The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees — John Shaqi
The Romance of Old New England RooftreesCrawford, Mary Caroline
History
The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees
Crawford, Mary Caroline
Historic buildings -- New England; New England -- Biography
In loyal remembrance of the palace of his monarchs, he named his
spacious home in the sequestered valley Whitehall. Here he began
domestic life, and became the father of a family. The neighbouring
groves and the cliffs that skirt the coast offered shade and silence and
solitude very soothing to his spirit, and one wonders not that he
wrote, under the projecting rock that still bears his name, "The Minute
Philosopher," one of his most noted works. The friends with whom he had
crossed the ocean went to stay in Boston, but no solicitations could
withdraw him from the quiet of his island home. "After my long fatigue
of business," he told Lord Percival, "this retirement is very agreeable
to me; and my wife loves a country life and books as well as to pass her
time continually and cheerfully without any other conversation than her
husband and the dead." For the wife was a mystic and a quietist.
But though Berkeley waited patiently for developments which should
denote the realisation of his hopes, he waited always in vain. From the
first he had so planned his enterprise that it was at the mercy of Sir
Robert Walpole; and at last came the crisis of the project, with which
the astute financier had never really sympathised. Early in 1730,
Walpole threw off the mask. "If you put the question to me as a
minister," he wrote Lord Percival, "I must and can assure you that the
money shall most undoubtedly be paid--as soon as suits with public
convenience; but if you ask me as a friend whether Dean Berkeley should
continue in America, expecting the payment of L200,000, I advise him by
all means to return to Europe, and to give up his present expectations."
When acquainted by his friend Percival with this frank statement,
Berkeley accepted the blow as a philosopher should. Brave and resolutely
patient, he prepared for departure. His books he left as a gift to the
library of Yale College, and his farm of Whitehall was made over to the
same institution, to found three scholarships for the encouragement of
Greek and Latin study. His visit was thus far from being barren of
results. He supplied a decided stimulus to higher education in the
colonies, in that he gave out counsel and help to the men already
working for the cause of learning in the new country. And he helped to
form in Newport a philosophical reunion, the effects of which were long
felt.
In the autumn of 1731 he sailed from Boston for London, where he arrived
in January of the next year. There a bishopric and twenty years of
useful and honourable labour awaited him. He died at Oxford, whence he
had removed from his see at Cloyne, on Sunday evening, January 14, 1753,
while reading aloud to his family the burial service portion of
Corinthians. He was buried in the Cathedral of Christ Church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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