378 FOTHERGILL'S CLOSING YEARS CHAP. 



with hope. His constitution had never been robust, 

 and although temperate and regular habits carried him 

 far, the strain of his daily toil began to tell. It was 

 noticed that his step was less light, his manner less alert. 

 The loss of his favourite brother in 1772 was a sore trial 

 and took away much of his comfort in life. " I feel," 

 he wrote to his niece, " a vast void in my enjoyments." 

 The troubles of the times, the long war with America 

 which he had laboured to avert, and all that the war 

 brought with it, and the cares which he bore for others, 

 weighed upon his spirits. 



The retreat during each autumn to Lea Hall gave 

 him two months of comparative peace. But in writing 

 and in other ways his time was so filled that true leisure 

 of mind seldom came. He returned home still weary 

 yet thankful in spirit. Looking forward, he saw that he 

 could not bear the burden much longer, and he cast about 

 for the means of a fuller retirement. His garden at 

 Upton, now one of the scientific institutions of the 

 country, and still growing from year to year, was become 

 a care to him. He could but seldom visit it, and he 

 would fain have passed it over to other hands. The 

 liberal use of his money for many good ends, and the 

 claims of relations and friends upon him, by which he 

 was not a little burdened in later years, hindered him 

 from making sufficient provision for the future. " Nobody 

 thinks it ever worth his while," he wrote plaintively, " to 

 pay me either principal or interest of the money I have 

 lent." Hence retirement was difficult ; his work too, 

 although no longer a pure pleasure, had grown to be 

 second nature with him ; and so, despite his desire for a 

 little more ease, he continued to labour at the oar. 



In the year 1777 Fothergill completed his sixty-fifth 

 year. Since the war had broken out his communications 

 with America had been few, but he still watched closely 

 the course of events, as we have seen, and used his voice 

 and pen where there seemed to be a chance of promoting 

 a reasonable peace. In this year his efforts in the cause 

 of education in his own society led to the first steps in 



