free from selfish feeling. His honours and success were
valued for the sake of his family. His services and life were for his
country. He had a truly English heart, and served her with entire
devotedness. Nothing, indeed, could be a finer commentary than his own
career upon her free and equal institutions, which, by the force of
those qualities they so powerfully tend to create, had enabled him to
rise from the condition of an unfriended orphan, to the dignity of the
British peerage. Most painful, therefore, were his feelings, when revolt
and anarchy in neighbouring countries were held up to be admired and
imitated at home, until a praiseworthy desire of improvement had become
a rage for destructive innovation. In a letter written at this time,
Nov. 12th, 1831, after alluding to his own declining strength, he thus
proceeds:--"I am fast approaching that end which we must all come to. My
own term I feel is expiring, and happy is the man who does not live to
see the destruction of his country, which discontent has brought to the
verge of ruin. Hitherto thrice happy England, how art thou torn to
pieces by thine own children! Strangers, who a year ago looked up to you
as a happy exception in the world, with admiration, at this moment know
thee not! Fire, riot, and bloodshed, are roving through the land, and
God in his displeasure visits us also with pestilence; and, in fact, in
one short year, we seem almost to have reached the climax of misery. One
cannot sit down to put one's thoughts to paper, without feeling
oppressed by public events, and with vain thought of how and when will
the evils terminate. _That_ must be left to God's mercy, for I believe
man is at this moment unequal to the task."

He then passes to another subject. It was a trait in his character,
that, through all his success, he never forgot his early friends.

"When I sat down, I intended to commence by letting you know that I have
heard from ---- of the last week's illness and decease of our early, and
I believe almost our oldest friend, ----. He states, that he died, by
God's mercy, free from pain; that his suffering was not much, and he
bore it patiently, with a calm mind, keeping his senses to the last few
hours. That you had paid your old friend a last visit, from which, he
says, he appeared to be quite revivified; that his eyes sparkled with
inward joy, and that he had asked kindly after me; that he went off at
last in a kind of sleep, without a strug