ilege of being with him to
the last; and any nobler spectacle of tender, generous affection, high
courage, child-like submission to the Supreme Will, and of magnanimity
in its true sense, I do not again expect to see. On the morning of his
death he said to me, "John, come and tell me honestly how this is to
end; tell me the last symptoms in their sequence." I knew the man, and
was honest, and told him all I knew. "Is there any chance of stupor or
delirium?" "I think not. Death (to take Bichat's division) will begin at
the heart itself, and you will die conscious." "I am glad of that. It
was Samuel Johnson, wasn't it, who wished not to die unconscious, that
he might enter the eternal world with his mind unclouded; but you know,
John, that was physiological nonsense. We leave the brain, and all this
ruined body, behind; but I would like to be in my senses when I take my
last look of this wonderful world," looking across the still sea towards
the Argyllshire hills, lying in the light of sunrise, "and of my
friends--of you," fixing his eyes on a faithful friend and myself. And
it was so; in less than an hour he was dead, sitting erect in his
chair--his disease had for weeks prevented him from lying down,--all the
dignity, simplicity, and benignity of its master resting upon, and, as
it were, supporting that "ruin," which he had left.

I cannot end this tribute to my father's friend and mine, and my own
dear and earliest friend's father, without recording one of the most
extraordinary instances of the power of will, under the pressure of
affection, I ever witnessed or heard of. Dr. Belfrage was twice married.
His second wife was a woman of great sweetness and delicacy, not only of
mind, but, to his sorrow, of constitution. She died, after less than a
year of singular and unbroken happiness. There was no portrait of her.
He resolved there should be one; and though utterly ignorant of drawing,
he determined to do it himself. No one else could have such a perfect
image of her in his mind, and he resolved to realize this image. He got
the materials for miniature painting, and, I think, eight prepared ivory
plates. He then shut himself up from every one, and from everything, for
fourteen days, and came out of his room, wasted and feeble, with one of
the plates (the others he had used and burnt), on which was a portrait,
full of subtle likeness, and drawn and colored in a way no one could
have dreamt of, having had such an artist.