making him her heir, finding herself slighted, altered her intentions, and left about 8000l. between her two executors, Dr. Berkeley and Mr. Marshal. In his life, in the Biographia Britannica, it is said, that Swift had often taken him to dine at this lady's house; but Mrs. Berkeley, his widow, asserts that he never dined there but once, and that by chance. In the discharge of his office as executor, Dr. Berkeley destroyed as much of Vanessa's correspondence as he could find; not, as he declares, because he had found any thing criminal in her connection with the Dean, but because he had found in the lady's letters a warmth and ardour of expression which might have been turned into ridicule, and which delicacy required him to conceal from the public. Her other executor did not act with equal tenderness to her memory, and published the "Cadenus and Vanessa"—which Dr. Delany asserts proved fatal to Swift's other lady, Stella.
In 1717 he had been elected senior fellow of his college, and on 18th May, 1724, be resigned this preferment, being appointed to the deanery of Derry, with about 1100l. a year.
He was now about to enter on a new scene of life, in which he manifested himself as the benevolent, disinterested philanthropist, and warm supporter of Christianity, in a manner in which he has seldom been equalled. He had turned his attention to the miserable condition of the native Indians on the vast continent of North America, and felt anxious to promote their civilization, and advance their temporal and spiritual benefits. The most likely means which appeared to the Dean, was to erect a college for the education of young men, who might afterwards be employed as missionaries. He accordingly published in 1725 "A Proposal for converting the Savage Americans to Christianity, by a College to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermuda."—With so much zeal did he enter into this plan, that he actually offered to resign all his own church preferments, and
