HIS DEATH. 367 



He himself felt the happiness of prayer, but he said, 'I 1870. 

 regard it rather as a luxury than a duty.' 



In reference to the vision of the apostles I may men- 

 tion that he had always been interested in cases of the 

 kind, especially those in which departing persons, while 

 fully conscious, assert the presence of those who have gone 

 before. Such instances, he said, were so common that one 

 could not believe them to be all illusion ; but whatever 

 they were, they should be recorded carefully. 



In August 1870, seven months before his own release, D ea th 

 our daughter Christiana was taken. She had stayed at ju"hter 

 Bournemouth on her return from Madeira, and died there. Christiana. 

 I came home the day after her death to find her father so 

 weak that he had that day fallen on the floor, and was 

 unable to rise without help. 



From this time the decline in his health was very 

 apparent, but he did not seem to suffer, except from weak- 

 ness and sleeplessness. The physical state was a com- 

 plicated one, chiefly owing to nervous prostration, and 

 traceable in the first instance to the shock of the College 

 disappointment, and afterwards to anxiety and sorrow on 

 our children's account. 



In March 1871 he became still weaker, and talked 1871. 

 very little. The only word I remember relating to his 

 own state was, after saying that any way all would be 

 right, 'But I shall be glad when I have got it over.' 

 When I expressed a hope that he would not be taken yet, 

 he told me to ' leave it all in God's hands,' and he then 

 waited quietly for the end. 



During the last two days of his life there were indica- 

 tions of his passing through the experience which he had 

 himself considered worthy of investigation and of record. 

 He seemed to recognise all those of his family whom he 

 had lost his three children, his mother and sister, whom 

 he greeted, naming them in the reverse order to that in 

 which they left this world. No one seeing him at that 

 moment could doubt that what he seemed to perceive. 



