This was in all probability the last letter FitzGerald ever wrote. On the following day, Wednesday, June 13, he went to pay his annual visit at Merton Rectory. On Friday the 15th I received from Mr. Crabbe the announcement of his peaceful end: 'I grieve to have to tell you that our dear friend Edward FitzGerald died here this morning [June 14]. He came last evening to pay his usual visit with my sisters, but did not seem in his usual spirits, and did not eat anything. . . . At ten he said he would go to bed. I went up with him. . . . At a quarter to eight I tapped at his door to ask how he was, and getting no answer went in and found him as if sleeping peacefully but quite dead. A very noble character has passed away.' On the following Tuesday, June 19, he was buried in the little churchyard of Boulge, and the stone which marks his grave bears the simple inscription 'Edward FitzGerald, Born 31 March 1809, Died 14 June 1883. It is He that hath made us and not we ourselves.' For some time before his death he seems to have had a foreboding that the end was not far distant. In one of the last conversations I had with him, certainly during my last visit at Easter 1883, he spoke of his mother's death, in its suddenness very like his own, and at the same age. 'We none of us get beyond seventy-five,' he said. At this age his eldest brother had died, four years before. And in a letter to one of his nieces, after speaking of the fatal malady by which the wife of a dear friend was attacked, he added, 'It seems strange to me to be so seemingly alert--certainly, alive--amid such fatalities with younger and stronger people. But, even while I say so, the hair may break, and the suspended Sword fall. If it would but do so at once, and effectually!' Sixteen days later his wish was fulfilled. INDEX TO LETTERS _To_ MISS AITKEN, 188 _To_ JOHN ALLEN, 63*, 70-72*, 74, 169*, 206, 219 _To_ MRS. CHARLES ALLEN, 7-9*, 14-16* _To_ MISS ANNA BIDDELL, 134, 178, 179, 189, 205, 295, 304 _From_ CARLYLE, 135, 154, 155, 167, 175* _To_ CARLYLE, 5, 128, 155, 165 _To_ E. B. COWELL, 1, 4*, 19*, 26, 44*, 52*, 57, 59*, 68*, 78*, 83-86*, 93-95*, 99, 103, 106*, 107, 111*, 128 _note_, 180, 185, 202, 270 _note_, 322 _note_ _To_ MRS. COWELL, 65*, 196, 216 _To_ GEORGE CRABBE, 17, 18, 21, 35, 39, 41, 42, 51, 57, 208 _note_ _To_ W. E. CROWFOOT, 118 _note_ _From_ W. B. DONNE, 169 _note_ _To_ W. B. DONNE, 3, 33, 40, 48, 66, 91, 164 _To_ FITZEDWARD HALL, 220* _To_ LORD HOUGHTON, 285* _To_ CHARLES KEENE, 280, 289-293 _To_ MRS. KEMBLE, 298, 305, 310-312, 320, 332-335 _To_ S. LAURENCE, 50, 55, 56, 113-116, 171, 190, 212, 277, 303, 337, 346 _To_ J. R. LOWELL, 224-226, 235, 245-249, 257, 260, 261, 266-272 _To_ C. E. NORTON, 157, 186, 190-192, 196-199, 203, 208, 213, 222, 229- 234, 241-244, 253-255, 258, 262, 275, 278, 281, 294, 298, 301, 315-318, 321, 327, 329, 330, 339, 340, 343