Halifax's only son, had been affianced to the Lady Mary Finch,
Nottingham's daughter. The day of the nuptials was fixed; a joyous
company assembled at Burley on the Hill, the mansion of the bride's
father, which, from one of the noblest terraces in the island, looks
down on magnificent woods of beech and oak, on the rich valley of
Catmos, and on the spire of Oakham. The father of the bridegroom was
detained to London by indisposition, which was not supposed to be
dangerous. On a sudden his malady took an alarming form. He was told
that he had but a few hours to live. He received the intimation with
tranquil fortitude. It was proposed to send off an express to summon his
son to town. But Halifax, good natured to the last, would not disturb
the felicity of the wedding day. He gave strict orders that his
interment should be private, prepared himself for the great change by
devotions which astonished those who had called him an atheist, and died
with the serenity of a philosopher and of a Christian, while his friends
and kindred, not suspecting his danger, were tasting the sack posset and
drawing the curtain. [564] His legitimate male posterity and his titles
soon became extinct. No small portion, however, of his wit and eloquence
descended to his daughter's son, Philip Stanhope, fourth Earl
of Chesterfield. But it is perhaps not generally known that some
adventurers, who, without advantages of fortune or position, made
themselves conspicuous by the mere force of ability, inherited the blood
of Halifax. He left a natural son, Henry Carey, whose dramas once drew
crowded audiences to the theatres, and some of whose gay and spirited
verses still live in the memory of hundreds of thousands. From Henry
Carey descended that Edmund Kean, who, in our time, transformed himself
so marvellously into Shylock, Iago and Othello.

More than one historian has been charged with partiality to Halifax. The
truth is that the memory of Halifax is entitled in an especial manner
to the protection of history. For what distinguishes him from all other
English statesmen is this, that, through a long public life, and through
frequent and violent revolutions of public feeling, he almost invariably
took that view of the great questions of his time which history has
finally adopted. He was called inconstant, because the relative position
in which he stood to the contending factions was perpetually varying. As
well might the pole star be called inconstan