LAST YEARS. 323 



" We are busy," he writes on the 22nd, " among the fixed 

 stars, as we were more than twenty years ago, especially 

 hunting for the charming double stars. There are no 

 planets visible in the evenings now." No definite appre- 

 hensions crossed our minds, although he was occasionally 

 more feeble and notably more silent than of old. But near 

 the close of the year 1887, while he was examining the 

 heavens late one very cold night, a newly purchased portion 

 of the telescope apparatus became dislodged and fell into 

 the garden ; the agitation produced by this little accident, 

 and some exposure in leaning out to see where the lens had 

 fallen, brought on an attack of bronchitis, and although this 

 particular complaint was overcome, he was never well again. 

 Yet, through the months of December and January, 

 there seemed nothing alarming in his condition. He was 

 kept indoors, but not in bed, and he was as busy as ever, 

 writing, drawing, and reading. One of the last books which 

 he read with unabated interest was the Life of Darwin. 

 All went on much in the old style until March, 1888, when 

 a disease of the heart, which must for a long while past 

 have been latent, rather suddenly made itself apparent. 

 Under the repeated attacks of this complaint, his brain, his 

 spirits, his manifold resources of body and mind, sank lower 

 and lower, and the five months which followed were a 

 period of great weariness and almost unbroken gloom. 

 After a long and slow decay, the sadness of which was 

 happily not embittered by actual pain, he ceased to breathe, 

 in his sleep, without a struggle, at a few minutes before 

 one o'clock on the morning of August 23, 1888. He had 

 lived seventy-eight years, four months, and seventeen 

 days. He was buried, near his mother, in the Torquay 

 Cemetery, attended to the grave by a large congregation 

 of those who had known and respected him during his 

 thirty years' residence in the neighbourhood. 



