I fight against sickness and fate, believing I have still duties to perform, and that even my illness is connected in some way with my being made useful to my fellow-creatures. I have this conviction full on my mind, that intellectual beings spring from the same breath of Infinite Intelligence, and return to it again, but by different courses, like rivers born amidst the clouds of heaven and lost in the deep and eternal ocean; some in youth rapid and short-lived torrents, some in manhood powerful and copious rivers, and some in age by a winding and slow course, half lost in their career and making their exit by many sandy and shallow mouths. [And then he asks him if he will come and travel with him.] But I write as if I were a strong man, when I am like a pendulum, as it were, swinging between death and life. God bless you, my dear Poole! Your grateful and affectionate Friend, H. DAVY. A fortnight afterwards he had another severe attack of paralysis of the right side. On February 23, three days after the attack, he dictated a letter to his brother. MY DEAR JOHN,--Notwithstanding all my care and discipline and ascetic living I am dying from a severe attack of palsy, which has seized the whole of the body with the exception of the intellectual organ. I am under the usual severe discipline of bleeding and blistering, but the weakness increases, and a few hours or days will finish my mortal existence. I shall leave my bones in the Eternal City. I bless God that I have been able to finish all my philosophical labours.... God bless you, my dear brother! may you be happy and prosperous! Your affectionate Friend and Brother, H. DAVY. The 25th he dictated another letter, chiefly on the torpedo; it ends: Pray do not neglect this subject, which I leave to you as another legacy. God bless you, my dear brother! Your affectionate Friend, H. DAVY. He tried to write a postscript, and he did write ‘My dear John;’ then he dictated, ‘I am dying; come as quickly as you can. You will not see me alive, I am afraid. God bless you!’