had men of magnanimity enough in his councils, to advise him to meet, at this juncture, the wishes of his people; he would thereby become the idol of the nation, and the most admired monarch in Europe. You mistake me, Sir, if you suppose that I have the most distant desire to make the democratic scale of the constitution outweigh the monarchical. Not one jot of the legal prerogative of the crown do I wish to see abolished; not one tittle of the king's influence in the state to be destroyed, except so far as it is extended over the representatives of the people. I most readily submit to laws made by men exercising their free powers of deliberation for the good of the whole; but, when the legislative assembly is actuated by an extrinsic spirit, then submission becomes irksome to me; then I begin to be alarmed; knowing with Hooker, that to live by one man's will becomes the cause of all men's misery. I dread despotism worse than death, and the despotism of a parliament worse than that of a king; but I hope the time will never come, when it will be necessary for me to declare that I will submit to neither. 1 shall probably be rotten in my grave before I see what you speak of, the tyranny of a George the Sixth, or of a Cromwell; and it may be that I want philosophy in interesting myself in political disquisitions, in apprehending what may never happen; but I conceive that I am to live in society in another state, and a sober attachment to theoretic principles of political truth cannot be an improper ingredient in a social character,.either in this world or in the next.

"The whig part of the coalition ministry which was formed in April, 1783, forced themselves into the king's service. His majesty had shown the greatest reluctance to treating with them. Their enemies said, and their adherents suspected, that if poverty had not pressed hard upon some of them, they would not, for the good of their country, have overlooked the indignities which had been shown them by the court; they would have declined accepting places, when they perfectly knew that their services were unacceptable to the king. They did, however, accept; and, on the day they kissed hands, I told Lord John Cavendish (who had reluctantly joined the coalition) that they had two things against them, the closet and the country; that the king hated them, and would take the first opportunity of turning them out; and that the coalition would make the country hate them. Lord John was aware of the opposition they would have from the closet, but he entertained no suspicion of the country being disgusted at the coalition. The event, however, of the general election, in which the whig interest was almost every where unsuccessful, and Lord John himself turned out at York, proved that my foresight was well founded. It is a great happiness in our constitution, that, when the aristocratic parties in the houses of parliament flagrantly deviate from principles of honour, in order to support their respective interests, there is integrity enough still remaining in the mass of the people, to counteract the mischief of such selfishness or ambition."

When a meeting of the bishops was convened at the Bounty-office, on a summons from the archbishop of Canterbury, and at the instance of Mr Pitt, who wanted to know the sentiments of the bench relative to the repeal of the test and corporation acts: "I was the junior bishop," says Dr Watson, "and, as such, was called upon to deliver my opinion first, which I did in the negative. The only bishop who voted with

me was Bishop Shipley. The then archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the bishops of Worcester, Lincoln, Ely, Peterborough, Norwich, Exeter, Bangor, Bath and Wells, Rochester, and Lichfield, voted that the acts ought to be maintained. When the question was thus decided, that my brethren might see I was not sorry to be known to have voted as I had done, I moved that not only the result of the meeting, but that the names of those who had voted for and against the maintenance of the acts, should be sent to Mr Pitt; and the motion was passed unanimously. The question for the repeal of the acts was then lost in the commons, by a majority of 78-178: 100. It was again brought forward in 1789, and was again lost by a majority of 20—122: 102. This small majority encouraged the dissenters to bring it forward again in 1790; but the cry of the church's danger began to be raised, and meetings were held by some alarmed clergymen, principally in dioceses of York and Chester, and the question was lost by a majority of 194-299: 105. In a conversation I then had with Lord Camden, president of the council, I plainly asked him if he foresaw any danger likely to result to the church establishment from the repeal of the test act he answered, at once, none whatever. On my urging the policy of conciliating the dissenters by granting their petition, his answer made a great impression on my mind, as it showed the principle on which great statesmen sometimes condescend to act. It was this: -Pitt was wrong in refusing the former application of the dissenters, but he must be now supported."

In 1796 Bishop Watson published his celebratedApology for the Bible,' in a series of letters addressed to Paine, the author of the Age of Reason.' This work is written in a very popular manner, and exposes with admirable tact the unfounded assertions and sophistical arguments which pervade the Age of Reason.'

On the death of Bishop Horsley, "it was very generally imagined," says Bishop Watson, "that I should have been translated to the see of St Asaph; and that I might not furnish the minister (Lord Grenville) with the excuse for passing me by, that I had not asked for it, I got a common friend to inform him, that, on account of my northern connections, the bishopric of St Asaph would be peculiarly acceptable to myself. It was given to the bishop of Bangor, and the bishopric of Bangor was given to the bishop of Oxford. I cannot truly say that I was wholly insensible to these and to many similar arrangements, by which I had been for so many years neglected, and exhibited to the world as a marked man fallen under royal displeasure; but I can say that neither was the tranquillity of my mind disturbed, nor my adherence to the principles of the revolution shaken, nor my attachment to the house of Brunswick, acting on these principles, lessened thereby. I knew that I possessed not the talents of adulation, intrigue, and versatility of principle, by which laymen, as well as churchmen, usually in courts ascend the ladder of ambition. I knew this, and I remained,

without repining, at the bottom of it."

From October, 1813, the health of the bishop of Landaff rapidly declined; bodily exertion became extremely irksome to him; and, though his mental faculties continued unimpaired, yet he cautiously refrained from every species of literary composition. The example of the archbishop of Toledo was often before him, and the determination, as fre

quently expressed, that his own prudence should exempt him from the admonition of a Gil Blas. He expired on the 4th of July, 1816, in

the 79th year of his age.

"In transcribing," says an able reviewer of Bishop Watson's memoirs, "the manly expressions of enlightened and patriotic sentiment which abound in this volume, and which place in so favourable a light the intellectual character of the bishop of Landaff, deep regret has been constantly blended with the feeling of satisfaction, when we have reflected how every such sentiment would have acquired the power of making a tenfold impression, had it been enforced by a life reflecting the glories of true greatness, and genuine piety. Bishop Watson is not to be named with the father of modern science, whom Pope styled

but his character suggests the necessity of a similar qualification of our praise. He wanted just that one ingredient of genuine greatness which should have delivered him from the love of this world To him might our Saviour's address to the amiable young ruler have been with propriety applied: One thing thou lackest.' Ambition was, at first, it is evident, his ruling passion, and it was as honourable an ambition as usually prompts the candidates for earthly things.' When repeated disappointments had shown him the futility of all expectation of further advancement, he took refuge in the pride of retirement; but retirement was, to a mind like his, an element of peculiar danger. He forsook the world in the disgust produced by defeat, not with the lofty spirit of a conqueror. At every movement on the episcopal bench, the rustling of lawn sleeves seemed to break upon his solitude, with the effect of a distant bugle upon an old hunter, who, though condemned to ignoble rest, has not lost his relish for the chase. By the banks of romantic Windermere, still his dreams were of Lambeth; he could neither forget nor bear to be forgotten. In this state of seclusion, it was inevitable that the action of his mind should assume a morbid direction. Avarice, which has been termed the passion of age, is but a different modification of the selfism (to use his own phrase) which at another period developed itself in the form of ambition. The life-long complaints of the retired bishop of the poorest diocese, terminated in his leaving behind him, it is said, not much less than a hundred thousand pounds. It is true that this accumulation of property was the fruit of his own honourable exertions; but there was, to say the least, an incongruity in a regius professor's driving the trade of an agriculturist, and in his disregarding those episcopal duties which he had so solemnly pledged himself to discharge, that could not fail to strike even the peasantry of Westmoreland, and all with whom the money-getting bishop came into contact.

Who would not laugh, if such a man there be,
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he.'

Why did he not resign his station in the establishment, and become respectable by avowing his preference for a secular life? Or why did not the powers of the world to come seize, in that solitude, upon his unoccupied faculties, and render it impossible for him, thenceforth, to stoop to the drudgery of the world, producing a happy blindness to the things which are seen, from the overpowering glory of the visions

of eternity? One thing he lacked. That one thing would have made the vacillating theologian a firm believer, the despairing partisan a persevering patriot, the retired bishop' a holy and a happy recluse. For want of this one requisite, he subscribed to what he did not believe, undertook duties he never discharged, (as if in religious concerns alone, that bold integrity, which never yielded to the fear or favour of man, might be safely prevaricated away,) retained the care of a diocese in which he never resided, and which he seldom visited, and has bequeathed us only the opinions of a sage, not, alas! the example of a saint;-a

THOMAS LEWIS O'BEIRNE was born at Farnagh, in the county of Longford, in the year 1749.' He was sent at the age of seven years to the diocesan school of Ardagh, then taught by the Rev. Thomas Hynes, one of the most celebrated scholars of his day. Under the tuition of this worthy man he continued until the class to which he belonged went off to Trinity college, Dublin, in the year 1763. At this time peace being concluded with France, he was sent to Paris, and entered under the care of Dr O'Kelly, into what was called the Irish community, from its admitting young persons destined for other pursuits and professions, as well as for the Romish ministry. From this seminary he attended the public course of academic studies in the college of Plessis, and was annually crowned, as well at the public distribution of prizes at the college, as in the university at large, until he concluded his year of rhetoric in 1767. At this time he fell into so bad a state of health that he was advised by the physicians to try his native air, and in the beginning of the summer of 1768, he accompanied Mr Usher, the author of Clio, or, a Discourse upon Taste,' as far as London, from whence he shortly after returned to his father's house, after an absence of five years. Having in the course of the ensuing autumn

nors.

'The O'Beirnes of Dangan, in the county of Roscommon, ranked from the earliest times to the period of the Revolution among the most ancient and respectable of the Irish families of the province of Connaught, and were originally a branch of the O'ConFrancis O'Beirne of Dangan, at the time of the Revolution forfeited the inheritance of his family, for the second time, in the cause of the unfortunate Stuarts. Under Cromwell's usurpation he attended Charles II. through all his fortunes, and in the act of settlement he was restored to his estates. When the battle of Aughrim, in which he fought, had given the last blow to all the expectations of the adherents of James, he arrived in Spain with his wife and children. His two daughters were taken into the family of the queen dowager in quality of maids-of-honour, and in that state, the elder, a woman of uncommon beauty, had the misfortune to be beloved by the famous duke of Wharton, and the still greater misfortune to return his love. Notwithstanding the opposition of her royal mistress, she persisted in her determination to marry this ontcast of each church and state; and was that wife to whose fate Pope alludes in the well-known line in his character of Clodio,

A tyrant to the very wife he loved.'

and winter completely re-established his health, he once more quitted the paternal roof to return to Paris, with an intention to apply himself to the study of physic; but having remained for some months in London, he there formed connections, and adopted ideas, that changed the whole tenor of his life.

The first circumstance that led to his renouncing Roman Catholicism was the acquaintance and patronage of Dr Hinchliffe, bishop of Peterborough. To this prelate he was first introduced at Mr Bouverie's, at Delapre-abbey, near Northampton, and he afterwards improved his acquaintance with him at Lord Northampton's at Castle Ashby. An exposition which he drew up of his reasons for having renounced the errors of popery gave such satisfaction to Dr Hinchliffe, that he communicated it to Dr Cornwallis, then archbishop of Canterbury, and, with his grace's concurrence, he encouraged Mr O'Beirne publicly to read his recantation, as a necessary previous step to his admission to orders. With this recommendation Mr O'Beirne cheerfully complied, and, between the morning-prayer and the communion-service, standing under the screen of All-Saints' church, in Northampton, he solemnly renounced the errors of the church of Rome.2 From this time the bishop never ceased to give him the most convincing proofs of his friendship. Under his auspices he was entered of Trinity college, Cambridge, of which his lordship was then master. He admitted him to orders as soon as he was of age, and immediately on his receiving priesthood, procured him the vicarage of Grundon, in Northamptonshire, that belonged to Trinity college; and at length, when, in the year 1776, Lord Howe was appointed commissioner and commander-in-chief in the expedition to America, he had applied to Dr Hinchliffe to recommend a clergyman to him, who should not only live in his own family, as chaplain to his flag, but be qualified to assist him in whatever steps he might be encouraged to take relative to an establishment for the episcopal church in America, his lordship instantly thought of his young friend, and placed him in the situation that may be said to have led to all his future fortunes.

On his return from America, when the conduct of Lord Howe, with respect to the direction and execution of military operations, became the subject of general animadversion and parliamentary inquiry, and

2 The Rev. George Croly seems to attribute O'Beirne's change of religion to the following circumstance. While returning from a visit to some friends, he stopped at a village-inn, and ordered a shoulder of mutton, the only meat in the house, to be dressed for his dinner. Before the joint was roasted two other travellers arrived, who prevailed on the landlady to serve up the mutton at their own table. "The young Irishman above stairs, however, on being apprized of the arrangement, protested that no two travellers on earth should deprive him of his dinner; but at the same time declared that he should feel happy to have their company. The invitation was accepted; and O'Beirne, then a very handsome young man, and always a very quick, anecdotical, and intelligent one,' so fascinated his guests, that in the course of the evening, which appears to have been jovially passed, they inquired what he meant to do with himself?" He replied, that he was destined for the Irish priesthood; which, however, his companions protested would not afford sufficient scope for his abilities; and, on their departure, they requested him to call upon them in London, at the same time avowing themselves to be Charles James Fox, and the duke of Portland." "Such an invitation," adds Croly, "was not likely to be declined: his two friends kept their promise honourably; and, in a short period, O'Beirne enjoyed all the advantages of the first society in the empire."