On the voyage home from the Mediterranean in the steamship _Meteor_, which is described in the journal I have quoted in the last chapter, my father received the sad news of the death of Sir Joseph Sydney Yorke, an event to which he makes no allusion in the journal. Admiral Sir Henry Hotham, who had just been appointed to the command of the Mediterranean station, and had sailed in the _St. Vincent_ from Portsmouth, was the bearer of a last letter written by Sir Joseph to his son on the 3rd of April 1831. The _St. Vincent_ met the _Meteor_ at sea, and Sir Henry, in handing the letter to Captain Yorke, had also to announce Sir Joseph's death, which occurred only two days after he had finished the letter. This letter was found among my father's papers, and I set it out at length; it is quite typical of others which display the affection which existed between father and son, and it shows very convincingly the success which attended Captain Yorke's career in the Mediterranean. The circumstances of the accident in which Sir Joseph lost his life appear, so far as they can be known, in a note to Sir Joseph's letter written by my brother John, the late Earl of Hardwicke. [Footnote: He died from influenza, March 1909.] From this it will be seen that Sir Joseph was returning from a visit to the St. Vincent, which he had made in order to hand his letter to Sir Henry Hotham, when he met his death. It appears also from the annotation by my father that Sir Henry sailed without hearing of the accident, and only learned of Sir Joseph's death by subsequently reading a notice of it in Galignani's _Messenger_. * * * * * 14 NEW BURLINGTON STREET, LONDON: April 2, 1831. 'MY DEAREST CHARLES,