n times, Marie Antoinette, to madness; he lived to censure the
infatuation of religious zeal in the Birmingham riots. 'Are not the
devils escaped out of the swine, and overrunning the earth
headlong?'--he asked in one of his letters.

He had offered his hand, and all the ambitious views which it opened, to
each of the Miss Berrys successively, but they refused to bear his name,
though they still cheered his solitude: and, strange to say, two of the
most admired and beloved women of their time remained single.

In 1796, the sinking invalid was persuaded to remove to Berkeley Square,
to be within reach of good and prompt advice. He consented unwillingly,
for his 'Gothic Castle' was his favourite abode. He left it with a
presentiment that he should see it no more; but he followed the
proffered advice, and in the spring of the year was established in
Berkeley Square. His mind was still clear. He seems to have cherished to
the last a concern for that literary fame which he affected to despise.
'Literature has,' he said, 'many revolutions; if an author could rise
from the dead, after a hundred years, what would be his surprise at the
adventures of his works! I often say, perhaps my books may be published
in Paternoster Row!' He would indeed have been astonished at the vast
circulation of his Letters, and the popularity which has carried them
into every aristocratic family in England. It is remarkable that among
the middle and lower classes they are far less known, for he was
essentially the chronicler, as well as the wit and beau, of St. James's,
of Windsor, and Richmond.

At last he declared that he should 'be content with a sprig of rosemary'
thrown on him when the parson of the parish commits his 'dust to dust.'
The end of his now suffering existence was near at hand. Irritability,
one of the unpitied accompaniments of weakness, seemed to compete with
the gathering clouds of mental darkness as the last hour drew on. At
intervals there were flashes of a wit that appeared at that solemn
moment hardly natural, and that must have startled rather than pleased,
the watchful friends around him. He became unjust in his fretfulness,
and those who loved him most could not wish to see him survive the wreck
of his intellect. Fever came on, and he died on the 2nd of March, 1797.

He had collected his letters from his friends: these epistles were
deposited in two boxes, one marked with an A., the other with a B. The
chest A. was not