order to settle a question which arose in the course of the reading, he left the library to speak to his wife and sister. Leaving them a moment later with a laugh, he went into an adjoining room, where presently he was heard to groan. His secretary hurried to his side, and found him quite unconscious. In the early afternoon he died, without knowing that the end had come. Prescott had always dreaded the thought of being buried alive. His vivid imagination had shown him the appalling horror of a living burial. Again and again he had demanded of those nearest him that he should be shielded from the possibility of such a fate. Therefore, when the physicians had satisfied themselves that life had really left him, a large vein was severed, to make assurance doubly sure. On the last day of January he was buried in the family tomb, in the crypt of St. Paul's. Men and women of every rank and station were present at the simple ceremony. The Legislature of the State had adjourned so that its members might pay their tribute of respect to so distinguished a citizen. The Historical Society was represented among the mourners. His personal friends and those of humble station, whom he had so often befriended, filled the body of the church. Before his burial, his remains, in accordance with a wish of his that was well known, had been carried to the room in which were his beloved books and where so many imperishable pages had been written. There, as it were, he lay in state. It is thus that one may best, in thought, take leave of him, amid the memorials and records of a past which he had made to live again. CHAPTER VII "FERDINAND AND ISABELLA"--PRESCOTT'S STYLE The _History of Ferdinand and Isabella_ is best regarded as Prescott's initiation into the writing of historical literature. It was a _prolusio_, a preliminary trial of his powers, in some respects an apprenticeship to the profession which he had decided to adopt. When he began its composition he had published nothing but a few casual reviews. He had neither acquired a style nor gained that self-confidence which does so much to command success. No such work as this had as yet been undertaken by an American. How far he could himself overcome the peculiar difficulties which confronted him was quite uncertain. Whether he had it in him to be at once a serious investigator and a maker of literature, he did not know. Therefore, the _Ferdinand and Isabella_ shows here and there an uncertainty of touch and a lack of assured method such as were quite natural in one who had undertaken so ambitious a task with so little technical experience.