CLOSING TEAKS. 455 



many words, and is significant of that love which was so large an 

 element of his nature :* — 



" My dearest Robert : — I rejoice in my soul to learn that your 

 son Charles has married a wife to his own entire satisfaction, and I 

 trust to his father's, mother's, sisters', and brother's, and all friends. 

 Kindest love to Mrs. Fiudlay and the rest. God bless you, and 

 her, and them. Much love in few words. Your friend of friends, 



" J. W." 



And so with these kind words he took farewell of the friend, the 

 " brother," of his youth. What thoughts of the past would revisit 

 his memory in writing that little missive, we can imagine, taking him 

 back to the sunlit hills which enclosed the home of his prime, from 

 whence his " friend of friends" heard of a wedding morning:, briojit 

 as the good deserve, and radiant with happiness ; more serene, 

 because it had come to close sorrow long and stoutly borne. 



A yearning for home still lingered amidst the fading joys of 

 memory; and the old man, standing on the threshold of another 

 life, sighed to set his house in order. He must return to Edin- 

 burgh ; so, bidding adieu to the kind brother who had so gently 

 met all the caprices of his illness, and to whom the happier condi- 

 tion of a docile spirit had endeared him more than ever, he left the 

 devoted circle of that household towards the close of the year 1852, 

 and once again established himself in Gloucester Place. 



For the first few months after his return, he appeared to rally, 

 and gained strength ; so much so as to inspire his family with hopes 

 that better days were yet in store ; but, like the sudden reanimation 

 of a dying light, the glow proved tremulous and uncertain. Anx- 

 iety and watching still continued ; the gloom and depression of his 

 mind coming and going from time to time, leaving with the strug- 

 gle of each beating wave, a melancholy evidence that a wreck lav 

 there. How was such a trial borne ? As all others had been. 

 Grief deep as death was overcome in the end by patience. That 

 great and lustrous mind felt day by day how its might was sinking ; 



* SiDce I wrote the above this dear friend has also been laid in his grave. Mr. Robert Findlay 

 died on the 27th of June, 1862, having reached the advanced age of seventy-eight. As one of 

 my father's earliest and dearest friends, I would have respected his memory : but personal knowl- 

 edge of his high worth, and all those amiable qualities which endeared him to his family and 

 friends, claims expression of sorrow. 



