His wife was seriously ill through January, and he watched most devotedly by her bedside. On the 26th of the month he was taken ill with angina pectoris. He felt that the end was near. He said, "I have no fear of death. I have long foreseen it. My only regret is for poor Ann. I had hoped to close her eyes before mine were shut." To a friend who spoke to him of his always expressed belief in the divinity of Christ, though many of his friends were Unitarian, he said, quoting the words of an eminent Semitic scholar: "I find the whole history of humanity before him and after him points to him, and finds in him its centre and its solution. His whole conduct, his deeds, his words, have a supernatural character, being altogether inexplicable from human relations and human means. I feel that here there is something more than man." "Then you have no doubt about a future life?" said the friend. "I am as sure of it as I am that there will be a to-morrow," was the reply. On Saturday evening, Feb. 2, 1884, at fifteen minutes past six, he closed his eyes calmly and quietly forever. All Boston, all America, was moved at the death of the great leader--patrician born, yet the people's advocate. The funeral was held at eleven o'clock Wednesday, Feb. 6, at Hollis-street Church, and then the body was borne to Faneuil Hall, two colored companies forming a guard of honor. There, where he had won his first fame in youth at the Lovejoy meeting, where he had stirred the whole land by his eloquence in the cause of the oppressed, it was fitting he should sleep at last. The Irish National League of Boston sent a mound of flowers, three feet by four, with the word "Humanity" in the centre, in violets on a bed of carnations. The Irish-American Societies of Boston sent a harp four feet high of ivy leaves and japonicas, with the word "Ireland" in the centre. One of the harp strings was broken. Others sent a sheaf of ripened wheat, a crown of ivy and roses, and a wreath of laurel. From one o'clock till four, thousands passed the form of their beloved dead; rich and poor, Irish and American, black and white, children and adults. One old colored woman, with tears flowing down her cheeks, said, "Our Wendell Philips has gone." Another said, "He was de bes' fren' we ever hed. We owes him a heap!" Frederick Douglass looked on in sorrow. "I wanted to see this throng," he said, "and to see the hold that this man had upon the community. It is a wonderful tribute." Thousands were unable to enter Faneuil Hall, and filled every available inch of space in the street, and windows and balconies of buildings. A vast crowd followed up State Street to Washington, up School to Tremont, to the old Granary burying-ground, where the body was laid in the family vault.