In May, 1734, Berkeley was consecrated as Bishop of Cloyne, in St. Paul’s Church, Dublin. Except occasional visits, he had been absent from Ireland for more than twenty years. He returned to spend eighteen years of almost unbroken seclusion in his remote diocese. It suited a growing inclination to a recluse, meditative life, which had been encouraged by circumstances in Rhode Island. The eastern and northern part in the county of Cork formed his diocese, bounded on the west by Cork harbour, and on the east by the beautiful Blackwater and the mountains of Waterford; the sea, which was its southern boundary, approached within two miles of the episcopal residence in the village of Cloyne. As soon as he was settled, he resumed study “with unabated attention,” but still with indifferent health. Travelling had become irksome to him, and at Cloyne he was almost as much removed as he had been in Rhode Island from the thinking world. Cork took the place of Newport; but Cork was twenty miles from Cloyne, while Newport was only three miles from Whitehall. His episcopal neighbour at Cork was Bishop Browne, the critic of _Alciphron_. Isaac Gervais, afterwards Dean of Tuam, often enlivened the “manse-house” at Cloyne by his wit and intercourse with the great world. Secker, the Bishop of Bristol, and Benson, the Bishop of Gloucester, now and then exchanged letters with him, and correspondence was kept up as of old with Prior at Dublin and Johnson at Stratford. But there is no trace of intercourse with Swift, who was wearing out an unhappy old age, or with Pope, almost the only survivor of the brilliant society of other years. We are told, indeed, that the beauty of Cloyne was so described to the bard of Twickenham, by the pen which in former days had described Ischia, that Pope was almost moved to visit it. And a letter from Secker in February, 1735(31), contains this scrap: “Your friend Mr. Pope is publishing small poems every now and then, full of much wit and not a little keenness(32).” “Our common friend, Dr. Butler,” he adds, “hath almost completed a set of speculations upon the credibility of religion from its analogy to the constitution and course of nature, which I believe in due time you will read with pleasure.” Butler’s _Analogy_ appeared in the following year. But I have found no remains of correspondence between Berkeley and their “common friend”; the two most illustrious religious thinkers of the Anglican communion.