“You once _talked_ of passing _this_ winter in Italy; but I hope your plans will be entirely guided by the state of your health and feelings. Your society would undoubtedly be a very great resource to me, but I am so well aware of my own present unfitness for society, that I would not have you risk the chance of an uncomfortable moment on my account. I often read Lord Byron’s _Euthanasia_: it is the only case, probably, where my feelings perfectly coincide with what his were.” At times the feeling of despair was so intense that he actually seemed apprehensive of suicide. It was probably under the influence of such a fear that he wrote in his journal that he had too strong a faith in the optimism of the system of the universe ever to accelerate his dissolution. “I have been and am taking a care of my health which I fear it is not worth; but which, hoping it may please Providence to preserve me for wise purposes, I think it my _duty_.” On another occasion he wrote to Lady Davy:-- “I am glad to hear of your perfect re-establishment, and with health and the society of London, which you are so well fitted to ornament and enjoy, your ‘_viva la felicità_’ is much more secure than any hope belonging to me.” Subsequently he wrote:-- “Should your feelings or inclination lead you _to the land of the sun_, I need not say what real pleasure it would give me to enjoy your society; but do not make any sacrifice on my account.” A couple of days afterwards he wrote:-- “I hope I shall have the delight of seeing you at Baden Baden. If not, I shall come to England.... Pray let my physicians know what an obedient patient I am.... God bless you, my dear Jane!” Towards the end of September, and at Baden, the solitary man wrote:-- “I fear my light of life is burnt out, and that there remains nothing but stink, and smoke and dying snuff.... _Dubito fortissime restaurationem meum._--Decidedly worse and have decided to go home immediately.” At Mayence he informed his wife that he trusted soon to see her in Park Street. He had a lingering hope that she might still be induced to cross the water, and that he might meet her at Calais. “I think you will find me altered in many things--with a heart still alive to value and reply to kindness, and a disposition to recur to the brighter moments of my existence of fifteen years ago, and with a feeling that though a burnt-out flame can never be rekindled, a smothered one may be.... I hope it is a good omen that my paper by accident is _couleur de rose_.” He had previously determined to resign the chair of the Royal Society, and announced his decision in a letter to his old friend Davies Gilbert, the treasurer. To his wife he wrote:--