GLEANINGS ON GARDENS. 63 



frequent conversation of his being on the wisdom, 

 goodness, and beneficence of the Deity. Home Tooke 

 was a sincere Christian, and closed his long and 

 stormy life (' after having survived the scorpion stings 

 of slander ') with an extraordinary degree of calmness 

 and intrepidity. On his decease, however, his friends 

 thought it best to bury him in the grave of his sister 

 at Baling (at the age of seventy-seven), where the 

 words content and grateful now form part of the 

 inscription on that stone which covers the remains of 

 that acute scholar, that richly gifted and most" dis- 

 interested of men, whose dauntless mind made it 

 his boast, that ' no allurement or threat, no power or 

 oppression, nor life, nor death, thunder or lightning, 

 shall ever force me to give way to corruption or 

 influence, half the breadth of a single hair ; ' and 

 when enforcing what he deemed beneficial to his 

 country, thus addressed his jury : * I protest, that if 

 there stood a fire here, and I thought I could by that 

 means affect your minds, and the minds of my coun- 

 trymen, I would thrust my hand with pleasure into 

 the fire and burn it to ashes, whilst I was pleading 

 before you.' And who, on another occasion, made 

 this declaration : * I have never committed a single 

 action, nor written a syllable in public or in private, 

 nor entertained a thought (of an important political 

 nature, when taken with all its circumstances of time, 



