ath, and a barony; he was now raised to an
earldom, with a viscounty, by the title of Lord Fitzharris; and it was
in Pitt's contemplation to send him once more to Paris, when his
ministry was suddenly brought to a conclusion, and Mr Addington was
appointed premier; by whom the peace, or rather the unlucky truce of
Amiens, was made. His political life was now at an end. He had been for
some time suffering under deafness, which increased so much, that he
regarded it as incapacitating him from public employment; yet he still
loved society, and, dividing his time between London and his seat near
Henley, he passed a pleasant and cheerful time, mingling with the chief
characters of the rising political generation. For the last ten years of
his life, his thoughts seem to have been much directed to religious
subjects; and he kept what he entitled a "self-controlling journal," in
which he registered his thoughts. We have probably reason to regret that
the scrupulous delicacy of his biographer has hitherto withheld it from
the public. The few sentences transcribed from it, give a strong
conception of the piety and clear-headedness of the noble author. They
were written within a fortnight of his death. They describe him as
"having completed his 74th year, and having thus lived longer than any
of his ancestors for the last two centuries; that his existence had been
without any great misfortune, and without any acute disease, and that he
owed all praise and thanksgiving to the Supreme Being; that the next
step would probably be his last; that he was now too much exhausted,
both in mind and body, to be of service to his country, but was
fortunate in leaving his children well and happy; and that he now waited
the Divine will with becoming resignation."

He died without disease, and through mere exhaustion of nature, in his
75th year, in 1820, and was buried in Salisbury cathedral.

Lord Malmesbury's reputation ranked very high in the diplomatic circles
of the Continent. He was a clear-headed, well-informed, and active
minister--sagacious enough to see his way through difficulties which
would have perplexed inferior men, and bold enough to act according to
his own opinion, where feebler minds would have ruined all, by waiting
for the tardy wisdom of others. Talleyrand, a first-rate judge on such
subjects, said of him, in his epigrammatic style--"I think that Lord
Malmesbury was the ablest minister whom you had in his time. It was
hope