"Burke's son, upon whom his father has conferred something of his own celebrity, heard his parents sobbing in another room at the prospect of an event they knew to be inevitable. He rose from his bed, joined his illustrious father, and endeavored to engage him in a cheerful conversation. Burke continued silent, choked with grief. His son again made an effort to console him. 'I am under no terror,' he said; 'I feel myself better and in spirits, and yet my heart flutters, I know not why. Pray, talk to me, sir! talk of religion; talk of morality; talk, if you will, of indifferent subjects.' Here a noise attracted his notice, and he exclaimed, 'Does it rain?--No; it is the rustling of the wind through the trees.' The whistling of the wind and the waving of the trees brought Milton's majestic lines to his mind, and he repeated them with uncommon grace and effect: 'His praise, ye winds, that from four quarters blow, Breathe soft or loud; and wave your tops, ye pines, With every plant, in sign of worship wave!' A second time he took up the sublime and melodious strain, and, accompanying the action to the word, waved his own hand in token of worship, and sank into the arms of his father--a corpse. Not a sensation told him that in an instant he would stand in the presence of the Creator to whom his body was bent in homage, and whose praises still resounded from his lips." The account which all the biographies of Burke give of the effect this bereavement produced upon his parents is most fearful even to read; what must it have been to witness? His mother seems to have regained her self-possession sooner than his father. In one of his letters to the late Baron Smith, he writes--"So heavy a calamity has fallen upon me as to disable me from business, and disqualifies me for repose. The existence I have--_I do not know that I can call life_. * * Good nights to you--I never have any." And again--"The life which has been so embittered cannot long endure. The grave will soon close over me, and my dejections." To Lord Auckland he writes--"For myself, or for my family (alas! I have none), I have nothing to hope or to fear in this world." And again in another letter--"The storm has gone over me, and I lie like one of those old oaks which the late hurricane has scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honors, I lie prostrate on the earth; I am alone, I have none to meet my enemies in the gate. I greatly deceive myself, if in this hard season of life, I would give a peck of refuse wheat for all that is called fame and honor in the world."