CHAPTER XII.

LAST MONTHS OF BISHOP BLOMFIELD'S LIFE-HIS FINAL ATTACKHIS DEATH AND FUNERAL MEMORIALS TRIBUTES TO HIS

MEMORY-CONCLUSION.

THUS he who had been known to the world so long as the Bishop of London, retired from his high position, and once more, after thirty-three years, signed his name as Charles James Blomfield-the first Bishop of that ancient see, who, when he found himself unable to discharge the duties which he owed to it, had resigned his high honours, and with them two-thirds of his income. So associated had his name become with the diocese over which he presided, that men found it hard to remember, that though no longer Bishop of London, he was still a Bishop, his consecration being indelible; and that, if it had pleased God to restore him to health, he would still have been capable of performing all episcopal functions, although possessing no episcopal jurisdiction.

No such restoration, however, was in store for him. At first, he seemed the better for having completed the act of resignation; perhaps, because his mind was now relieved from the thought of duties which he had no power of performing. But, on the whole, he remained after his resignation much in the same state as in the previous twelve months. He was still perfectly help

less, and at times suffered great pain; he still derived comfort from the Scriptures and prayers which were read in his sick-room, and from the occasional reception of the Holy Communion; and he still found amusement in the works of fiction, or the books of a more solid kind, which were read to him by his sons and daughters, his ȧváyvwotal, as he called them. It is remembered by those who were with him, that at this time Mr. Nassau Senior lent for this purpose the manuscript of his interesting diary in France, which has since been published. The Bishop, too, had now the singular privilege of hearing his own biography read during his lifetime. Dr. Biber had originally contributed to the English Churchman a sketch of Bishop Blomfield's public life; and this was published in a single volume in 1857, and was read to the Bishop. He listened with great attention, and confirmed the general accuracy of Dr. Biber's account, remarking here and there where an error seemed to have crept in.

Thus the months wore on, in the quiet retirement of Fulham, in a forced inactivity so different from that to which the Bishop had been accustomed, till the summer of 1857. When July arrived, he was, though his friends did not know it, fast drawing to his end.

On the 30th of that month he seemed less well than usual. In the morning some relations came to visit him. He seemed, as usual, glad to see them, and made some playful remarks to a little grandson, whose childish simplicity and fancy for “seeing my grandpapa" seemed always to please him.

When he was carried back to his bed (which, during the summer, had been placed in the Porteus library) he

seemed cheerful, and one of his daughters remarked that, both then and when she took leave of him, he did not say, as he so often did, that he "was very ill, and should never see her again."

It had been the Bishop's custom throughout his illness to have read to him, with some slight alterations, the Confession and the Absolution in the Communion Service, with the Lord's Prayer, and a prayer from the Visitation of the Sick, or sometimes the "Prayer for a Sick Relation," from his own Manual of Prayers. For the last week or ten days he had expressed a strong desire that his children should come into his room before he went to sleep, to join in these prayers; and, fearful lest his desire might not be sufficiently impressed on their minds, he called, on this evening, the only one who happened to be in at the time, after she had taken leave of him for the night, and said, "My dear child, I wish you to come every evening, when your dear mother reads prayers with me, and all my children who can. I hope, my dear child, you will comply with my wish."

For a week or two past his friends had been meditating a move to Sydenham for change of air, more for the sake of those who attended him, than from any hope that it would cause a material improvement in his own state. Hitherto he had evinced a strong, and not unnatural, dislike to any change of place, and a dread of being removed from Fulham, lest he should never be enabled to return to it again. Now, however, he expressed the strongest desire to be removed; and, as his pain increased, he became restlessly impatient for something to be settled, and desired that if a house could not be

found, rooms should be taken in the hotel at Sydenham, adding that it was to him "a matter of life and death.”

On the evening of the next day the prayers were read to him as usual. All who knew him well will remember his sensitive dislike to bad English, or to any language which failed exactly to express the sentiments it was intended to convey; and, during his illness, this peculiarity had increased to an almost morbid excess, so that even when the Bible or some of the Church Prayers were being read to him, he would stop the reader to remark on the real meaning of a word, or the construction of a sentence; and a casual observer, unacquainted with his peculiarities, or with the real character of his mind, might sometimes have been led to think that he attended rather to the letter than to the spirit of what was read.

But the words of Life, studied in the spirit of prayer, had long ago entered into his soul, and dwelt there. In the long and painful night watches, his friends now know, from an assurance which once fell from his own lips, that he who spoke to those nearest and dearest to him so little of his inner life, and who now often ap-、 peared unable, from pain and weariness, to enter into what was read to him by others, was constantly lifting up his soul, though his lips were silent, in communion with his God and Saviour; and that never a night passed but the words of the Psalmist were rising from his heart, "Have mercy upon me, O God, after Thy great goodness." Not until his illness did any know that during many years of his life this fifty-first Psalm had been his nightly prayer.

It was on this same evening, too, while the prayers

were being read, that he interrupted them by calling to the nurse who attended him. And then with that characteristic love of explaining to others the meaning of expressions that they might use in ignorance, and with the equally characteristic gentleness of manner which marked his mode of teaching, he began to explain to the nurse that the words in the general confession, "there is no health in us," did not refer to our bodily, but to our spiritual health, and proceeded to show "how vile our earthly nature is, and that there is no cure for us but in the atoning blood of Christ, no hope but, for His sake, in the infinite mercy of God, for that of ourselves we can deserve nothing but punishment.”

When those who were with him rose from their knees, and bade him "good night," he took leave of them with all his old tenderness of manner. They were simple words and expressions of affection that he used, and such as his children had been accustomed to hear and to receive from him for many years, but they remembered them then, because these were almost the last words (except in short and incoherent sentences) which he addressed to them. At the time, it was his manner which especially struck them, more completely that of his own old self than they had noticed for some time, the energetic earnestness of his natural character adding force to his tenderness. Afterwards, when his wife bade him "good night," he detained her; and, drawing her to him, told her, in a low but distinct voice, that "he felt he had been a great sinner-none could know his sins better than he did himself; that repentance was a hard thing, but that he trusted humbly he had truly repented, and that he had a perfect trust in the mercy