"Westward the course of empire takes its way; sion, and has not added, as she The four first acts already past, It is strange that these verses should never have been suggested by any enterprising American as the national anthem of the new empire-curiously falsified so far as Berkeley's meaning went, yet taking, like so many other bits of unconscious prophecy, a wonderful signification of their own. On the 1st of August, 1728, Berkeley was married to Anne Foster, a daughter of the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons a lady, as he himself says in the quaint phraseology of the time, whose humour and turn of mind pleases me beyond anything I know in the whole sex.' On the 6th of September the pair set sail from Gravesend upon their amazing mission. Mr. James and Mr. Dalton, two young men of fortune; a Mr. Smilert or Smibert, "an ingenious painter;" and a cousin of Mrs. Berkeley's, "my Lady Hancock's daughter," made up the lit tle party. Berkeley took with him "a pretty large sum of money of his own property, and a collection of books for the use of his intended library." Thus the wild enterprise was actually carried out with such defiance of prudence and such devotion to a purpose as perhaps no mature man newly married, and with the responsibilities of individual life upon him, ever manifested before. He was now over forty, an unenthusiastic age, and the position which he thus abandoned must have been, both in income and rank, fully up to his highest hopes. Nevertheless the philosopher set sail, America shining before him in a haze of coming splendour, the empire of the future, Time's noblest offspring." fear America has proved ungrateful as well in the present advanced state of her history as in the immediate result of Berkeley's mis We Anxi But the little mission never got to Bermuda. The party went to Rhode Island, and took up its residence in Newport, a town containing about six thousand souls, the most thriving, flourishing place in all America for its bigness." In this small community Berkeley found "four sorts of Anabaptists, besides Presbyterians, Quakers, Independents, and many of no profession at all," but all living in tolerable peace and quiet, and all agreed, or politely professing to be so, that the Church of England was the second-best. Here he purchased land and built a farmhouse, meaning to make of his new property a stock farm to supply the future college at Bermuda. But the months passed wearily on, and the first flush of hope wavered, and the promised Government grant, without which nothing could be done, was not forthcoming. ous letters, full of increasing care, came from the troubled missionary, Though he threw himself at once into clerical work in his temporary abode, it was work with no satisfaction in it. If this were to be all, he could not but bethink himself that "upon all private accounts I should like Derry better than New England." His friends, wearying too of the quiet of Newport and the suspense, went off to Boston, and upon various expeditions. There his first child was born, and "a great joy" to him. "Among all my delays and disappointments, I thank God," he says, with quaint sobriety, "I have two domestic comforts that are very agreeable, my wife and my little son, both which exceed my expectations, and fully answer all my wishes." But yet notwithstanding these solaces, even Berkely's stout heart began to fail. His letters convey the idea to us of a man on a headland straining his eyes out to sea for ships which will not come. The winds blow him chance bits of news in an irregular, half reliable way. Now it is that one of the men whose co-operation he had hoped for, has been made a bishop at home, which calls from him an impatient sigh of congratulation, "since I doubt we are not likely to see him in this part of the world." Now it is the heart sickening tidings that a ship has been cast away with letters on board, which probably would have brought consolation. But consolation in the shape of his £20,000, Berkeley was not destined to receive. With his wife only standing by him, and his baby to amuse him, and his ear continually on the strain for such echoes from England as might come across the sea, the indomitable soul set to work again, and produced, by way of occupation to his anxious leisure, the 'Minute Philosopher,' a book intended for the refutation of the freethinkers of his time. It was "written in a series of dialogues on the model of Plato," and contained-besides a long strain of close and powerful argument, which of course, in the change which has come over scepticism, as well as other modes of thought, is little better than a fossil at this time many pleasant quaint indications of the manners of the day, the "dishes of tea," in which even freethinkers seemed to delight, and the little landscapes, quaint compositions, like the pretty artificial background of one of Stothard's engravings, where they meet the virtuous rustic, and find all their skill and cleverness crumble to nothing before him. Such was the fashion of the age; and nothing can more clearly manifest the difference between that period and our own, than the contrast between the freethinker as set forth by Berkeley, who was himself a man of the world, and knew what he was describing-professed libertine and scoffer, setting pleasure high above virtue, and almost professedly denying God in order to be free of the restraints of His law-and the pious, even pietistic, doubter of our own time, with his high morality and his tender conscience. Berkeley knew of no such refined and wonderful being. His Alciphron and Lysicles are fine gentlemen, "bloods" of the fullest flavour. And yet this is how (being on a visit in the country) they manage their meetings: "As we sat round the tea-table, in a summer parlour which looks into the garden, Alciphron, after the first dish, turned down his cup, and, reclining back in his chair, proceeded as follows"| How comical are the little changes of manner and custom which a century makes; and how much more than comical, how amazing, the difference in sentiment and thought! But in the mean time no news or bad news came from England. The money from which the endowment of the Bermuda College was to have come was otherwise appropriated; and Sir Robert Walpole, on being finally appealed to, made answer, that of course the money would be paid as soon as suited the public convenience, but, as a friend, he counselled Dean Berkeley to return home and not to await that far-off contingency. Thus the whole chivalric scheme broke down. Berkeley had wasted four years in the blank existence of the little New England town, had "expended much of his private property," and spent infinite exertions and hopes in vain. A long period before his actual setting-out had been swallowed up in negotiations to obtain this futile charter and unpaid grant. He gave up, on the whole, some seven years of the flower and prime of his life to the scheme thus cruelly and treacherously rendered abortive. It is so that England treats the generous movements and attempted self-devotion of her sons. Had it been a factory or a plantation, there might have been some hope for Berkeley; but a college with only ideal ad- the nation, though it possessed that vantages, mere possibilities of in- highest of supposed advantages→ fluence and evangelisation,-what an actual Parliament of its own. was that to Walpole, or to the We have already said that in Bishslumbrous prosaic nation over which op Berkeley's own character there he ruled? A generation later, is so much of the traditionary indeed, that Utopia in the Summer Irishman that it is difficult to avoid Islands, had it been planted, might identifying him with the country have been of use to England; but in which he was born; and yet there have been few statesmen in everything in his biography, as in all our island of more generous temper contemporary works, goes to prove than that of the Jewish king, who how entirely distinct was the native was satisfied that there should be race from the English colony which peace in his time. Berkeley re- ruled and represented it. The turned in 1732 to England, his Irish are not much more to Berhopes over, so far as the New World keley than were the Red men whom was concerned, his deanery gone he had so longed to preach to. They in the Old World, his money spent, occupied, it would seem, a position and the cares of a growing family not dissimilar. They were savages, upon him. Had he but contented to whom a benevolent protecting himself with pleasant Derry and colonist was kind, teaching them his £1100 a-year, as any other phi- the first principles of social econolosopher would! But here our my, and elementary rules of pruIdealist stands alone among philo- dence and self-interest;-and whom sophers, and in a very small mino- a bad colonist was correspondingly rity even among men. One friend hard upon as upon an abject and inhe had who understood and appre- ferior race. The schemes that were ciated the man. Queen Caroline, current in the island for introducherself advanced from Leicester ing manufactures and industries of Fields to the full glory of St various descriptions-the great soJames's, lost no time in doing what ciety which distributed flax-seed a queen could do to compensate and lent tools, and coaxed the him for his failure. But even pitiful barbarian into helping himqueens in England cannot do every- self, bear all the character which thing they will, and it was two years attend the bringing in of civilisabefore Berkeley was provided for. tion in the savage corners of the At the end of that time he became earth. Paddy himself, our old Bishop of Cloyne, and returned for witty well-beloved friend, does not the remainder of his active life to seem to have had any existence his native country, henceforward to when Bishop Berkeley wrote the employ all the powers of his intel- 'Querist,' or when Chesterfield set lect for its advantage, and to spend, up an anxious and short-lived Vicein comparative obscurity and un- Regality at Dublin, and Mr. Prior, ceasing beneficent genial work, the the " dear Tom" of Berkeley's letlatter half of his days. ters, established his society. At that day he was a wild aboriginal man, no gleam of his natural genius having yet shone through his uncouth guise-as unlike the Paddy brought into knowledge (we suppose) by Miss Edgeworth, as is the factious and irrepressible Irishman of the moment. And certainly, if it were wanted to prove the beneficial action which a Protestant bishop might exercise in such a Nothing can be more curious, especially at the present moment, than the incidental light thrown upon the Ireland of a century ago by the life of such a man. It would be difficult to conceive anything more unlike the Ireland which plays so large a part in the political world to-day. At that time nobody had so much as begun to think of the rights or wrongs of country, no better example could be found than that of the Bishop of Cloyne. When thus settled permanently in his own island, Berkeley devoted himself to its interests with all the enthusiasm of his nature. Probably his episcopal work was not very engrossing. The year after his installation in his bishopric the "Querist' was published in Dublin. Its object was a general exposition, not of the wrongs, but of the vices of Ireland, with many practical suggestions for their remedy, one of which was the establishment of a national bank. Industry, cleanliness, content, and that honest work which is in so many cases to the Celt as to the savage rather a curse than a blessing, are what he recommends and urges with perpetual iteration. "Whether there ever was, is, or will be, an industrious native poor or an idle rich ?" is the first question in theQuerist;' and on this he rings the changes with infinite variety and wealth of illustration. "Whether the bulk of our Irish natives are not kept from thriving by that cynical content in dirt and beggary which they possess to a degree beyond any other people in Christendom? Whether the creating of wants be not the likeliest way to produce industry in a people? And whether, if our peasantry were accustomed to eat beef and wear shoes, they would not be more industrious? Whether Ireland alone might not raise hemp sufficient for the British navy? Whether the upper part of this people are not truly English by blood, language, religion, manners, inclination, and interest? Whether we are not as much Englishmen as the children of old Romans born in Britain were still Romans?... Whether, if drunken ness be a necessary evil, men may not as well drink the growth of their country? Whether there be upon earth any Christian or civilised people so beggarly, wretched, and destitute as the common Irish? ... Whether there be any country in Christendom more capable of improvement than Ireland? Whether my countrymen are finding excuses than remedies? ... Whether it be not a new spectacle under the sun to behold in such a cli not readier at mate and such a soil, and under such a gentle Government, so many roads untrodden, fields untilled, houses desolate, and hands unemployed? Whose fault is it if poor Ireland still continues poor?" been handed on to us like so many This last pregnant question has of the others, and does not seem much nearer a reply now than in Bishop Berkeley's day. But it is curious to see this perennial question approached from the side of national compunction and a desire to mend. To think that neither a national bank, nor the distribution of flax and hemp seed, nor the proshould have brought any cure to motion of manufactures in general, the distracted country, would probably have much perplexed the ardent philosopher, thus reasoning with his own people with all the heat and vehemence of an anxiety bordering on despair. Some time later he treated the same subject in a still more remarkable and individual way, addressing, under the title of 'A Word to the West,' an eloquent remonstrance and exhortation to the Catholic priests of Ireland. Among all the remarkable productions of his genius there is none more remarkable than this. Indeed, Berkeley's fame as a philosopher has but obscured the singular exertions in the most practical of all fields of public labour which would of themselves have distinguished any other man. The way in which he addresses "your reverences," with a dignified respect and full acknowledgment of their influence, has been but too seldom emulated in Ireland. We are told in his biography that the priests returned "their sincere and hearty thanks to the worthy author" in the 'Dublin Journal,' "assuring him that they were determined to comply with every particular recommended in his address to the best of their power." The kind of advice thus given by the Protestant Bishop, in his acknowledged eminence as at once a sage of the highest reputation and 8 man "Be not startled, reverend sirs," he begins, "to find yourselves addressed by one of a different communion. We are indeed (to our shame be it spoken) more inclined to hate for those articles wherein we differ, than to love one another for those wherein we agree. But if we cannot extinguish, let us at least suspend our animosities; and, forget ting our religious feuds, consider ourselves in the amiable light of countrymen and neighbours. Why should disputes about faith interrupt the duties of civil life? or the different roads we take to heaven prevent our taking the same steps on earth? Do we not inhabit the same spot of ground, breathe the same air, and live under the same government? Why, then, should we not conspire in one to promote the common good of our country? We are all agreed about the usefulness of meat, drink, and clothes; and, without doubt, we all sincerely wish our poor neigh. bours were better supplied with them. Providence and nature have done their part: no country is better qualified to furnish the necessaries of life, and yet no people are worse provided. . Whether it be from the heaviness of the climate, or from the Spanish and Scythian blood that runs in their veins, or whatever else may be the cause, there still remains in the natives of this island a remarkable antipathy to labour. You, gentlemen, can alone conquer this innate hereditary sloth. Do you then, as you love your country, exert your selves. "The house of an Irish peasant is the cave of poverty-within you see a pot and a little straw; without, a heap of children tumbling on the dunghill. Their fields and gardens are a lively counterpart of Solomon's description in the Proverbs. . . . In every road the ragged ensigns of poverty are displayed. You often meet caravans of poor, whole families in a drove, without clothes to cover or bread to feed them, both which might be easily procured by moderate labor. They are encouraged in this vagabond life by the miserable hospitality they meet with in every cottage, whose inhabitants expect the same Bet kind reception in their turn when they become beggars, begging being the last refuge of these improvident creatures. The Scythians were noted for wandering, and the Spaniards for sloth and pride. Our Irish are behind neither of these nations, from which they descend, in their respective characteristics. ter is he that laboureth and aboundeth in all things than he that boasteth himself and wanteth bread,' saith the son of Sirach, but so saith not the Irishman. In my own family, a kitchen-wench refused to carry out cinders because she was descended from an old Irish stock.... At the same time, these proud people are more destitute than savages, and more abject than negroes. Hav. ing long observed and bewailed this wretched state of my countrymen, and the insufficiency of several methods set on foot to reclaim them, I have recourse to your reverences as the dernier resort. Raise your voices, reverend sirs, exert your influence, show your authority over the multitude, by urging them to the practice of an honest industry, a duty necessary to all and required in all, whether Protestants or Roman Catholics, whether Christians, Jews, or Pagans. .... ... When so many circumstances provoke and animate your people to labour, when their private wants and the necessities of the public, when the laws, the magistrates, and the very country calls upon them, you cannot think it becomes you alone to be silent or hindmost in every project for promoting the public good. Why should you, whose influence is greatest, be the least active? Why should you, whose words are most likely to prevail, say least in the common cause? "Perhaps it will be said, the discouragements attending those of your communion are a bar against all endeavors for exciting them to a laudable industry. . . To this it may be answered that, admitting these considerations do in some measure damp industry and ambition in persons of a certain rank, yet they can be no let to the industry of poor people, or supply an argument against endeavouring to procure meat, drink, and clothes. . . It will be alleged in excuse for this idleness, that the country people want encouragement to labour, as not having a property in the lands. There is small encouragement, say you, for them to build or plant upon another's land, wherein they have only a temporary interest. To which I answer, that life |