endeavored to engage him in a cheerful
conversation. Burke continued silent, choked with grief. His son again
made an effort to console him. 'I am under no terror,' he said; 'I feel
myself better and in spirits, and yet my heart flutters, I know not why.
Pray, talk to me, sir! talk of religion; talk of morality; talk, if you
will, of indifferent subjects.' Here a noise attracted his notice, and
he exclaimed, 'Does it rain?--No; it is the rustling of the wind through
the trees.' The whistling of the wind and the waving of the trees
brought Milton's majestic lines to his mind, and he repeated them with
uncommon grace and effect:

'His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow,
Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines,
With every plant, in sign of worship wave!'

A second time he took up the sublime and melodious strain, and,
accompanying the action to the word, waved his own hand in token of
worship, and sank into the arms of his father--a corpse. Not a sensation
told him that in an instant he would stand in the presence of the
Creator to whom his body was bent in homage, and whose praises still
resounded from his lips."

The account which all the biographies of Burke give of the effect this
bereavement produced upon his parents is most fearful even to read; what
must it have been to witness? His mother seems to have regained her
self-possession sooner than his father. In one of his letters to the
late Baron Smith, he writes--"So heavy a calamity has fallen upon me as
to disable me from business, and disqualifies me for repose. The
existence I have--_I do not know that I can call life_. * * Good nights
to you--I never have any." And again--"The life which has been so
embittered cannot long endure. The grave will soon close over me, and my
dejections." To Lord Auckland he writes--"For myself, or for my family
(alas! I have none), I have nothing to hope or to fear in this world."
And again in another letter--"The storm has gone over me, and I lie like
one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I
am stripped of all my honors, I lie prostrate on the earth; I am alone,
I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. I greatly deceive myself, if
in this hard season of life, I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all
that is called fame and honor in the world."

There is some thing in the "wail" and character of these laments that
recalls the mournful Psalms of David; like