to see another beyond that which is expected to greet us on the 19th of April. Many have been the warnings that have reached you and me of late, by the sudden death of true and trusty friends, that ' we have no abiding city here,' but are Birds of Passage, winging our way home."
April 13. On the 13th of April he wrote :
" I had felt very closely on Sunday last that I was drawing near * the breaking-point,' and yesterday was unable to write at all, although I particularly wished to send for your kind acceptance the accompanying portraits, specially copied, of my dearest wife whose birthday we have always celebrated on each 21st of February."
May 24. On the 24th of May he wrote :
" Next Friday, 29th of May, will be the triple anniversary endeared to us, viz., birthday of Charles II., his Restoration Day, 1660, and the forty-second anniversary of my own wedding day to my darling and beloved Margaret at Goodmanham Church … Surely no lovelier weather than what we have enjoyed here could have signalized the Empire Day of 1908. The sunset is brilliantly streaking the sky in the far west at this moment at 35 minutes past 7, and a constant succession of small groups of happy foot passengers continue to pass along the high road and across the stone bridge, blackened by railway-engine smoke, before my eyes ; behind, the green pasture fields where cattle are browsing, and numerous sheep are contentedly performing their mysterious alchemy of transmuting herbage into mutton. Everything looks peaceful. To the far horizon a capacious Union Jack waved above the square tower of Chart Church, due south, and visible clearly throughout the day until furled for evening service … With great enjoyment I have been once again reading my old favourite Charles Lever's brilliant military novel 'Jack Hinton the Guardsman,' with Phiz's original etchings, in succession to his ' Harry Lorrequer.'"
Oakappleday. His weekly letters to me still continued, and on Sunday the
eve of " the glorious first of June " he wrote :
" I was glad to see by yesterday's Daily Graphic picture that Oakapple Day had been duly observed at Chelsea around the statue of Charles II. by the aged and loyal pensioners, in honour of him whose last commission to his brother James of York was ' not to let Nelly starve.' '
His Cavalier Thus Ebsworth in his last long letter to me still dwelt upon his Lyrics. favourite Stuarts, and was true to the description of himself as "this determined Stuartist and loyal Cavalier." Joseph Knight in his review of ' Cavalier Lyrics ' in Notes and Queries, January 1st, 1887, says of him :
" If ever there was a soul born a couple of centuries too late, it is that of the Vicar of Molash … It is not a mere question of admiration
