The year 1876 was passed over without any special change worth notice.  The walking powers were much impeded by the want of control over the right leg.  The mind was entirely clear, though Mr. Motley did not feel equal, and indeed had been advised not to apply himself, to any literary work.  Occasional conversations, when I had interviews with him on the subject of his health, proved that the attack which had weakened the movements of the right side had not impaired the mental power.  The most noticeable change which had come over Mr. Motley since I first knew him was due to the death of Mrs. Motley in December, 1874.  It had in fact not only profoundly depressed him, but, if I may so express it, had removed the centre of his thought to a new world.  In long conversations with me of a speculative kind, after that painful event, it was plain how much his point of view of the whole course and relation of things had changed.  His mind was the last to dogmatize on any subject.  There was a candid and childlike desire to know, with an equal confession of the incapacity of the human intellect.  I wish I could recall the actual expressions he used, but the sense was that which has been so well stated by Hooker in concluding an exhortation against the pride of the human intellect, where he remarks:—­

“Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into the doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy to make mention of His Name, yet our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him, not indeed as He is, neither can know Him; and our safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence, when we confess without confession that His glory is inexplicable, His greatness above our capacity and reach.  He is above and we upon earth; therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few.”

Mrs. Motley’s illness was not a long one, and the nature of it was such that its course could with certainty be predicted.  Mr. Motley and her children passed the remaining days of her life, extending over about a month, with her, in the mutual under standing that she was soon to part from them.  The character of the illness, and the natural exhaustion of her strength by suffering, lessened the shock of her death, though not the loss, to those who survived her.

The last time I saw Mr. Motley was, I believe, about two months before his death, March 28, 1877.  There was no great change in his health, but he complained of indescribable sensations in his nervous system, and felt as if losing the whole power of walking, but this was not obvious in his gait, although he walked shorter distances than before.  I heard no more of him until I was suddenly summoned on the 29th of May into Devonshire to see him.  The telegram I received was so urgent, that I suspected some rupture of a blood- vessel in the brain, and that I should hardly reach him alive; and this was the case.  About two o’clock in the