Lord Stanhope shows that Wilberforce never saw Pitt after the
battle of Austerlitz was fought. With the Austerlitz look on his face,
Pitt travelled to London, to the villa now known as Bowling Green House
at Putney. With the Austerlitz look on his face he surrendered himself
to the care of his niece, Lady Hester Stanhope, who afterwards lived
eccentric and died lonely in the East, a kind of desert queen. With
the Austerlitz look on his face he bade that niece roll up the map of
Europe: "It will not be wanted these ten years." With the Austerlitz
look on his face he died on January 23, 1806.

England, that had lost in three months Nelson and Pitt, was to lose a
third great man in only eight months more. Pitt's body lay in
Westminster; Pitt's Ministry was dissipated into air; Pitt's great
opponent was called to the office for the last time, and for a very
short time. Fox, as we are told by his biographer, Lord Russell, never
felt personal enmity to Pitt. He said, with generous truth, that he
never gave a vote with more satisfaction than his vote in support of
the motion to pay Pitt's debts and to settle pensions on his nieces.
He could not and did not indorse the proposal to confer honor on the
memory of Mr. Pitt {340} as an "excellent statesman." He was ready to
take office in the Ministry of All the Talents that Lord Grenville
gathered together. He became Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House
of Commons.

Fox, in office as out of office, had three great questions closely at
heart: the treatment of Catholics, peace with France, and the Slave
Trade. But Fox in office was obliged to face and recognize the
difficulties, the solution of these questions. He admitted,
reluctantly, the inadvisability of pressing the Catholic claims at a
time when such pressure would prove destructive alike to the claims and
to the Ministry that maintained them. He admitted, reluctantly, that
the prospect of peace with France was very far from hopeful. He still
dreamed of a speedy abolition of the Slave Trade, and to this end he
attended Parliament too persistently in defiance of the warnings of his
failing health. He was tapped for dropsy; his condition grew worse; in
the evening of September 13, 1806, he died. He was the greatest
liberal of his age; the greatest friend of liberty. The Irish poet
bade the Irish banshee wail for him on whose burning tongue, truth,
peace, and freedom hung.

Fox was not long dead when the Mi