With the same dauntless courage with which he had faced existence he now accepted the knowledge that this day--the thought of which had sustained him through loneliness and battle and tempest--was to prove the day of his death. History indeed presents few events of an irony more profound. At sunset on March 6th, Collingwood set sail for England; at sunset on the 7th, he lay dead, and that fortitude with which he met a fate, the harshness of which must have cruelly enhanced his bodily anguish, presents to all time a sublime ending to a sublime career. Meanwhile in England those whom he had loved continued to count the lessening days to his return and to plan with tender solicitude every means for cherishing and restoring the enfeebled frame which they fondly believed needed but care and happiness to endow it with renewed health. Little as they recked of the burden which the waves were, in truth, bringing them, the knowledge, when it arrived, came with a blow which stunned. In the first announcement of the news, the very terseness of the communication seems to recreate more vividly the intense feeling which the writer knew required no insistence. On April 17th, 1810, Stanhope wrote briefly to the Vicar of Newcastle:-- GROSVENOR SQUARE. DEAR SMITH, You are the fittest person I know at Newcastle to execute with propriety a most painful & most melancholy office. I have only this moment been apprised of the loss both the public and the Collingwood family have sustained, and am so shocked with the intelligence that I can hardly write legibly. I enclose the letter. I am sure you will communicate it with all delicacy & due Preparation to Lady Collingwood & Mr and the Miss Collingwoods. Mrs Stanhope will endeavour to see Miss Collingwood to-morrow. Pray assure them of my readiness to be of every assistance to them in my power. Of the manner in which the news arrived, Mrs Stanhope furnishes more details. GROSVENOR SQUARE, _April 23rd, 1810._ MY DEAR JOHN, "I little thought when I wrote to you on Tuesday last that I should, before that post went out, hear the afflicting intelligence of the death of our great and valuable Friend, Lord Collingwood, whose loss is a publick calamity. But I will enter into particulars.