resided near Castletown, Roche, where Burke himself received five years
of boyish education under the guidance of a rustic schoolmaster. He was
entered at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1746, but only remained there
until 1749. In 1753 he became a member of the Middle Temple, and
maintained himself chiefly by literary toil. Bristol did itself the
honour to elect him for her representative in 1774, and after years of
splendid usefulness and mental triumph, as an orator, statesman, and
patriot, he retired to his favourite retreat, Beaconsfield, in
Buckinghamshire, where he died on July 9th, 1797. He was buried here;
and the pilgrim who visits the grave of this illustrious man, when he
gazes on the simple tomb which marks the earthly resting?place of
himself, brother, son, and widow, may feelingly recall his own pathetic
wish uttered some forty years before, in London:--"I would rather sleep
in the southern corner of a little country churchyard, than in the tomb
of the Capulets. I should like, however, that my dust should mingle with
kindred dust. The good old expression, 'family burying?ground,' has
something pleasing in it, at least to me." Alluding to his approaching
dissolution, he thus speaks, in a letter addressed to a relative of his
earliest schoolmaster:--"I have been at Bath these four months for no
purpose, and am therefore to be removed to my own house at Beaconsfield
to-morrow, to be nearer a habitation more permanent, humbly and
fearfully hoping that my better part may find a better mansion." It is a
source of deep thankfulness for those who reverence the genius and
eloquence of this great man, to state, that Burke's religion was that of
the Cross, and to find him speaking of the "Intercession" of our
Redeeming Lord, as "what he had long sought with unfeigned anxiety, and
to which he looked with trembling hope." The commencing paragraph in his
Will also authenticates the genuine character of his personal
Christianity. "According to the ancient, good, and laudable custom, of
which my heart and understanding recognise the propriety, I BEQUEATH MY