The long and truly fortunate career of Harvey—for fortunate he must be deemed, who, like Darwin, having enunciated an epoch-making discovery, lived to see it inculcated as a canon—was now drawing to a close. In several of his later letters he expresses his feelings of infirmity. Writing in 1655 to Dr. Horst, at Hesse-Darmstadt, he speaks of “advanced age, which unfits us for the investigation of novel subtleties, and the mind which inclines to repose after the fatigues of lengthened labours.” Later, on the 24th April, 1657, writing to Dr. Vlackveld, at Harlem, he says: “It is in vain that you apply the spur to urge me, at my present age—not mature merely, but declining—to gird myself for any new investigation. For I now consider myself entitled to my discharge from duty.” Harvey died on the 3d of June, 1657, in the eightieth year of his age, and the Fellows of his college followed his remains far out of the city towards Hempstead, in Essex, where his brother Eliab had a vault. His will is a characteristic document. He thus expresses his Christian faith: “I do most humbly render my soul to Him that gave it, and to my blessed Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus.” Making his brother Eliab executor and residuary legatee, he bequeaths legacies to all his relations with most affectionate expressions: we do not know the date of his wife’s death (she was still living in 1645), but she is here mentioned as “my dear deceased loving wife.” “I give to the College of Physicians all my books and papers, and my best Persia long carpet, and my blue satin embroidered cushion, one pair of brass andirons, with fireshovel and tongs of brass, for the ornament of the meeting-room I have erected.” It seems very probable that these books and papers included some much-regretted observations of Harvey’s, which were destroyed, with the building which he erected and the statue to his memory, in the great fire of 1666. He left £10 to his friend Hobbes of Malmesbury, who describes Harvey as the only one that he knew who conquered envy and established a new doctrine in his lifetime.