Page:Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.djvu/170

162 We got him ashore as soon as possible, violently and dangerously ill, which illness continued with little or no intermission until a quarter past nine in the morning of August the 2nd, when his pulse which had been sinking for the last twelve hours stopped, and he expired with the same placid heavenly smile on his countenance I had been used to see. . . During his illness he never once complained and his answer to inquiries was, "I am very comfortable, I am quite well." . . . His calm and sweet temper and very warm heart had endeared him to every member of society. . . . Had it pleased God to have spared his life till the 29th, he would have completed his twenty-fourth year. On August 3 at break of day our dearly beloved son was interred in the burial-ground at Barrackpur with military honours. The Commander-in-Chief attended, as did all the principal authorities in Calcutta. We had requested that the funeral might be as unostentatious as possible, but he was a general favourite, and the grief for his untimely end has been general and sincere.'

The record of the year 1826 concludes very sadly on Dec. 28. 'This year, full of momentous events, has nearly drawn to a close. Upon the whole the most miserable of my life' she writes.

And then turning from her own domestic sorrows, she reverts to public affairs again, and continues with most natural bitterness.

'While Lord Amherst was labouring day and night for his employers, in measures that have since proved to be highly advantageous to their interest, and for the prosperity of the country entrusted to his care, they were listening to the base falsehoods, and to the base intrigues to recall him. . . The Duke of Wellington evinced both magnanimity