LORD ROSEBERY AND THE BURKE MEMORIAL.

Otago Witness, Issue 2325, 22 September 1898, Page 28

LORD ROSEBERY AND THE BURKE MEMORIAL.

Lord Kosebery, on July 9, unveiled a Him orial to Edmund Burke, in the Par- a Church of St. Mary aud All Saints', Bcaccr - fieli, Buckinghamshire. In design the memori il is a handsome tablet bearing a head carved in Derbyshire alabaster, is copied from the portrait of Sir Joshua Eeynolds, painted in 1775, arid now in the National Portrait Gallery, and inscribed : — " Edmund J^urke, patriot, orator, statesman; lived at Butler's Court, formerly GregorieS, in this parish', 1769 to 1797. This memorial ia placed here by public subscription, records the undying honour in which his name is held. July 9, 1898." Lord Rosebery, at the luncheon given by Sir Edward Lawson at Hall Barn in honour of the event, said he was very glad to see a detachment of Irishmen present on that occasion to do honour to the greatest of Irishmen. But he thought that some of those who stood in the chtirch must have felt their thoughts revert for a moment to the sublime ceremony of a few weeks ago, in which all that was mortal of one of the greatest of Englishmen was enshrined in Westminster Abbey. There was a great contrast between that noble and Signal procession and their little ceremony of that day. But on the whole the little ceremony was not incongruous. It would not have taken place if Burke had been buried among the great of the earth in Westminster Abbey. Indeed, Charles Fox proposed it. By his will, however, Burke absolutely forbade it. It would not have been out of place had Burke been buried in Westminster Abbey, but it seemed to him to be more strictly appropriate that a man whose life had been distinguished in the highest walks of life, but not by many of the outer rewards of this world — for he was never a Cabinet Minister — should be buried, not in Westminster Abbey, among thosa who had achieved those distinctions, but in his own quiet home, where he was seen at his best, and in the church where he worshipped among the poorer neighbours whom he loved There were, of course, more than one Burke. There was the Burke who left works which will only perish with the English langvage; but on that day they thought more of the Burke as he was seen at " G-regories," the fanner, the unsuccessful farmer — as all gehtlem>n farmers are — the man who strolled aboivfc his place, who showed" with pride his pigs, his cattle, and his sheep, the man for whom nothina; was too small or too simple in the miclsfc of this home. There had been no pompous procession to hallow his centenary, nothing in the nature of ceremony — nothing that would attract the outward eye. He thought that they who had been present in the little church felt that they had taken a moment out of the world, and its cares and its businesses, for one higher and mot-3 sublime process of thought — that they had been enabled to enshrine in their lives a, memory in thought and in prayer, a memorjr which they would never let die. In the drawing room of Hall Barn is preserved what is known as " Burkes Dagger," the knife which he dramatically threw on the floor of the House if Commons upon an historic occasion. This ialic was viewed by the guests with much curiosity and. interest.