The next five years were comparatively uneventful ones in the life of Bishop Richardson. His time was spent in the discharge of his official duties. His coadjutor, Bishop Smith, had become old and feeble, and Bishop Richardson willingly took upon himself a portion of the invalid's work. His time, therefore, was fully occupied. In 1870 Bishop Smith died, and during the next four years the entire duties pertaining to the Episcopal office devolved upon the survivor. He seemed almost to renew his youth in order to meet the extra demands made upon him. He was more than fourscore years of age, yet he contrived to get creditably through an amount of mental and bodily labour which would have prostrated many men not past their prime. He frequently conducted his pulpit services and the sessions of the Conference without the aid of spectacles; and he was persistent in his determination to do his own work without the assistance of a secretary. This state of things, however, in a man of his age, could not be expected to last. His vital forces began perceptibly to give way. In the month of August, 1874, at the General Conference of the Church held at Napanee, he consecrated the Rev. Dr. Carman to the Episcopal office. The ceremonial taxed his energies very severely, and he was compelled by physical suffering to leave the Conference room as soon as he had placed his associate in the chair. At the close of the Conference he returned to his home at Clover Hill--now known as St. Joseph Street--where a few days' rest enabled him to regain as great a measure of health as could be expected in a man who had entered upon his eighty-fourth year. During the autumn and winter he was actively at work as earnestly as ever, watching over every department of the Church, and giving especial attention to the questions submitted by the General Conference for the action of the Quarterly Meeting Conferences. During the following winter, while visiting the Ancaster Circuit, he was prostrated by dizziness, and after his return home it was evident that his end was near. He sank quietly to his rest on the 9th of March, 1875. His death was like his life--manly, and devoid of display. "I have no ecstasy," he remarked to a clerical visitor, "but I know in whom I have believed." To another visitor he remarked, "My work is done; I have nothing to do now but to die." He retained his mental faculties in their full vigour almost up to the moment when he ceased to breathe. He was buried in the family vault at the Necropolis, Toronto, on the 12th of the month. The funeral was unusually large. The funeral sermon was preached by Bishop Carman in the Metropolitan Methodist Church, on the morning of Sunday, March 21st, from the text 1st Corinthians, xv. 55: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"