As time passed on, and his weakness increased, reading and writing, which had been the chief solace of his life, were of course no longer possible to him. He suffered little bodily pain during his last illness, but much weariness and depression, which he bore with his usual quiet fortitude and patience; and the gradual declension of his remarkable mental faculties, his keen intellect, vivid imagination, and retentive memory, was (it is a consolation to believe) far less distressing to himself than it was to the devoted watchers at his sick-bed. In the summer of 1900 he was removed to Dumfries House, in the hope that its more bracing air might be beneficial to him. He had always, as has been already remarked, loved {227} the beautiful old home of his Crichton ancestors, which both within and without was one of the most notable works of the brothers Adam, although the amenity of its surroundings had been to some extent spoiled by the numerous coalpits. "Falkland is probably, the most luxurious of my houses," he had once remarked, "but I think Dumfries House is, perhaps, the homeliest of them all." The improvement to his health wrought by this change was unhappily only transient: he grew gradually weaker, and on October 9, 1900, a few hours after being attacked by a second stroke, he quietly breathed his last, being then in the fifty-fourth year of his age. [Sidenote: 1900, Death and funeral] Bute was buried, according to his own wish, in the chapel close to the sea, within the grounds of Mountstuart, which he had fitted up some twenty years previously for Catholic worship. The funeral service was all the more impressive because of hired pomp and grandeur there was absolutely none. His coffin, made by his own carpenters, was borne by his own workmen from Dumfries House to the little wayside station, whence it was conveyed to the sea, and thence across the Firth of Clyde to Kilchattan Bay, in Bute, where a great assemblage awaited its arrival, and followed it for nearly five miles on foot, the only carriage being that of the widow. One who was present thus describes the sad procession: