GREATREAKS. 279 regiments, during the protracted combat in the Peninsula; —those who “fell in the blaze of their fame,” and whose names we would wish to hand down to posterity as imperishable. e VALENTINE GREATREAKS, An enthusiast of a peculiar cast, whose supposed cures caused much speculation among the learned, and were witnessed by the most celebrated and scientific men, among whom was the Hon. Robert Boyle, was born on February 14th, 1628, at Affane, in the county of Water ford, where his father, William Greatreaks, Esq. was pos sessed of a landed estate, which afterwards descended to his son. His mother was the daughter of Sir Edward Harris, one of the justices of the King's Bench in Ireland. He was educated in the protestant profession, at the free school of Lismore, till the age of thirteen, when his friends intended to remove him to Trinity College, Dublin, for the purpose of finishing his education. This, however, was prevented by the commencement of the Great Rebel lion, which induced his mother to retire into England taking Valentine and her other children with her. Here they resided for some time with his great uncle, Mr. Ed mund Harris; and on his death, his mother, anxious for her son's improvement in literature, committed him to the charge of Mr. John Daniel Getrius, minister of Stoke Gabriel, in Devonshire, with whom he spent several years in furthering his acquaintance with the classics and divinity. After a residence of five or six years in England he returned to his native country, which he found in so wretched a state, that he retired to the castle of Caper quin; “where I spent,” says he, “a year's time in con templation, and saw so much of the madness and wicked ness of the world, that my life became a burden to me, and my soul was as weary of this habitation of clay, as ever the galley-slave was of the oar; which brought my
