sick bed. We must remember, too, his extreme age. His time was not idly spent in the calm and regular life he led. His early love for out-door rambling, seems to have again revived. He writes in almost the last letter that he penned: "The pleasure which I derive from God's works in His visible creation is not with me, I think, impaired; but reading does not interest me as it used to do, and I feel that I am becoming daily a less instructive companion to others." He might have consoled himself with the reflection how much he had taught, and was at that moment teaching through his books.
There was much, too, which, had he not borne all with cheerful resignation, might have made him sad and weary as he neared the goal in life's pilgrimage. He had cause for sorrow, though not for repining, in the health of his sister, the loss of his accomplished daughter, Mrs. Quilliman, and the absence of so many, removed by death, who had been the steadfast friends and dear companions of his youth.
Not long after his last and saddest bereavement—the death of his daughter—the poet and father was himself called away to
"God who is our home."
On the 7th of April, 1850, he had reached his eightieth year. He had for some days suffered from an attack of inflammation in the chest, but was growing convalescent, and was employed in reading the third volume of Southey's "Life and Correspondence." He, however, suffered a relapse, and, on the 20th, was thought incapable of recovery. On that day he received the Sacrament. "William, you are going to Dora," whispered to him his sorrowing and affectionate wife; and, not long after,
