He immediately said that the sun had struck him, and returned
home; a most distressing fever, chiefly on the nerves, and accompanied by
grievous restlessness and afterwards delirium, set in, and he died on the
8th of July, 1822, in his fifty-fourth year, absolutely worn out by toil
and worry. But his career had established both the needfulness and the
position of a Bishop, and his successor was appointed without the same
opposition, still to a path perhaps only less thorny because briefer.

Of a Yorkshire family, where the eldest son was always bred up as the
country gentleman, the younger ones usually prepared to hold the family
livings, Reginald Heber was born on the 21st of April, 1783, at Malpas,
in Cheshire, a rectory held by his father, who was the clerical second
son, but soon after became head of the house by the death of his squire-
brother. He was twice married, and had a son by his first wife, so that
Reginald was born, as it were, to the prospect of taking Holy Orders; and
this fact seems to have in a certain degree coloured his whole boyhood,
and acted as a consecration, not saddening, but brightening his life.

A happy, eager, docile childhood seems to have been his; so obedient,
that when an attack on the lungs necessitated the use of very painful
remedies, the physician said that the chances of his recovery turned upon
his being the most tractable of children; and with such a love and
knowledge of the Bible that, when only five years old, his father could
consult him like a little Concordance, and withal full of boyish mirth
and daring. When sent to school at Neasdon, he was so excited by the
story of an African traveller overawing a wild bull by the calm defiance
of the eye, as to attempt the like process upon one that he found grazing
in a field, but without the like success; for he provoked so furious a
charge that he was forced to escape ignominiously over a high paling,
whence he descended into a muddy pond.

Neasdon was the place of education of his whole boyhood, among twelve
other pupils. Mr. John Thornton, the schoolfellow friend and
correspondent of his life, describes him as having been much beloved
there. He had no scruple as to fighting rather than submitting to
tyranny from a bigger boy, but his unfailing good nature and
unselfishness generally prevented such collisions; he was full of fun,
and excellent at games of all sorts; and though at one time evil talk was
prevalent among the