CLOSING YEAES. 440 



had ever loved him with the tenderest affection, and who sought 

 by every means to soothe his spirit and restore his health, proposed 

 that he should again make his house a home. He did so, taking up 

 his abode at Woodburn,* where, from the closing year of 1851 un- 

 til the autumn of 1852, he resided. If unwearied care and devoted 

 affection could have stayed the increasing malady, which with cer- 

 tain, though often invisible, steps was wearing him away, he had 

 never died. While under that kind roof, there were many days of 

 calm happiness, mingled with others sad enough. The restlessness 

 attending nervous disease is almost as distressing as pain ; of which 

 I believe he had but little during the whole course of his decline. 

 He rallied so far when at Woodburn as to be able to write his last 

 papers for Blackwood' 's Magazine — numbers IX. and X. of " Dies 

 Boreales." There was nothing in that house to disturb study when 

 he was inclined for it. He had a suite of rooms to himself; no 

 noise, no interruptions molested the quiet of his days. Pleasant 

 and cheerful faces surrounded him at a moment's notice. His 

 nieces rallied about him as loving daughters, often watching through 

 the weary hours of sleepless nights by his bedside. Nothing was 

 wanting, yet did the heart " know its own bitterness," in those mo- 

 ments when the cruelty of his disorder laid hold of his spirits, and 

 plunged him, as he expressed it, into a state of " hopeless misery." 

 " Nothing," he said to me, " can give you an idea of how utterly 

 wretched I am ; my mind is going, I feel it." Then coming directly 

 to the burden of his soul, he would say, " Yes, I know my friends 

 thought me unfit to hold up my head in the class as I ought to do ;" 

 then continuing, with an expression of profound solemnity, " I have 

 signed my death-warrant ; it is time I should retire." This was so 

 evidently a morbid state of feeling induced by disease, that, dis- 

 tressing as it was to those who witnessed it, one could not but feel 

 satisfied that ere long it would pass away, and a more placid frame 

 of mind ensue. When these brighter hours came — which they did 

 — nothing could be more delightful than his aspect, more playfully 

 charming than his spirit. He scarcely looked like an invalid, or 

 one who would be tormented by the fluctuations of moody humors. 

 Altogether there was a something about him different from his 

 days of defiant strength. Massive as his frame still remained, its 

 power was visibly gone, and a gentle air of submission had taken 



* Mr. E. S. Wilson's residence, near Dalkeith. 

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