, though he was suffering
severely from the local hemorrhage before named, he made no complaint of
illness. But there was observed in him a very unusual appearance of
fatigue. "He seemed very weary." He was out with his dogs for the last
time on Monday the 6th of June, when he walked with his letters into
Rochester. On Tuesday the 7th, after his daughter Mary had left on a
visit to her sister Kate, not finding himself equal to much fatigue, he
drove to Cobhamwood with his sister-in-law, there dismissed the
carriage, and walked round the park and back. He returned in time to put
up in his new conservatory some Chinese lanterns sent from London that
afternoon; and, the whole of the evening, he sat with Miss Hogarth in
the dining-room that he might see their effect when lighted. More than
once he then expressed his satisfaction at having finally abandoned all
intention of exchanging Gadshill for London; and this he had done more
impressively some days before. While he lived, he said, he should like
his name to be more and more associated with the place; and he had a
notion that when he died he should like to lie in the little graveyard
belonging to the Cathedral at the foot of the Castle wall.

On the 8th of June he passed all the day writing in the Chalet. He came
over for luncheon; and, much against his usual custom, returned to his
desk. Of the sentences he was then writing, the last of his long life of
literature, a portion has been given in facsimile on a previous page;
and the reader will observe with a painful interest, not alone its
evidence of minute labour at this fast-closing hour of time with him,
but the direction his thoughts had taken. He imagines such a brilliant
morning as had risen with that eighth of June shining on the old city of
Rochester. He sees in surpassing beauty, with the lusty ivy gleaming in
the sun, and the rich trees waving in the balmy air, its antiquities and
its ruins; its Cathedral and Castle. But his fancy, then, is not with
the stern dead forms of either; but with that which makes warm the cold
stone tombs of centuries, and lights them up with flecks of brightness,
"fluttering there like wings." To him, on that sunny summer morning, the
changes of glorious light from moving boughs, the songs of birds, the
scents from garden, woods, and fields, have penetrated into the
Cathedral, have subdued its earthy odour, and are preaching the
Resurrection and the Life.

* * *