The money he had expected, especially from the King’s ministers, failed, and after waiting in vain expectation two years and a half, he returned to England, leaving an infant daughter buried in the churchyard of Trinity, and bestowing upon Yale College a library of eight hundred and eighty volumes, as well as his estate in Rhode Island. During his residence at Newport he preached every Sunday, and was indefatigable in pastoral duties, besides meditating, if not composing, “The Minute Philosopher,” which was published shortly after his return. In his absence he had not been forgotten at home; and shortly after his return he became Bishop of Cloyne, in which place he was most exemplary, devoting himself to his episcopal duties, to the education of his children, and the pleasures of composition. It was while occupied with his plan of a college, especially as a nursery for the colonial churches, shortly before sailing for America, that the great future was revealed to him, and he wrote the famous poem, the only one found among his works, entitled “Verses on the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America.”[302] The date may be fixed at 1726. Such a poem was an historic event. I give the first and last stanzas. “The Muse, disgusted at an age and clime Barren of every glorious theme, _In distant lands now waits a better time,_ _Producing subjects worthy fame_. … _Westward the course of empire takes its way_; The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day; Time’s noblest offspring is the last.” It is difficult to exaggerate the value of these verses, which have been so often quoted as to have become a commonplace of literature and politics. There is nothing from any oracle, there is very little from any prophecy, which can compare with them. The biographer of Berkeley, who wrote in the last century, was very cautious, when, after calling them “a beautiful copy of verses,” he says that “another age perhaps will acknowledge the old conjunction of the prophetic character with that of the poet to have again taken place.”[303] The _vates_ of the Romans was poet and prophet; and such was Berkeley. Mr. Webster calls this an “extraordinary prophecy,” and then says: “It was an intuitive glance into futurity; it was a grand conception, strong, ardent, glowing, embracing all time since the creation of the world and all regions of which that world is composed, and judging of the future by just analogy with the past. And the inimitable imagery and beauty with which the thought is expressed, joined to the conception itself, render it one of the most striking passages in our language.”[304]