may be found in all its purity in the Isle of seisin had been accordingly given, is signed Man." Hence we find that no Act of Uniform-“ per me Samuelem Brookes, scrivr," ie. ity (with all its advantages) forbids this Island scrivenor. Query, then, at what precise period Church from that liberty, which every Church was the term used of the clergy alone, and the has ever possessed, of making alterations or ad- motive causes ?*-Notes and Queries. ditions, as may seem to the ecclesiastical governors necessary or expedient. Accordingly we find Bishop Wilson, although he tells us the religion and worship is exactly the same with that of the Church of England," prescribing, on his own authority, "A Form of Prayer to be used by his Clergy, who according to a laudable custom, are bound to attend the boats during the herring fishing;" also "Forms of Ex-usual." When was it usual? communication and of receiving Penitents;" as well as "A Form of Consecrating Churches, Train of Lords and Ladies, bared his leg unto "For his ambassador, attended with a great Chapels, Churchyards, and Places of Burial."

66

W. A. L.
[* Some historical notices of this term will be
found in "N. & Q.," 1st S. XII, 160, 330.]

Arch-Duke Maximilian by proxy married Anne
MARRIAGE BY PROXY. Heylin says that the
Duchess of Bretagne," which marriage he con-
summated by a ceremony in those days un-

The Bishop also adds, "There is a petition in- the knee, and put the same within the sheets of serted in the Litany, and used in the public ser- the Duchess, taking possession thereby of her vice throughout the year, for the blessings of Bed and Body."

the sea on which the comfortable subsistence of But she was afterwards married to Charles so many depends; and the law provideth that VIII., his " divines" holdingevery boat pay tythe fish, without any pretence to prescription. In the Manx Book of Com- rather an invention of Court than any way "That this pretended consummation was mon Prayer, 1765, translated under the direc- firm by the laws of the Church."-Votes and tion of Bishop Hildesley, the petition reads as Queries. follows: "Dy gooidsave ihiat dy choyrt as dy