pain, but one day with inexpressible torment; yet he bore it decently, without breaking out into repinings, or impatient complaints.  Nature being at last quite exhausted, and all the floods of life gone, he died without a groan on the 26th of July 1680, in the 33d year of his age.  A day or two before his death he lay much silent, and seemed extremely devout in his contemplations; he was frequently observed to raise his eyes to heaven, and send forth ejaculations to the searcher of hearts, who saw his penitence, and who, he hoped, would forgive him.’

Thus died lord Rochester, an amazing instance of the goodness of God, who permitted him to enjoy time, and inclined his heart to penitence.  As by his life he was suffered to set an example of the most abandoned dissoluteness to the world; so by his death, he was a lively demonstration of the fruitlessness of vicious courses, and may be proposed as an example to all those who are captivated with the charms of guilty pleasure.

Let all his failings now sleep with him in the grave, and let us only think of his closing moments, his penitence, and reformation.  Had he been permitted to have recovered his illness, it is reasonable to presume he would have been as lively an example of virtue as he had ever been of vice, and have born his testimony in favour of religion.

He left behind him a son named Charles, who dying on the 12th of November, was buried by his father on the 7th of December following:  he also left behind him three daughters.  The male line ceasing, Charles ii. conferred the title of earl of Rochester on Lawrence viscount Killingworth, a younger son of Edward earl of Clarendon.

We might now enumerate his lordship’s writings, of which we have already given some character; but unhappily for the world they are too generally diffused, and we think ourselves under no obligations to particularize those works which have been so fruitful of mischief to society, by promoting a general corruption of morals; and which he himself in his last moments wished he could recal, or rather that he never had composed.

Footnotes:  1.  See the Life of Sheffield Duke of Buckingham. 2.  The Duchess of Portsmouth.

* * * * *

George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.

Son and heir of George, duke, marquis, and earl of Buckingham, murdered by Felton in the year 1628.  This nobleman was born at Wallingford-House in the parish of St. Martin’s in the Fields on the 30th of January 1627, and baptized there on the 14th of February following, by Dr. Laud, then bishop of Bath and Wells, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury.