y the
gift of the Duke of Newcastle; and Bethell, then Attorney-General, wrote
to him in favour of Fitzjames's appointment. I am not aware how Bethell
came to have any knowledge of him; but Fitzjames had formed a very high
opinion of the great lawyer's merits. He showed it when Bethell, then
Lord Westbury, was accused of misconduct as Lord Chancellor. He thought
that the accusations, if not entirely unfounded, were grossly
exaggerated for party purposes. He could not persuade the 'Pall Mall
Gazette,' for which he was then writing, to take this view; but upon
Westbury's resignation he obtained the insertion of a very cordial
eulogy upon the ex-chancellor's merits as a law reformer.

The appointment to the recordership was one of the last pieces of
intelligence to give pleasure to my father. Fitzjames had seen much of
him during the last year. He had spent some weeks with him at Dorking in
the summer of 1858, and had taken a little expedition with him in the
spring of 1859. My father injured himself by a walk on his seventieth
birthday (January 3, 1859), and his health afterwards showed symptoms of
decline. In the autumn he was advised to go to Homburg; and thence, on
August 30, he wrote his last letter, criticising a draft of a report
which Fitzjames was preparing for the Education Commission, and
suggesting a few sentences which would, he thinks, give greater
clearness and emphasis to the main points. Immediately afterwards
serious symptoms appeared, due, I believe, to the old break-down of
1847. My father was anxious to return, and started homewards with my
mother and sister, who had accompanied him. They got as far as Coblenz,
where they were joined by Fitzjames, who had set out upon hearing the
news. He was just in time to see his father alive. Sir James Stephen
died September 14, 1859, an hour or two after his son's arrival. He was
buried at Kensal Green, where his tombstone bears the inscription: 'Be
strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed:
for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.' The words
(from Joshua i. 9) were chosen because a friend remembered the emphasis
with which my father had once dwelt upon them at his family prayers.
With the opening words of the same passage my brother concluded the book
which expressed his strongest convictions,[75] and summed up his
practical doctrine of life. What he felt at the time may be inferred
from a striking essay upon the 'We