g of certain ignorant savages far away a 1713, when she was at home and af bolqoba road aud 1 to place big enough and rich enough to supply room for the overflowings of the mother country, however vast these And it overflowings might be. case, how important was it to conciliate, and cultivate, and Christianise the native race! To be sure there were but two things to do that, or exterminate them; and extermination had not dawned upon any mind as the preferable alternative as yet. Accordingly, the new Dean is scarce warm in his seat before this idea, howsoever conceived or suggested, begins work so strongly in him that he cannot rest. Derry and £1100 a-year and all the advantages of place and position, become as nothing in comparison with those savage Americans. Yet there is a certain statesmanlike calm even in his fervour. It is no wild solitary expedition on which he longs to set out. His scheme is to carry a staff with him to go accompanied with his brotherhood, a colony of evangelists. Their work was to be done by means of a college to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermuda." In 1725 he published his. plan for this expedition. He himself was to resign his appointment and become head of the college on the magnificent stipend of a hun naron en fing stokeda ta el ll be of binger dred pounds quence and year-u strul for three years past hath so won upon his friends, that no less than three young Fellows of his University declared themselves willing to accompany him, abandoning all their prospects. To gain an endowment for this college, Berkeley set out in the end of 24, armed with all the recommendations his friends could give him, to men powerful in Church and State. Here is one of these commendatory letters, which not only throws the vivid light of personal revelation upon Berkeley, but reveals out of the darkness, in one of his softest moments, a tragical figure, still more remarkable and universally known than himself. The letter is addressed to Lord Carteret, then Lieutenant of Ireland, and it is Swift who writes "3d of September 1724.-There is a gentleman of this kingdom just gone for England-it is Dr. George Berkeley, Dean of Derry, the best preferment among us, being worth about £1100 a-year. He takes the Bath in his way to London, and will of course attend your Excellency, and be presented, I suppose, by his friend, my Lord Burlington; and because I believe you will choose out some very idle minutes to read this letter, perhaps you may not be ill en tertained with some account of the man and his errand. He was a Fellow in the University here, and, going to England very young, about thirteen years ago, he became the founder of a sect there called the Immaterialists, by the force of a very curious book on that subject. Dr. Smalridge and many other eminent persons were his proselytes. I sent him secretary and chaplain to Sicily with my Lord Poterborough; and upon his Lordship's return, Dr. Berkeley spent above seven years in travelling over most parts of Europe, but chiefly through every corner of Italy, Sicily, and other islands. When he came back to England he found so many friends that he was effectually recommended to the Duke of Grafton, by whom he was lately made Dean of Derry. Your Excellency will be frightened when I tell you all this is but an introduction, for I am now to mention his errand. He is an absolute philosopher with regard to money, titles, and a " of founding a University at Bermuda, by a charter from the Crown. He has seduced several of the hopefullest young clergymen and others here, many of them well provided for, and all of them in the fairest way of preferment; but in England his conquests are greater, and I doubt will spread very far this winter, He showed me a little tract which he designs to publish, and there your Excellency will see his whole scheme of a life academic-philosophic of a college founded for Indian scholars and missionaries, where he most exorbitantly proposeth a whole hundred pound ayear for himself, forty pounds for a fellow, and ten for a student. His heart from him and left at your Excellency's will break if his deanery be not taken disposal. I discourage him by the coldness of courts and ministers, who will interpret all this as impossible and a vision, but nothing will do. And therefore I do humbly. y entreat your Excellency either to use such persua sions as will keep one of the first men in this kingdom for learning and virtue quiet at home, or assist him by your credit to compass his romantic design, which, however, is very noble and generous, and directly proper for a great person of your excellent education to encourage." ki anta Berkeley's pamphlet, which was published early in the ensuing year, sets forth at length all the necessity and advantage of this wonderful scheme. He begins by lamenting "that there is at this day little sense of religion, and a most notorious corruption of manners in the English colonies settled on the continent of America and the islands," and that "the Gospel hath hitherto made but a very inconsiderable progress among the neighbouring Americans, who still continue in much the same ignorance and barbarism in which we found them above a hundred years ago." After sumof affairs, one of which he describes ming up the causes of this condition as the mean qualifications, both in learning and morals, of the clergy, who are, in many cases, "the very dregs and refuse" of the Church, he propounds his plan a plan which has been adopted in recent "Westward the opurse of empire takes its first acts already past, sion, and has not added, as shall close the drams with the day; beadroll of saints and heroes. Time's noblest offspring is its last." 9:17 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 1of 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 ise 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, now over ever mani 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. Anxious 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 tions. There his first child was Boston, and upon various expediforty, an unenthusiastic age, and born, and a great joy" to him. the position which he thus aban- "Among all my delays and disapdoned must have been, both in in- pointments, I thank God," he says, come and on, fully up to his with quaint sobriety, "I have two highest Nevertheless the domestic comforts that are very philosopher set sail, America shin- agreeable, my wife and my little mylittle ing before him in a haze of coming son, both which exceed my expecsplendour, the empire of the future, tations, and fully answer all my Time's noblest offspring." We wishes." But yet notwithstanding has proved ungrate these solaces, even Berkely's stout His letters fested before. He fear America the present advanced heart began to fail. ful as well t convey the idea to us of a man mediate result of Berkeley's mis-on a headland straining his eyes 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! out to sea for ships which will not " |