The question in the House of Commons was decided before the publication could appear, and it was supposed that Mr. Burke had, in consequence, abandoned the intention of publishing his ideas. But Sir John, not having received any answer, or, at least, any that was satisfactory to him, requested me to take his chariot and go to Gregory’s, in order that I might discover whether that celebrated character continued his intention of throwing his thoughts upon paper. I reached Mr. Burke’s before breakfast, and had every reason to be pleased with my reception. ‘Why, Mr. Young, it is many years since I saw you, and, to the best of my recollection, you have not suffered the smallest change; you look as young as you did sixteen years ago. You must be very strong; you have no belly; your form shows lightness; you have an elastic mind.’ I wished to myself that I could have returned anything like the compliment, but I was shocked to see him so broken, so low, and with such expressions of melancholy. I almost thought that I was come to see the greatest genius of the age in ruin. And I had every reason to think, from all that passed on this visit, that the powers of his mind had suffered considerably. He introduced me to his brother, Mr. W. Burke, to Mrs. B., and to the Count de la Tour du Pin, an emigrant philosopher and naturalist. After breakfast he took me a sauntering walk for five hours over his farm, and to a cottage where a scrap of land had been stolen from the waste. I was glad to find his farm in good order, and doubly so to hear him remark that it was his only amusement, except the attention which he paid to a school in the vicinity for sixty children of noble emigrants. His conversation was remarkably desultory, a broken mixture of agricultural observations, French madness, price of provisions, the death of his son, the absurdity of regulating labour, the mischief of our Poor-laws, and the difficulty of cottagers keeping cows. An argumentative discussion of any opinion seemed to distress him, and I, therefore, avoided it. And his discourse was so scattered and interrupted by varying ideas, that I could bring away but few of his remarks that were clearly defined.