conception of the piety and clear-headedness of the noble author. They were written within a fortnight of his death. They describe him as "having completed his 74th year, and having thus lived longer than any of his ancestors for the last two centuries; that his existence had been without any great misfortune, and without any acute disease, and that he owed all praise and thanksgiving to the Supreme Being; that the next step would probably be his last; that he was now too much exhausted, both in mind and body, to be of service to his country, but was fortunate in leaving his children well and happy; and that he now waited the Divine will with becoming resignation." He died without disease, and through mere exhaustion of nature, in his 75th year, in 1820, and was buried in Salisbury cathedral. Lord Malmesbury's reputation ranked very high in the diplomatic circles of the Continent. He was a clear-headed, well-informed, and active minister--sagacious enough to see his way through difficulties which would have perplexed inferior men, and bold enough to act according to his own opinion, where feebler minds would have ruined all, by waiting for the tardy wisdom of others. Talleyrand, a first-rate judge on such subjects, said of him, in his epigrammatic style--"I think that Lord Malmesbury was the ablest minister whom you had in his time. It was hopeless to get before him; all that could be done was to follow him close. If one let him have the last word, he contrived always to have the best of the argument." He seems to have been a thorough Englishman in the highest sense of the word, and to have had the loftiest opinion of the power and principles of England; not from any fantastic prejudice, but from the experience of a long life, with the best opportunities of forming an unprejudiced judgment. We have already mentioned his declared opinion after living long abroad, and as a great diplomatic functionary, living under the most advantageous circumstances of foreign society; that any Englishman who, after a residence abroad, prefers the Continent to his own country, is beyond all question a man of gross and contemptible mind, and incapable of taking a "common-sense view" of the subject. We have his constant testimony, that "as there is nothing equal to England on the face of the earth, so no exertion on the part of her people can be too great in defence of her freedom and honour." In conformity with this matured conviction, and reigning principle of his heart, he chose as the motto for his coronet-- "Ubique patriam reminisci."{B}