His letter to the Roman Catholic Bishops of Ireland shows the large spirit of charity with which he exercised his episcopal office. Traditions of his loved and cherished presence still linger about the Palace of Cloyne, now a ruin; and a beautiful recumbent figure recently placed in the Cathedral perpetuates his memory there. But as he advanced in years, feeble in health, and long desirous of ending his days in a quiet retirement, he made Oxford his choice, and wrote to the Secretary of State (in 1752) to ask leave to resign his Bishopric. So unusual a desire as that of voluntary retirement, involving the loss of the episcopal revenue, led the King, George II., to enquire who it was that preferred such a request, and on learning that it was his old friend, Dr. Berkeley, declared that he should die a Bishop in spite of himself, but might reside where he pleased. Before he left Ireland, he instituted in his old College the two medals which bear his name for proficiency in Greek. In Oxford he died, and was buried in the Cathedral of Christ Church. Markham, the Archbishop of York, wrote his epitaph:-- “Si Christianus fueris Si amans patriæ Utroque nomine gloriari potes Berkleium vixisse.” Of the three portraits in our College perhaps none can be regarded as accurate. Probably the somewhat idealised outlines of the Cloyne monument convey a true image of Berkeley as his own generation knew him. “A handsome man,” it is said, “with a countenance full of meaning and benignity.” It would be out of place to attempt here to estimate Berkeley’s philosophical rank. If Hamann’s verdict be just--“Without Berkeley no Hume, without Hume no Kant,” we owe to the gentle wisdom of our great countryman a metaphysical debt difficult to overestimate; but quite apart from the importance of his position in the evolution of the critical idealism, the figure of that serene thinker, modest, tender, without reproach, will ever win and hold the admiration and reverence of all lovers of the beautiful in life and character. One of Berkeley’s most remarkable Episcopal brethren was Bishop Clayton, the mover of a motion in the Irish House of Lords proposing that the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds should be expunged from the Liturgy of the Church of Ireland--a somewhat bold proposal on the part of a dignitary of the Church. Mention should also here be made of Philip Skelton, a contemporary of Clayton, and a scholar of wide repute.