the melancholy event.

'A worthier and better man there never was, no more learned and
accomplished in his own profession, as well as out of it. What he wanted
was the calm, firm judgment of his father, and he had the misfortune to
live in times which required a double portion of it. Every precaution
was taken by me to prepare him for the offer, and to persuade him to
form some previous plan of conduct, but all in vain. He would never
explain himself clearly, and left everything to chance, till we were all
overborne, perplexed and confounded in that fatal interval which opened
and closed the negotiation with my brother. With him the Somers line of
the law seems to be at an end, I mean of that set in the profession who,
mixing principles of liberty with those proper to monarchy, have
conducted and guided that great body of men ever since the Revolution.'

Fever, complicated by colic and the rupture of a blood-vessel, caused
Charles Yorke's death, the consequence of the extreme nervous tension
which he had undergone, of which his widow has left a most touching and
graphic description. I wish I could have found room for the whole of her
account of those days. The circumstances of his physical constitution
and the mental struggle he had suffered are quite sufficient to account
for his death without the gratuitous assumption of suicide, which there
is nothing in the family papers to support. There is no doubt that this
idea was prevalent at the time, and allusions to it are to be found in
many subsequent accounts, down to that in Sir George Trevelyan's 'Life
of Fox.' Perhaps it is not too much to hope that this allegation may be
at last disposed of in the light of the papers by his brother and his
wife. We have two clear and positive declarations in these papers:
first, that in the beginning of his illness he declined his physic, and
afterwards took an opiate; second, that there followed the rupture of a