Yesterday the Duke [of York] told me that the late King [George III.] was walking with him one day at Kew, and his Majesty said, 'The world tells many lies, and here is one instance. I am said to have held frequent communication with Lord Bute, and the last time I ever saw or spoke to him was in that pavilion in the year 1764.' The King went over to breakfast with his mother, the Princess Dowager, and she took him aside and said, 'There is somebody here who wishes very much to speak to you.' 'Who is it?' 'Lord Bute.' 'Good God, mamma! how could you bring him here? It is impossible for me to hold any communication with Lord Bute in this manner.' However, he did see him, when Lord Bute made a violent attack upon him for having abandoned and neglected him. The King replied that he could not, in justice to his Ministers, hold any communication with him unknown to them, when Lord Bute said that he would never see the King again. The King became angry in his turn, and said, 'Then, my Lord, be it so, and remember from henceforth we never meet again.' And from that day he never beheld Lord Bute or had any communication with him. 1827. [Page Head: DEATH OF THE DUKE OF YORK.] Friday night, January 5th, 1827, half-past one {p.084} I am just come from taking my last look at the poor Duke.[6] He expired at twenty minutes after nine. Since eleven o'clock last night the physicians never left his room. He never moved, and they repeatedly thought that life was extinct, but it was not till that hour that they found it was all over. The Duke of Sussex and Stephenson were in the next room; Taylor, Torrens and Dighton, Armstrong and I were upstairs. Armstrong and I had been there about half an hour when they came and whispered something to Dighton and called out Taylor. Dighton told Torrens and they went out; immediately after Taylor came up, and told us it was all over and begged we would go downstairs. We went directly into the room. The Duke was sitting exactly as at the moment he died, in his great arm-chair, dressed in his grey dressing-gown, his head inclined against the side of the chair, his hands lying before him, and looking as if he were in a deep and quiet sleep. Not a vestige of pain was perceptible on his countenance, which, except being thinner, was exactly such as I have seen it a hundred times during his life. In fact, he had not suffered at all, and had expired with all the ease and tranquillity which the serenity of his countenance betokened. Nothing about or around him had the semblance of death; it was all like quiet repose, and it was not without a melancholy satisfaction we saw such evident signs of the tranquillity of his last moments. [6] [His Royal Highness the Duke of York, second son of King George III., died on the 5th of January, 1827.]