The curate of Kilkhampton wrote to me: “Mr. Hawker complained that we had not invited him to a retreat held by one of the Cowley Missioners in the same month in which he died. Of course we knew that he could not have come, and so did not ask him. But surely his making a kind of grievance of it is hardly consistent with the idea that even at that time he was in heart a Roman Catholic.” On Sunday, 1st Aug., Mr. Hawker went with his wife to St. James Church, Plymouth, for morning service. The service was choral, and he much enjoyed it. Mrs. Hawker saw him home, and then went on to the Roman Catholic Cathedral, to high mass; and in the evening he accompanied her to benediction, and was pleased with the beauty of the service, which to him had all the attractions of novelty, as he had never travelled abroad, and so was unfamiliar with Roman Catholic ritual. The church was very solemn, and nicely cared for; and benediction is one of the most touching, popular and elastic of services. He was so pleased, that he said he should be quite happy to spend a night in the church. During the week he began to fail rapidly, and on Friday spent the greater part of the day on his bed. He suffered from great mental prostration. One evening he was got out of the house as far as to the Laira, a beautiful creek with the Saltram woods beyond, touching the water; but he was too weak in body and depressed in mind to go out for exercise again. Feeling himself growing weaker, and, as Mrs. Hawker wrote to his niece, “with the truth really beginning to dawn upon him,” he became nervously impatient to get away from Plymouth as speedily as possible, and to return to the home he loved, hallowed by the feet of St. Morwenna, and rendered dear to him by the associations of more than forty years. But before he left Plymouth, when all had been ordered to be in readiness for departure, and notice had been given that the lodgings would be left the ensuing week, a curious occurrence took place. His beloved St. Cuthbert’s stole was sent for from Morwenstow, and a biretta, a distinctively priest’s cap, was borrowed for him—a thing he never wore himself—and he had himself photographed in cassock, surplice, stole and biretta, as a priest. It was his last conscious act; and it is certainly very inconsistent with the supposition that at the time he disbelieved in his Orders. This photograph was taken on Saturday, 7th Aug.: on Monday, 9th Aug., he was struck down with paralysis.