’With this exception, public affairs seem to have faded from his mind.  “I must resign myself to doing no work.  I have not sufficient control over my thoughts.  I have washed my hands of it all.”  But it was remarkable that, as the end drew nearer, the keen sense of public duty once more flashed up within him.  It was on the 19th that he could not help expressing his wonder what was meant by his long lingering; and once, half wandering, he whispered, “If I did not die, I might get to Lahore, and carry out the original programme.”  Later on in the day he sent for Mr. Thurlow, and desired that a message should be sent, through Sir Charles Wood, expressive of his love and devotion to the Queen, and of his determination to do his work to the last possible moment.  His voice, faint and inaudible at first, gained strength with the earnestness of the words which came forth as if direct from his heart, and which, as soon as pronounced, left him prostrate with the exertion.  He begged, at the same time, that his “best blessing” might be sent to the Secretaries of the Indian Government, and also a private message to Sir Charles Wood in England.

’These were his last public acts.  A few words and looks of intense affection for his wife and child were all that escaped him afterwards.  One more night of agonized restlessness, followed by an almost sudden close of the long struggle, and a few moments of perfect calm, and his spirit was released.

’His death was on the 20th of November, and on the 21st he was privately buried, at his own request, on the spot selected beforehand.’

* * * * *

He was cut off, as those felt most keenly who were most capable of judging, ‘just at the moment when his best qualities were about to show themselves;’ just when the information and experience which he had accumulated were beginning to ripen into confidence in his knowledge of the country; and to the historian his figure must remain as an unfinished torso in the gallery of our Indian rulers.  But those who have read the foregoing pages, more especially the fragments which they contain of his own words and writings, will have derived from them some impression of the varied ability, the steady conscientious industry, the genial temper, the ‘combination of fertility of resource with simplicity of aim,’ of firmness with tact, of cautious sagacity with prompt resolution, which might have found even larger scope in the government of India than in the active and eventful life which has been described.

These attributes, however, do not make up the man, such as he lives in the memory of those who saw him most nearly.  Beneath the manifold outward workings of his strong and capable nature there flowed a ‘buried life’ of depth more than proportionate.