with that of better, and wiser men: but ever expecting a reverse
in health such as my seventy-five years are subject to. What a tragedy
is that of ---! So brisk, bright, good, a little woman, who seemed made
to live! And now the Doctors allot her but two years longer at most, and
her friends think that a year will see the End! and poor ---, tender,
true, and brave! His letters to me are quite fine in telling about it.
Mrs. Kemble wrote me word some two or three months ago that he was
looking very old: no wonder. I am told that she keeps up her Spirits the
better of the two. Ah, Providence might have spared 'pauvre et triste
Humanite' that Trial, together with a few others which (one would think)
would have made no difference to its Supremacy. 'Voila ma petite
protestation respectueuse a la Providence,' as Madame de Sevigne says.

To-morrow I am going (for my one annual Visit) to G. Crabbe's, where I am
to meet his Sisters, and talk over old Bredfield Vicarage days. Two of
my eight Nieces are now with me here in my house, for a two months'
visit, I suppose and hope. And I think this is all I have to tell you of

Yours ever sincerely
E. F. G.

* * * * *

This was in all probability the last letter FitzGerald ever wrote. On
the following day, Wednesday, June 13, he went to pay his annual visit at
Merton Rectory. On Friday the 15th I received from Mr. Crabbe the
announcement of his peaceful end: 'I grieve to have to tell you that our
dear friend Edward FitzGerald died here this morning [June 14]. He came
last evening to pay his usual visit with my sisters, but did not seem in
his usual spirits, and did not eat anything. . . . At ten he said he
would go to bed. I went up with him. . . . At a quarter to eight I
tapped at his door to ask how he was, and getting no answer went in and
found him as if sleeping peacefully but quite dead. A very noble
character has passed away.' On the following Tuesday, June 19, he was
buried in the little churchyard of Boulge, and the stone which marks his
grave bears the simple inscription 'Edward FitzGerald, Born 31 March
1809, Died 14 June 1883. It is He that hath made us and not we
ourselves.'

For some time before his death he seems to have had a foreboding that the
end was not far distant. In one of the last conversations I had with
him, certainly during my last visit at Easter 1883, he spoke of his
mother's death, in its suddenness very like his own, and at the sam