lessened by his acceptance of a bishopric) returning with all its force, and I wrote the following letter to him: you "You have never written to me since you went to Ireland; I know nothing of you except by report. I cannot however suffer an ardent friendship of many years' standing to cool so suddenly, as not to be greatly interested in what I hear of you, and they tell me that you are ill, and dangerously ill. If the fact is so, and think my consolation can be of any use to you, command me in any way, and to any extent you judge fit. Some twenty years ago, you were then, I believe, at Vienna, I preferred your interest to my own, in soliciting for you the Professorship of Modern History, and you wrote me word that you should die contented in having met with a true friend : that friend is still what he was then, and, though both our situations are mended, yet the principle of regard remains the same, "I am," &c. By way of breviary, as a postscript often is, follows this: "I ought not to give you advice, for you have not consulted me; and if you had, our feelings may be different; but nothing should induce mé to embitter the rest of my life in the squabbles of a college." After the letter he makes this remark : : "It was then reported that Preston was to have been translated to an English bishoprick, and to have been made Master of Trinity College." How the dying prelate received this gentle reminiscence of supposed benefits conferred, and of college squabbles, we know not, but we do know how Hotspur would have received it and read it; how any well-regulated mind would have reflected on it. His regard for Preston had been lessened by his acceptance of a bishopric! Good Heavens ! and yet he himself a few years before had accepted the Bishopric of Llandaff; and would have accepted any other he could have clutched from that time until the last moment of his earthly existence. But it was quite in the style of that Diogenes. The truth will out! nature will return in spite of every effort— "Quamvis repellas furcâ tamen usque recurrit.” "It was reported (says he) that Preston was to have been translated to an English bishopric, and to have been made Master of Trinity." Here lies the mystery of his writing at all,-the pith and marrow of his tale: jealousy and disappointment were the prime movers, at the bottom of this cool, cruel, hard-hearted, selfish, and unprovoked letter! Nothing would have stung him to the quick so keenly as such a translation, or of his succeeding to the Mastership of Trinity. The very idea, the very report was, like a piece of red cloth to a certain animal, enough to goad him to madness. "I ought not (adds he) to give you advice, for you have not consulted me." Why should the Bishop of Ferns consult a man who had no correspondence with him; who had no sympathies in common with him, who could have no love for him, and who was many years his elder in age? When he tells him that he solicited the Professorship of Modern History for Preston, to the neglect of his own interest, we must beg to say Credat Judæus Apella! Watson was the Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Divinity, and of other things, more particularly alluded to in his life; and therefore (assuming its truth) not to fill the chair of Modern History was an act of sublime self-denial, which none but a man of Watson's egotism would dare to talk of. He would have been fitted for it, just as well as he was for the University laboratory of chemistry, we had almost said for the chair of Divinity. However, notwithstanding this entire estrangement for so many years, they contrived to repair at their joint expense the school where they had been educated, as appears by the following Inscription drawn up by Watson :— Hanc scholam fundavit Amplisque reditibus annuis dotavit De Heversham-Hall, Armiger, Elapsis centum et amplius annis Et circumcirca arboribus consitis condecoravit THOMAS WATSON, Ab anno 1698vo usque ad annum 1737um RICARDUS WATSON, Episcopus Landovensis, et GULIELMUS PRESTON, Episcopus Fernensis, MDCCLXXXVIII. Watson was right in the report he heard of the dangerous illness of the Bishop of Ferns; for, in truth, at the date of the above letter he was on his death-bed, as appears by the following memorandum recorded in the Register of Ferns* : "The Right Reverend William Preston, Lord Bishop of Leighlin and Ferns, died at the house of John Tidd, Esq., Clare Street, on Sunday the 19th day of April, 1789, at three o'clock in the morning.” * See Eicke's Eccl. Reg. 6 Vol. 255; see also Ib. 238. Mr. Tidd was a barrister, and then resided in Clare Street, Dublin; but how connected with our countryman does not appear. 66 We do not find that the Prelate was ever married, although a gentleman of great intelligence and research, and in daily intercourse with the present Bishop of the See, appears to think otherwise. There are certainly, as he suggests, two or three clergymen of the same name within the Diocese ; but if descendants in blood they have not inherited much, if any, of that which in him was so enlightened by genius, enlarged by travel, softened by benevolence, and accomplished by travel;" in other words, they seem one and all devoid of the commonest rules of civility, and of intercourse with mankind. Perhaps, in charity be it said, our letters were intercepted and used as cartridge-paper by the rebellious army of the King of Munster. May those who follow be more fortunate in their inquiries, and succeed in wiping the cobwebs from his manuscripts and correspondence! We have sought in vain, too, for Mr. Tidd's descendants to clear up this difficulty. If we have only put future inquiry on the right track, we can then say with one whose name and writings will endure for ever, 66 we could wish to read one page more, but this is enough for our measure; we have not lived in vain." The Duchess of Rutland caused a monument to be erected to his memory in the Cathedral, at Ferns: |