fit.  Three or four lords who sat near him caught him in his fall.  The House broke up in confusion.  The dying man was carried to the residence of one of the officers of Parliament, and was so far restored as to be able to bear a journey to Hayes.  At Hayes, after lingering a few weeks, he expired in his seventieth year.  His bed was watched to the last, with anxious tenderness, by his wife and children; and he well deserved their care.  Too often haughty and wayward to others, to them he had been almost effeminately kind.  He had through life been dreaded by his political opponents, and regarded with more awe than love even by his political associates.  But no fear seems to have mingled with the affection which his fondness, constantly overflowing in a thousand endearing forms, had inspired in the little circle at Hayes.

Chatham, at the time of his decease, had not, in both Houses of Parliament, ten personal adherents.  Half the public men of the age had been estranged from him by his errors, and the other half by the exertions which he had made to repair his errors.  His last speech had been an attack at once on the policy pursued by the Government, and on the policy recommended by the Opposition.  But death restored him to his old place in the affection of his country.  Who could hear unmoved of the fall of that which had been so great, and which had stood so long?  The circumstances, too, seemed rather to belong to the tragic stage than to real life.  A great statesman, full of years and honours, led forth to the Senate House by a son of rare hopes, and stricken down in full council while straining his feeble voice to rouse the drooping spirit of his country, could not but be remembered with peculiar veneration and tenderness.  The few detractors who ventured to murmur were silenced by the indignant clamours of a nation which remembered only the lofty genius, the unsullied probity, the undisputed services, of him who was no more.  For once, the chiefs of all parties were agreed.  A public funeral, a public monument, were eagerly voted.  The debts of the deceased were paid.  A provision was made for his family.  The City of London requested that the remains of the great man whom she had so long loved and honoured might rest under the dome of her magnificent cathedral.  But the petition came too late.  Everything was already prepared for the interment in Westminster Abbey.

Though men of all parties had concurred in decreeing posthumous honours to Chatham, his corpse was attended to the grave almost exclusively by opponents of the Government.  The banner of the lordship of Chatham was borne by Colonel Barre, attended by the Duke of Richmond and Lord Rockingham.  Burke, Savile, and Dunning upheld the pall.  Lord Camden was conspicuous in the procession.  The chief mourner was young William Pitt.  After the lapse of more than twenty-seven years, in a season as dark and perilous, his own shattered frame and broken heart were laid, with the same pomp, in the same consecrated mould.