In December, 1875, Mr. Motley consulted me for trouble of vision in reading or walking, from sensations like those produced by flakes of falling snow coming between him and the objects he was looking at.  Mr. Bowman, one of our most excellent oculists, was then consulted.  Mr. Bowman wrote to me as follows:  “Such symptoms as exist point rather to disturbed retinal function than to any brain-mischief.  It is, however, quite likely that what you fear for the brain may have had its counterpart in the nerve-structures of the eye, and as he is short-sighted, this tendency may be further intensified.”

   Mr. Bowman suggested no more than such an arrangement of glasses as
   might put the eyes, when in use, under better optic conditions.

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,