our

MY LORD,-WHEN we are obliged to take up the pen in defence of Qur clraracters, letters stand in no need of apology. Without fatiguing you, therefore, with any, I shall enter immediately upon the subject, and as you have thought proper. as well as Lord Spenser, to bring my name in an indecent manner before the public, I shall begin my defence with the same freedom you have used in at tacking me."

"To say that you have both been wanting in what the rules of decency require, would be the mildest censure your conduct deserved, with equal reason I can say, that you have violated the laws of justice.

For time alone can discover what connection there was between the Malt Cill, which was the subject of discussion, and Napper Tandy. Had it not been for one of the asser tions you made, I should not have brought the affair before the public, but would have been contented with seeing myself disguised by your Billinsgate Orators in both houses: for there are men, my Lord, whose censure is the highest recommendation one can have and I am sincere enough to confess, that I consider your Lordship as worthy of the first rank in this class: You have de

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clared, or the Printer fory our that I made discoveries to Government, I assert that declaration is false. This may appear to your ears not very civil language but, it is the voice of truth, and I repeat, my Lord that it is a mean and audacious falsehood. I never had any relation nor correspondence with your governmet, or if I had, that govenment knew my character too well to attempt to make me temporise."

"Had you been content with saying, that there were particular cir cumstances in my case, you would not have swerved from the truth, for you know all, though you have suffered only a part to appear.

With respect to my life, I never thought I owed any gratitude to your government for it. I owed my life to the great and generous people, to the first of men, to the Hero, the pacificator, who said, that if I fell, I should fall with eterna! lustre. It is for the cause of that people, that I am ready to shed the last drop of my blood. I can recapitulate with satisfaction my past life, spent in the service of my country, whilst I look with pity and contempt upon those who, by prosituting themselves, have been raised to the first offices of the state, I am more proud of the name of French citizen, than I should be of the rank of a titled slave.

I am my Lord with the the same sentiments, I have always entertained and cherished long before I knew you a petty Secretary of the Castle of Dublin, a friend of universal benevolence, and an enemy of those who build their fortune upon the ruin of their country.

(to be continued)

Life of Bishop Burke.

DOCTOR Thomas Burke, a learned Divine and Catholic Bishop of Offory, was descended from the numerous stock of the De Burgos, or Burkes of Connaught, the head and reprefentatives of which is the Marquis of Clanrickarde, In 1723, being then a youth, he was fent to Rome, and placed under the direction of his relation the Rev. Thomas Burke, at that time apoftolic Penitentiary of St. Maria Majore, that he might prepare himself for entering into the Dominician Order. He had scarcely entered into his fifteenth year, when he was invested with the habit of the order, the 14th of June, 1724, by the Rev. James Fitz Gerald, Prior of the Convent of St. Sioctus and Clement, having first obtained a dispenfation from the congregation of Cardinals. On the 2d of March, 1726, being then fix teen, he made his profession. While a Novice, he began his ftudies, under the Rev. Thomas Vincent O'Kelly. His courfe of Philofophy he went through under the Rev. John Brett, ond for five years after applied to Theology.

So great was his progrefs in letters, that he was particularly noticed by his Holiness Pope Benedict XIII. wbo came almost every week to the College of St. Sixtus, while it was rebuilding. During the carnival of 1792, the Pope continued there for ten days he ate, without any cere mony with the brethren, and treated them with the greateft affability, At a proper age he was ordained Deacon, and gradually advanced to the theological honour which he received the 29th of July, 1742, from the Rev. Thomas Ripole, general of the Order. The next year he returned to his native city, Dublin, and in the year 1749 and 1757 was

definitor of a provincial chapter, and in 1759, he was by the Pope promoted to the See of Offory. This exalted ftation, fo juftly due to his talents and erudition, to his hu manity, charity, and other Chriftian virtues, he did not enjoy his ele vated fituation many years, for he died in his houfe in Maudlin-street Kilkenny, on Wednesday the 25th of September. 1776, univerfally lamented.

In 1738, he tranflated, while at Rome, from the Spani fhino Latin, "Promptuarium Morale," of Fran cis Larraga, a Dominican. This performance he fo changed, encreafed and illustrated, that it became almost a new work. It contains what is called abroad, moral Theology, and is useful for those who took orders, heard confeflions, or were penitents

He was employed by the Irifa Clergy, 1741, to solicit the Holy See, that ten Irif Saints, who as yet, were only invoked in parishes, of which they were patrons, fhould have offices to be ufed throughout the Isle, which he compiled. Thefe were approved by Benedict XIV. and received in Ireland. and in the

Irish Colleges abroad. However,by a Monitum prefixed to the Officia Propria S Hiberniæ, it appears that Dr. Burke was not fufficiently careful in collecting the history of those Saints, and confequently, was not fo generally accepted, and it afterwards received fome improvements from himself.

In 1753, when he was about to commit to press. Promptuarium dogmatica-canonica— morale-he was unexpectedly chosen in a provincial chapter, historiographer of the Dominican order in Ireland. After seven years incessant applica tion to the affairs of the Domini cans, his work received the approba

tion of John Thomas de Boxadors, General of the Order at Rome, and his license to print it, dated the 14th February, 1759.

This work, though declared to be printed at Colonge, was executed by Edmund Finn, in Kilkenny, under Dr. Burke's own inspection. It is dedicated to Cardinal Corsini, protector of Ireland, and of the Dominican Order In 1772, he published, Supplementum Hibernie Dominicanæ, varia virorum generum compians additamenta juxta momorati operis Serium disposita, pereundum au&torem P. Thomam de Burgo, O. P. p, Sc. Pm. Oss-rns. m A. L. 1773.

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Dr. Burke's principal design, in this supplement is to vindicate the Pope's Nuncio, Rinuccini. from the charges brought against him while he resided here, by the supreme Council of confederate catholics, and sent by them to the Pope. This our Author was enabled to do, by a visit which he made to Florence in his way to Rome, in 1769, where he discovered, in the library of the Mar quiss Rinuccini, ample materials for his purpose, which he has here given.

The following is a succint view of thiscurious work It is divided into seventeen chapters. In the first he treats of the name, quality, dimensi on, andd ivision of Ireland. In the second, of the Dominicans, end their arrival ip Ireland. In the 3d, 4th, 5th, and eth, Chapters of their his tory from 1224 to 1739. In the 8th the same subject is continued. In the 9th, he gives an historical ac count of the 43 Dominican monas teries in Ireland. In the 10th he mentions the several doubtful con vents claimed by the order In the

ath, we have the Dominican Nunne ries. In the 2th the extra national Monasteries and Nunneries: In the 13th, the prelates of the or

der. In the 14th, the provincial priors, In the 5th, the Dominican Writers. In the 16th those who suffered for religion. In the 7th the present state of the order. Το these is added an appendix, exhibiting the Abbies, Convents, and other religious houses in Ireland, at the time of the Reformation.

Account of the Life and Works Monsieur Anquetil Duperron, Member of the Academy of Inferiptions Belle Letters, History, and Anci ent Literature; by Monsieur Dacer; read at the public sittings of the National Institute, July 1, 1808. (Continued from page 422)

HE also received from Father Tieffenthaler, a missionary with whom he corresponded, a map of the Ganges, with various geographical particulars relative to the course of that river, which he communicated to Mr. Bernoulli, of the academy of Berlin, who had undertaken to give a Description of India. To this important work he added his own observations which formed a very material and interesting portion of it.

At the commencement of the revolution, Dupperron, a stranger, to ambition and intrigue, thought of nothing but the reform of abuses; he published a work under the title of La Dignite du Commerce & de etat u Commercant. At any other time, this work would have been well received, but as political, and not mercantile, interests engaged the attention of all classes of society at that time, it was scarcely noticed. Resolving not to have the mortification of witnessing the succeeding troubles of his country he shut himself up in his library, and appeared

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no longer in public at the Academy, of which he had hitherto been an assidious member, and dropt all correspondence even with his most intimate friends.

Deprived of every kind of income, he wa obliged at intervals to dispose. of many of his books, to pay the rent for the rest, and to supply himself with the common necessaries of life but having for a length of time accustomed himself to absteriousness and even to privation, he confidered himself the only happy man at that time in France. He thus estranged himfelf from every thing but thought, by which he traversed India and lived amidst the Brahmins: Affected by the evils which the cupidity of Europeans had loaded that rich but unhappy country, he endeavoured, but in vain, to persuade them, in a work which he published in 1798. under the title of L'Inde on rapport avec L'Enrope, that it was to their interest to build warehouses instead of batteries, and send out merchants instead of soldiers, to establish a connection cemented by confidence, and not authority, founded upon force, and maintained by injustice and ty ranny. It was Anquetil's Intention to have gone to India to study the Sanscrit language, but being prevented by the war, he still resolved to turn his retirement to account by studying that language and translating the Vedas and other sacred writ ings of the Brahmins, by the help of a dictionary which he had pro cured from Cardinal Antonelli: but despairing of success from the insuf ficiency of his means, he gave up this project, and undertook to translate from the Persian Recueil des Oupneklat, or Upecnischada or Socretr ot to be revealed

Although it was not a translation from the original Sanscrit, and the

Persian author has sometimes inter mixed the Indian and mussulman ideas, ftill Anquetil has rendered considerable service to literature, in enabling us to appreciate the greater part of the philosophical and religious dogmals of the Brahmin and the doctrine contained in the Vedas. His translation was made in Latin, that he might the more closely adhere to the Persian phrases, and mystic obscurity of the original. In this he has in many parts too well fucceeded and in spite of the numerous explanatory and instructive notes, by which he has endeavoured, to enlight en the extravagance of mythology, and the ridiculous allegories, it required a strong application to comprehead and follow the chain of ideas. Some of his remarks are foreign to the work itself, and are evidently the effusion of a recluse, strongly tinctured with the weakness of human nature. Anquetil Duperron, appears to have intermixed, in a manner his own philosophical and religions ideas, and given a complete picture of his moral and philosophical life, in the epiftle which he addresses to the Brahmins, to induce them to translate the ancient Indian writing into Persia :-" Bread and cheese (said he,) to the value of four French sous, or the twelfth part of a rupee, and water from the well, form my daily food: I live without fire even in winter, I sleep without even a bed or bed clothes; neither do I change or wash my linen. I subfist on the fruits of literary works. without income, revenue, or penfion. I have neither wife, children, nor fervants. Having no eftates, I have no tie to this world. Alone, but entirely free, I am in friendship with all mankind. In this simple state, at warfare with my senses, I either triumph over wordly attractions, or I despise them.

Lookin

ing up with veneration to that supreme and perfect being, drawing near my end, I wait with impatience for the dissolution of my body."There does not appear the least exaggeration in this account which he gives of himself: all those who were intimate with him give just the same description of his way of life. His passion for the most perfect independence, accustomed him from his youth, to an austere regimen, which he ever afterwards observed, and inspired him with a love of poverty, which he looked upon as the firm support of virtue, " Oh, poverty, too much despised (said he, in one of his remarks), thou art the protector of soul and body, and the bulwark of morality and religion! He was too frank and ingenuous to feign any virtue or sentiment, and there are too many proofs of his sincerity and disinterestedness to leave even a doubt of it. On the suppression of a journal from which he received a pension, on his return from India, nothing could induce him to take any step to obtain a recompence. The Abbe Barthelemy was still his providence, and served him without his knowledge, in order not to of fend him, in such a manner, that Anquetil always considered the grant conferred on him by the minister, solely as an act of justice. Towards the end of the reign of Louis XVI. when that monarch was bestowing gratuities on a certain number of men of letters, he was included in the list for a sum of 3000 livres; but the 'difficulty was to obtain his accept ance of it. One of his acquaintances undertook this delicate commission. After having in vain tried every method of persuasion, he secretly put the money on one corner of the shimney piece, and hastily left the Foom; but the purse, with the money found its way to the bottom of

the stairs before him. In like manner he refufed a pension of 6000 livres, which was adjudged him hy the Committee of Public Instruction, aud he returned the warrant, protesting that he had no need of it, and that he would accept of nothing, although it was well known he was at that time in the greatest distress. So familiar with poverty himself, he felt only for that of others, and was at a loss on whom to bestow the superfluous part of his moderate income. When he was admitted a member of the National Institute, at the commencement of its organization, he was then uneasy, lest Le should be too rich. "Pray inform me (said he, to one of his friend) what honest family is in need of relief. I know of none, and I receive at least 100 francs per month, which are totally useless to me, unless applied this way." Old age, and the length of time he had been secluded from all literary society, had not changed his sentiments; he retained the same love of truth, the same principles, and the same attachment to his origi nal opinions.

At length exhausted by late study, rigorous and abstemious diet, and almost destitue of sight, the sudden failure of his senses, when he was still anticipating some new works, convinced him that his end was fast approaching. He had five brothers who had repaired to him as soon as his situation was known; and he at length consented to be taken to oue of their houses, that he might receive that attention which it was impossible to pay him in his own lodging which contained no kind of moveables except books. He died the 17th of Janua v, 1805, in the arms of his brother, professing to the last the

same sentiments as he had all his life entertained.