gle, and had felt all the
comfort which could be given him by a sincere old friend. I was very
glad to hear that you had given him the comfort of taking leave of him,
for I readily believe he ever felt for you unabated friendship, and for
myself also. I think we must have known him above three-score years. I
am sure you will derive pleasure from having shown him that your
friendship could only end by his death."

In the last week of December, 1831, after an extraordinary exemption
from such trials in his own family, he lost his youngest daughter.
Little more than two months elapsed, when on the 2nd of March the
warning was repeated in the almost sudden death of a grandchild,
daughter of his eldest son. He communicated this event with the
reflection--"We have long been mercifully spared. Death has at length
entered our family, and it behoves us all to be watchful."[16]

In the spring of this year he was made Vice-Admiral of England, and was
honoured at the same time with a very flattering letter from his
Sovereign. This he immediately enclosed to his elder brother, to whom he
knew it would give pleasure. Of the appointment itself, he remarked, "I
shall have it only for one year." He held it but for a few months.

In May, Sir Israel Pellew was on his death-bed; and Lord Exmouth, though
he now travelled with much difficulty and pain, could not refuse himself
the melancholy satisfaction of a parting visit to one with whom he had
been so closely and affectionately united. Their brother came up from
Falmouth on the same errand, and on this painful occasion they all met
for the last time. He then returned to his home, which he never left
again.

He cherished a very strong attachment to the Church; and for more than
thirty years had been a member of the Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, which he joined when the claims of the society were so little
appreciated, that only principle could have prompted the step. It might
therefore be expected that he would feel deep anxiety when the safety of
that Church was threatened. But upon this subject his mind was firm; and
in one of the last letters he ever wrote, dated August 28th, he declares
his confidence in the most emphatic language. After some personal
observations to the friend he was addressing, one of his old officers,
he alludes to the cholera, then raging in his neighbourhood; "which," he
says, "I am much inclined to consider an infliction of Providence, to
show hi