Page:Charles von Hügel (1903 memoir).djvu/88

 In the year 1867 his failing health occasioned his retirement from the public service: his sight had begun to suffer during the last year of his stay at Florence. At Brussels, as at Florence, he left behind him the best and the most honourable memories. Thenceforward he lived in the country of his wife, in the Isle of Wight, and at Torquay, on the south coast of Devonshire. His bodily strength was broken. The events of 1866 had been a heavy blow to him, and the rest of his life was one of continuous and painful illness, borne with great patience, and comforted and soothed by the most faithful, self-sacrificing love. His mental faculties, as well as his interests, remained, however, the same.

Hügel had always shewn a lively interest in my Italian studies, and especially in the Memoirs of the Duchess of Albany, whom he had known in her later years, and in the History of the City of Rome. In February 1870 he wrote to me from Torquay sending me Spencer Northcote's and Brownlow's Roma Sotterranea an epitome of di Rossi's Explorations of the Catacombs. It was the memento of a dying man. An uncontrollable longing for home had seized him. He looked death calmly in the face, but wished to await it in his own country. Towards the end of May he was brought to London, but the journey exhausted the small remainder of his strength. With the greatest difficulty he reached Brussels by Calais, a dying man on a bed of pain. The 2nd of June was the day of his death. His widow conveyed his remains to the far-off Imperial city.

The foregoing sketch of a life so rich, fruitful, many-sided, and eventful, is no more than a slight outline, but it may perhaps have succeeded in giving an idea of the