XXIII.

1874-1877. AEt. 60-63.

DEATH OF MRS. MOTLEY.--LAST VISIT TO AMERICA.--ILLNESS AND DEATH.-LADY
HARCOURT'S COMMUNICATION.

On the last day of 1874, the beloved wife, whose health had for some
years been failing, was taken from him by death. She had been the pride
of his happier years, the stay and solace of those which had so tried his
sensitive spirit. The blow found him already weakened by mental
suffering and bodily infirmity, and he never recovered from it. Mr.
Motley's last visit to America was in the summer and autumn of 1875.
During several weeks which he passed at Nahant, a seaside resort near
Boston, I saw him almost daily. He walked feebly and with some little
difficulty, and complained of a feeling of great weight in the right arm,
which made writing laborious. His handwriting had not betrayed any very
obvious change, so far as I had noticed in his letters. His features and
speech were without any paralytic character. His mind was clear except
when, as on one or two occasions, he complained of some confused feeling,
and walked a few minutes in the open air to compose himself. His
thoughts were always tending to revert to the almost worshipped companion
from whom death had parted him a few months before. Yet he could often
be led away to other topics, and in talking of them could be betrayed
into momentary cheerfulness of manner. His long-enduring and all-
pervading grief was not more a tribute to the virtues and graces of her
whom he mourned than an evidence of the deeply affectionate nature which
in other relations endeared him to so many whose friendship was a title