His strength failed daily, and it was soon seen that the end was not far off. In the beginning of July death seemed close at hand, but he rallied once more. Happily his sufferings were at no time very severe. His mind often wandered, and at last he sank into a state of stupor. For hours he lay motionless, giving no signs of life but by his quiet breathing. His aged wife sat holding his beloved hand in hers. He gave one last sign that he was still of this world. He felt for her wedding-ring--that ring which he had put round her finger more than fifty years before. Finding it, he knew whose dear hand it was that he was holding, and with one gentle pressure he showed that the love that he had always borne her from the beginning he bore her to the end. He never moved again. He died on the 27th day of August, in the year 1879. Hitherto this day had always been held a festival in our family; for on it his brother Arthur had, for eighty-one years, kept his birthday. It had been Rowland Hill's hope that his countrymen would think him not unworthy to find his last resting-place in Westminster Abbey. It was, indeed, with singular agreement that the voice of the people awarded to him the last great honour which we Englishmen render to our famous dead. There, followed by his children and his children's children, by his two aged brothers, who had shared in his struggles and his triumphs, by his brothers' children and their children's children, he was laid in his glorious place of rest. It was the burial of a man of the people, and the people came together to do him honour. Men came, too, who had worked under him and worked with him--men who knew well what manner of man he was who was now laid among the great ones of the land. There was but one left of the good line of Postmasters-General under whom it had been his happiness to serve. He unhappily was on the wide Atlantic the day that we were gathered round the open grave. "I can truly say," wrote the Duke of Argyll, "that no one among his many friends and admirers would have joined more sincerely than I should in the mourning of that day. I had the highest admiration of him, and the strongest feeling of personal regard and affection towards him." The City of London, which he had so signally served, was represented by its chief magistrate, and the great Liberal party, to which he had been so long attached, by his old friend Mr. Charles Villiers and Earl Granville. His native town sent its Mayor and a deputation of citizens, while his county was represented by its Lord-Lieutenant. The presence of the venerable Astronomer-Royal, for whom the dead man had long entertained a feeling of high regard, reminded those who had known him how he had always spoken of astronomy as "my favourite science."