in quiet happiness, alloyed only by concern for his wife's future. He enjoyed the 'long-seated visits' of his country neighbours, and made pleasant company for his home guests. He strolled about his gardens, and in 1816 constantly overlooked the workmen employed in restoring after his own plans the grey old parish church, which a later squire of Daylesford was to rebuild. In 1818 his health, hitherto good, began to break down. In July, a cancerous swelling in his throat grew daily worse; and after much suffering, borne with patient fortitude — 'none of you know what I suffer,' he once said — the white-haired statesman on the 22nd August drew a handkerchief over his face, and passed away without sigh or struggle, in his eighty-sixth year. His remains were laid among the bones of his forefathers in a vault that now lies just beneath the chancel of the new church[1].
An inscription beneath a bust in Westminster Abbey records the services of him whose resolute courage preserved and strengthened our young Indian Empire, and whose organising genius rendered possible the whole course of Indian history from the days of Cornwallis down to those of Dalhousie. Hastings had lived to see nearly half of all India brought directly under British rule, and the very year of his death witnessed the final overthrow of the Maráthá power by the armies of Lord Hastings.
- ↑ Gleig, Notes and Queries, vol. vi. 1870.
