“I am so troubled at the sad condition this poor child seems to be in, that I know not what I do. I pray God to give you some comfort in this great affliction. If you think anything under heaven can be done, pray let me know it, or if you think my coming can be of the least use, let me know it. I beg I may hear as soon as possible, for I have no thought but what is at Cambridge. “I writ to you this morning,” he adds, “and was in hopes I should have heard again before this time, for I hope the doctors were with you early this morning. If we must be so unhappy as to lose this poor child, I pray God to enable us both to behave ourselves with that resignation which we ought to do. If this uneasiness which I now lie under should last long, I think I could not live. For God’s sake, if there be any hope of recovery, let me know it.”[478] These mournful anticipations were followed by the too probable result. Within a few hours after the unhappy father had written this letter, he set off for Cambridge, where he arrived only in time to see his son expire, on the morning of Saturday, the twentieth of February, 1704.[479] The condolence of friends and relations, and the sympathy even of foes, followed this event. To the chosen place of Lord Blandford’s interment, in King’s College Chapel, whose sacred walls had witnessed his early and late piety, beneath whose roof he had been a constant attendant at morning and evening prayers,—the disconsolate parents followed the earthly remains of their lost treasure. An inscription, in elegant Latin, on a monument erected to his memory, perpetuates the recollection of his early promise. Not only of the highest rank by descent, but of the most exalted virtues, the external qualities of one so favoured by fortune, and endowed by nature, corresponded, as the inscription states, with his mental attributes. He possessed, it is said, the stately and manly form, and the surpassing symmetry, which constitute the perfection of manly beauty.[480] In the quickness of his faculties alone did he resemble his mother. His admirable humility, and sweetness of manners, in the midst of all that rank and affluence could effect to spoil him, were the bright reflection of his glorious father. In purity of conduct, though introduced early to a court life, between the period of his leaving Eton and entering on an academic life at Cambridge, he was more happy than that parent; for men are to be judged by circumstances. A sense of religious duty (the only effectual safeguard) led to a “strict observance of decorum, that rather,” says an historian, “seemed innate, than acquired.”[481] He retained of the court nothing but its politeness, and desired, in the bright prospects which apparently awaited him, nothing but true honour and distinction, not from his position alone, but from his own strenuous exertions.