Under the valid plea of advancing age and failing health Sir Rutherford during his last years relinquished one after another the offices which he had filled with so much earnestness and good faith. Deafness alone obliged him to retire from the active chairmanship of the Westminster Hospital, though his attendances at the weekly meetings of the Board were unremitting to the very end. As late as July 1897 he took a leading part in measures he deemed urgent for the wellbeing of the institution. During the Jubilee celebrations he was able to receive a formal visit from a party of twelve Dyak police from British North Borneo, under the command of Mr Wardrop. The Committee of the Jubilee Nurses continued to meet at his house, and he did work for the institution during the summer. While at Wimbledon with his family in August, he was seized by an illness from which he rallied sufficiently to be brought home to his house at Westminster, where he came under the medical care of his old friend and physician, Dr Lionel Beale. Among the few friends who were admitted to see him during the last month of his life were the Dean of Westminster, Lord Lister, Mr Edmund Bagshawe of Bath, and one or two others. His strength was then gradually failing, though he retained his intellect unimpaired till within a few days of the end, on November 2, 1897. He was buried in Merstham churchyard. His widow, nearly his own age, survived him sixteen months, dying in March 1899. How much the maintenance of the husband's long life of active usefulness owed to the support and encouragement of a judicious and devoted wife must remain behind the veil. She had her reward.

MAP OF EASTERN ASIA TO ILLUSTRATE THE ENGLISHMAN IN CHINA IN THE VICTORIAN ERA
By Alexander Michie
[View larger image.]

It may be interesting in conclusion to add a few words of Sir Rutherford Alcock's estimate of himself, which occur in a letter to the friend who had pressed him on the subject of biography, written within a year of his death. "In worldly things," he said, "I have been exceptionally favoured by opportunities, many of them unanticipated, and rather fortuitous than by any efforts or merits. My early life was marked by a great rashness, and a readiness to accept responsibilities which savoured much of presumption and confidence from conceit in my powers to deal with whatever fell in my way—very different from my retrospect in old age and the sobered estimate my judgment is now disposed to form of all I undertook and accomplished, and the risks I accepted, through my fifty years of active life."

If, however, age be the season appropriate for judgment, youth is the time for laying up the materials for it; and he who takes no risks achieves nothing worthy of being judged. We estimate the man by his record rather than by his own review of it, falling back on the criterion, valid in all circumstances, "By their fruits ye shall know them."

INDEX.

FOOTNOTES