Last week, after a few days' illness, without pain or trouble, Lord Harrowby died at Sandon, having just completed his eighty-fifth year.[29] The three old friends, Tom Grenville, the Archbishop of York, and Lord Harrowby, thus died all three of old age, peacefully and painlessly, within twelve months. Lord Harrowby survived Mr. Grenville exactly a year, and the Archbishop three months. He was the last of his generation and of the colleagues of Mr. Pitt, the sole survivor of those stirring times and mighty contests. He had all along such bad health that half a century ago his life was considered a very bad one, and yet he reached his eighty-sixth year with his faculties very little impaired. He was at the top of the second-rate men, always honourable and straightforward, generally liberal and enlightened, greatly esteemed and respected. No man ever passed through a long political life more entirely without blemish or suspicion. It is curious that in the biographical notices of him, which according to the custom of the present day have appeared in the newspapers, no mention, or hardly any, has been made of by far the most remarkable transaction in which he ever was engaged, that of procuring the passing of the second reading of the second Reform Bill in the House of Lords--one of the most important services, as it turned out, that any man ever rendered to his country. In conjunction with Lord Wharncliffe he accomplished this, his conduct being perfectly disinterested, for he had long before resolved never again to take office, and had refused to be Prime Minister on the death of Canning. I was in their confidence, and much concerned in the whole of that transaction, as fully appears in my Journal of that period. His speech on the first Reform Bill was very celebrated, exceedingly able, and superior to any other he ever made. He was remarkably well informed. Madame de StaÎl speaks of him somewhere as Lord Harrowby, 'qui connaÓt notre littÈrature un peu mieux que nous-mÍmes;' but his precise manner and tart disposition prevented his being agreeable in society. He was very religious, very generous, and a man of the strictest integrity in private and in public life. I lived a great deal with him, but all my intimacy was with his admirable wife, whose virtues and merits I have elsewhere recorded. [Footnote 29: Dudley, second Baron and first Earl of Harrowby, born December 22, 1782; died December 26, 1847.]