My mother's illness was approaching its melancholy end. On January 8th I sat up all night at Brompton. On the 9th she was speechless. On Sunday, the 10th, at 3 P.M., she died. On the 16th she was buried in the Brompton Cemetery. Edward James Reeve read the service. Arthur Taylor, John, Richard, John Edward, and Fairfax Taylor, Sir A, Gordon, P. Worsley, W. Wallace, J. P. Simpson, R. Lane, Dr. Fyfe, and John Cox attended. On the 17th I went to Essex Street Chapel, where Madge preached her funeral sermon. He had preached my father's funeral sermon just fifty years before. My mother survived my father nearly fifty years. This is not the place to comment on her singular virtues! We went to Boulogne on the 18th for the first period of mourning, and visited Amiens and Abbeville. Home on the 25th. _To Mr. Dempster_ 62 _Rutland Gate, January 11th_.--Your long kindness and friendship tell me how much I may rely on your sympathy. My dear mother expired yesterday afternoon, in perfect serenity. However long one may have anticipated such a stroke and, as I told you in July, I knew it was impending--one cannot realise it till it falls. As Gray said to Mason, 'A man has but one mother;' it is a blank that cannot be filled up. But I have the consolatory thought that my dear mother's life was complete in its usefulness, its energy, its unquenchable zeal for the good of others, its Christian endurance of sorrow and of pain; and no one ever lived in this world more fitted to enter upon another. Christine was with her to the last. _From the Duc d'Aumale_ _Orleans House_, 11 _Janvier_.--Helas! cher Monsieur; je n'ai pas de consolation a vous offrir; je ne puis que vous assurer de ma profonde sympathie. Je juge de ce que vous devez souffrir par ce que je ressentirais a votre place. Mon coeur est avec le votre. H. D'ORLEANS. _From Lord Clarendon_ January 11th. My Dear Reeve,--I heard to my great regret a little while ago that the day of your affliction was fast approaching, and I knew at once by your envelope this afternoon that the hour had come. I thank you for your kind thought of not allowing me to hear by public report an event that so deeply affects your happiness; and I know from my own sad experience how to feel for you in this trial--the loss of a mother's never-failing love and sympathy, and of one's own daily occupation, that real labour of love, in ministering to her comfort and soothing the ills of declining years. You have the consolation, and it is one to be grateful for, my dear Reeve, that your last impressions are of a calm and painless passage from this life, such as you would have most desired for her whom you have so loved and can never forget. Lady Clarendon and my daughters desire me to send you their kind regards and the expression of their sincerest sympathy. Believe me, my dear Reeve, Ever yours truly, CLARENDON. _To Madame de Tocqueville_ Boulogne-sur-mer, January 20th.