446 THE LIFE OF JANES D. FORBES. [CHAP. 



where you would be better at present. We expect 

 J. Mackenzie back from Bournemouth to-day. 



' With much love to you and Aunt Jane, I remain, 

 my dearest Eliza, your affectionate* father, 



* JAMES D. FORBES/ 



What remains cannot be given otherwise than in the 

 words of her, who for five-and-twenty years had been 

 the companion of his life, and during the long decline, 

 his unwearied attendant and consoler. * He saw with 

 calmness the slow but certain progress of his decline. 

 He had no doubts, no anxieties ; there was no earthly 

 excitement in his death. Every day to the last he lived, 

 so far as increasing weakness allowed, as he had done for 

 seventeen years, thinking of others and taking the same 

 interest in every subject that he ever had done, yet look- 

 ing always steadily in the face of death. During these 

 last months at Clifton, each afternoon, when his religious 

 reading was over, he would lie and listen, while his 

 children, to fill up the long intervals of enforced silence, 

 read to him various books of travels, history, biography, 

 and the Waverley novels. But during the last month 

 and more, even such small diversions as this were no 

 longer possible. 



* On Christmas-day he had a very bad turn, and on the 

 27th he sank so low that Dr. Symonds scarcely expected 

 him to live through that day. On Monday he rallied 

 somewhat, but on Tuesday, the 29th, he was so much 

 weaker that he appeared barely conscious, not knowing 

 day from night. About eleven o'clock, A.M., however, he 

 suddenly roused himself and asked, " What day is this ? " 

 We said, " Tuesday." " What hour ? " " Eleven o'clock," 

 we replied. " Kemember," he continued, " that Mr. 

 Mathers comes at twelve o'clock to-day." Mr. Mathers was 

 the clergyman who had attended him, and my husband 

 had settled a week before, when no immediate change 

 was expected, that he should come on Tuesday, the 29th, 

 to administer the Holy Communion. None present will 

 ever forget that solemn hour. His four children and 



