The foreboding was only too well justified. But the first blow which fell was one little looked for. Ellen Moore died suddenly in her bed. A month later came from Africa "a strange and ominous-looking letter which we opened with trembling hands, and it told us that my son Tom was dead." I add one last quotation from the Diary. "The last of our five children now are gone and I am left desolate and alone. Not a single relative have I now left in the world." That is practically the end of Moore's life. A severe illness followed, and "when he recovered," says Lord John Russell, "he was a different man." "Nothing seemed to rest upon his mind," and, with his memory, his wit had gone also. He made an excursion to town in 1846 to superintend the production of the last volume of his history, and one year later still, to be the guest of Rogers, who was to Moore, at any rate, a most considerate, loyal, helpful, and constant friend. But what he wrote to this friend from Sloperton was true: "I am sinking here into a mere vegetable." So, peacefully at the last, after five years of mere breathing, in which neither joy nor sorrow touched him, he faded out of life; watched over to the last by the woman who had grown more necessary to him with every year. He left her unprovided with money, yet not without provision. The Memoirs which he, himself a great lover and reader of such literature, had scrupulously kept for a period of close on thirty years, were always designed to be a posthumous resource; and he had confided them by a will made many years earlier to the care of Lord John Russell. Had he foreseen that the friend of whom he asked this office would be charged with the cares of an Administration, when it fell to be accomplished, the request would probably not have been made; but being made, it was duly honoured, and Moore, who had always liked impressive auspices for his children at the font,[1] had himself a Prime Minister for his biographer.