more his
staff and companion as years had advanced. The Queen sent her sympathy,
but nothing could console him. He was then seventy-one years old, and
his work was done. His remaining years were those of loneliness and
sorrow and suffering. He visited friends, but they amused him not. He
wrote reminiscences, but his isolation remained. He sought out
charities when he himself was the object of compassion,--a sad old man
who could not sleep. He tried to interest himself in politics, but time
hung heavy on his hands. He read much and thought more, but assumed no
fresh literary work. He had enough to do to correct proof-sheets of new
editions of his works. His fiercest protests were now against atheism in
its varied forms. In 1870, Mr. Erskine, his last Scotch friend, died. In
1873 he writes: "More and more dreary, barren, base, and ugly seem to me
all the aspects of this poor, diminishing quack-world,--fallen openly
anarchic, doomed to a death which one can wish to be speedy."

Poor old man! He has survived his friends, his pleasures, his labors,
almost his fame; he is sick, and weary of life, which to him has become
a blank. Pity it is, he could not have died when "Cromwell" was
completed. He drags on his forlorn life, without wife or children, and
with only a few friends, in disease and ennui and discontent, almost
alone, until he is eighty-five.

"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps on this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

The relief came at last. It was on a cold day in February, 1881, that
Lecky, Froude, and Tyndall, alone of his London friends, accompanied his
mortal remains to Ecclefechan, where he was buried by the graves of his
father and mother. He might have rested in the vaults of Westminster;
but he chose to lie in a humble churchyard, near where he was born.

"In future years," says his able and interesting biographer, "Scotland
will have raised a monument over his remains; but no monument is needed
for one who has made an eternal memorial for himself in the hearts of
all to whom truth is the dearest possession.

"'For,