432 



Memoirs of Eminent Persons. 



[June 1, 



(he hedge, espied the retired gardens 

 of Mrs. Mdier^, corresponding in taste- 

 ful display with the rusticated cottage- 

 oruee. Here while I walk on enjoying 

 the unmolested serenity of a summer's 

 morning, how lost to its loveliness and 

 fragrance are thedwellers of tliat smoky 

 metropolis at twenty-five miles distant. 

 There huddled in heterogeneous tu- 

 mult, creature is gi-appling with crea- 

 ture in trafficking controversy; thou- 

 sands are pouring forth from crowded 

 habitations, inhaling noxious vapours; 

 others ^re sinking under their daily 

 toil, from lassitude and bodily exhaus- 

 tion ; and there perhaps may be seen the 

 wealthy and the great, whose villas are 

 tenantless, until the chilling damps 

 of autumn ,sliall have impaired the 

 country of Its meridian splendour. 

 Viewed from the liilly pivot, on the 

 summit of which 1 had been turning, the 

 emulative handicraft of man had con- 

 trived to raise a few puny edifices, whose 

 proud roofs were seen just overtopping 

 the foliage of the circumjacent woods. 

 The morning would liave been spent 

 much more unprofitably in examining 

 their interiors, or inspecting the general 

 objects of public curiosity. There per- 

 haps I might have beheld specimens of 

 exquisitely finished v^orkmanship, and 

 unique models of taste. Their walls 

 and galleries might be hung with the 

 matchless productions of eminent mas- 

 ters in the different schools, .and pro- 

 fusely decorated by the magic pencil of 



art ; and their libraries furnished more 

 as ostentatious ornaments, than for 

 their intrinsic value; and '-whose very 

 indices are not to be reJid over in an 

 age." 



Wealth now enlists and enslaves every 

 artifice to minister to the depraved pas- 

 sions of man. Sloth fulness and seden- 

 tary ease are nurtured by imtimely con- 

 cessions to effeminate habits, and the 

 cravings of appetite are pampered by 

 epicurean excesses. The frivolity and 

 foppery of deep and superfluous cloth- 

 ing are kept up, and studied as the 

 criterion of superiority ; '• but though 

 a coat be ever so fine that a fool wears,. 

 'tis but a fool's coat." Talent is too 

 often perverted by its possessors in 

 playing the parts of stipendiary scribes, 

 in couuteracting justice, in contamina- 

 ting the channels of public informa- 

 tion, or in fettering that intellectual 

 engine, whose gigantic powers circulate 

 life and vigour throughout mankind : 



Totam infusa per artus 



Mens agitat molem, et maguo se corpora 

 miscet. Virgil. 



" yirt is long, and life but short,'' 

 and the futility of the former when 

 compared with the lubricity of the lat- 

 ter, should teach us, like the Emperor 

 Vespasian, to record the incidents of 

 our lives, so that on referring to the 

 pages of our Diary, we may then enjoy 

 the imimpaired transports of a pleasing 

 retrospect. • T. 



MEMOIRS OF EMINENT PERSONS 



RECENTLY DECEASED. 



COMMUNICATIONS TO THIS ARTICLE OF AUTHENTIC ANECDOTES OF REMARKABLE 

 PERSONS, ARE EARNESTLY SOLICITED. 



SIR CHARLES BUNBURY. 



ON the 31st of March, at his house. Pall 

 Mall, departed this life Sir Thomas 

 Charles Bunbury, Bart., having nearly 

 completed his eighty-first year, his birth- 

 day beiug May-day, 1740. 



The Bunbury family were originally of 

 Buubury and Stanuey, in the county pa- 

 latine of Chester ; possessing also estates 

 at Milden Mall and Great Barton, in Suf- 

 folk, indeed nearly the whole of the latter 

 parish. The late Sir Charles was born at 

 Great Barton, at the hall or mansion, 

 which was his summer residence through- 

 out life. His father was the Rev. Sir Wra. 

 Buubury, Bart., sometime fellow of Cathe- 

 rine Hall, Cambridge, whom he succeeded 

 in 1764. Sir Charles received his education 

 at Westminster, and at Catherine Hall, 

 Cambridge, whence he entered early into 



public life. In 1763, he accepted the ap- 

 pointment of secretary to tbe embassy at 

 Paris, in which he was succeeded by David 

 Hume, the celebrated historian. Sir Charles 

 was nest appointed to the secretaryship in 

 Ireland, during the government of Lord 

 Weymouth, afterwards Marquis of Bath, 

 which he did not long retain, and which 

 was his last connection with the court or 

 with ministers. In bis absence on the Con- 

 tinent, he had been elected a Knight of the 

 Shire for his native county of Suffolk, serv- 

 ing in the first Parliament of the laie King, 

 and being chosen regularly to represent 

 the same county in nine successive Parlia- 

 ments, with the exception of one, subse- 

 quent to the dissolution in 1784 ; miiking 

 on the whole, a service to his country of 

 neai-ly fifty years, and which he quitted 

 only on the approach of old ag^ and ina- 

 bility, 



