I have noticed the apparent commencement of that general indisposition which had for some time been stealing upon him, undermining his powers, oppressing his spirits, and subduing his best energies; but in the end of 1826, his complaint assumed a more decided and alarming form. Feeling more than usually unwell, while on a visit to his friend Lord Gage, he determined to return to London, and was seized while on his journey, at Mayersfield, with an apoplectic attack. Prompt and copious bleeding, however, on the spot, arrested the symptoms more immediately threatening the extinction of life, and enabled him to reach home; but paralysis, the usual consequence of such seizures, had obviously, though at first but slightly, diminished his muscular powers, and given an awkwardness to his gait. As soon as the more immediate danger of the attack had passed away, it was thought expedient to recommend, as the best means of his farther recovery, a residence in the southern part of Europe, where he would be removed from all the cares and anxieties that were inseparably connected with his continuance in London; and he accordingly quitted England, with the intention of spending what remained of the winter in Italy. The following interesting letter to his friend will sufficiently explain the serious character of his malady, and the degree of bodily infirmity which accompanied it. TO THOMAS POOLE, ESQ. Ravenna, March 14, 1827. MY DEAR POOLE, I should have answered your letter immediately, had it been possible; but I was, at the time I received it, very ill, in the crisis of the complaint under which I have long suffered, and which turned out to be a determination of the blood to the brain; at last producing the most alarming nervous symptoms, and threatening the loss of power and of life. Had I been in England, I should gladly have promoted the election of your friend at the Athenæum: your certificate of character would always be enough for me; for, like our angling evangelical Isaac Walton, I know you choose for your friends only good men. I am, thank God, better, but still very weak, and wholly unfit for any kind of business and study. I have, however, considerably recovered the use of all the limbs that were affected; and as my amendment has been slow and gradual, I hope in time it may be complete: but I am leading the life of an anchorite, obliged to abstain from flesh, wine, business, study, experiments, and all things that I love; but this discipline is salutary, and for the sake of being able to do something more for science, and, I hope, for humanity, I submit to it; believing that the Great Source of intellectual being so wills it for good. I am here lodged in the Apostolical Palace, by the kindness of the Vice-Legate of Ravenna, a most admirable and enlightened prelate, and who has done every thing for me that he could have done for a brother.